Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. As I was trying to figure out the role I wanted to play in the VC world I decided I wanted to focus on businesses that were building deeply technical products to solve problems for business users. And my friend and Invoca co-founder Colin Kelley has done both.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). I like technical founders so this wasn’t an issue.

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Revolution

MARCH 8, 2023

population, but in 2022, companies with solely female founders garnered just 2% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups. The long and short of it: Female founders face systemic barriers to founding, funding, and scaling their businesses. Women represent 50.5% of the U.S. That ticked up to 15.4%

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David Teten VC

JULY 27, 2021

We have collected a wide range of freebies, contests, accelerators, online communities, and VCs designed for student tech founders. I have been researching this both to support Versatile VC ’s portfolio companies and also as part of research for my new book, To University and Beyond: Launch Your Career in High Gear. Right here.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Tracy DiNunzio isn’t your typical Silicon Valley startup founder. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. I blog on entrepreneurship & VC precisely because entrepreneurs and other VCs are my customers.

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David Teten VC

MARCH 1, 2022

The easiest way to work with and for VC funds is to become a part-time scout, getting paid for sourcing investments. How to find a job as a VC scout. VC recruiters list and compensation data. How to negotiate a partner role at a VC or private equity firm. Syllabus for how to launch, manage, and invest a VC fund.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

VC has been invested over the past decade according to race, gender and educational background makes for grim reading — with all-ethnic teams and female entrepreneurs receiving just a fraction of available funding versus all-white teams and male founders. female entrepreneurs face in accessing VC funding versus male counterparts.

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

Sesie Bonsi is the founder and CEO of Bleu , a financial technology platform focused on enabling touchless payment experiences. But most venture-backed startups are “still overwhelmingly white, male, Ivy-League-educated and based in Silicon Valley,” according to a study conducted by RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC. Sesie Bonsi.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 19, 2022

For Black founders, who have rarely received more than 1% of total venture capital invested in startups, 2022 wasn’t kind, and 2023 doesn’t look promising given how things are going. To find out how Black founders are planning to manage their time, money, and expectations for the upcoming months, TechCrunch+ surveyed three founders.

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Revolution

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Since the beginning of modern venture capital investing — a relatively nascent asset class — the industry has been biased toward funding what it knows best: founders with familiar demographics (white, male) in familiar geographies (Silicon Valley). One event held by a few investors focused on Black founders is clearly not enough.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 4, 2022

The founders bootstrapped Spleet for 18 months before conducting a family and friend round of $265,000. million seed funding led by Los Angeles–based early-stage VC firm MaC Venture Capital. Closing on $103M, MaC VC is changing the face of venture capital. Now it is announcing the completion of its $2.6

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

In 2010, Antonio Garcia Martinez, the founder of AdGrok, wrote, “New York will always be a tech backwater, I don’t care what Chris Dixon or Ron Conway or Paul Graham say.” Top founders want to live in a place where employees are serious about working hard. Startup founders always need help. Mayors don’t build startup cities.

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

The latest to get VC recognition is KNN3, a Singapore-based startup working to help developers make sense of relational data across blockchains. The blockchain data space is already quite crowded, co-founder Thomas Yu admitted, but there’s still room for more specialized services. In the U.S.,

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Dream It

APRIL 24, 2019

Over the past week, Zillow announced the rollout of their 3D Home tool, which lets real estate agents show immersive VC views of homes for sale. According to the founders, properties using the VirtualAPT content have seen over 300 percent increase for new building lease-ups.

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StartupNation

JANUARY 6, 2022

Venture capital or VC. They are also often founders of successful businesses with plenty of experience in return on investment. One of the downsides to VC funding is that, since they’re investing so much capital in your startup, they’ll usually have a lot of leverage when it comes to deciding how you run your own business.

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This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 15, 2013

Their goal is to be a brand that parents and teachers trust to produce high-quality, fun, and inspiring mobile products that enable learning and encourage kids to explore the world around them. Most VC funds wouldn''t touch a pre-product app company. When he pitched, he was the proverbial "guy with an idea."

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. There is one source I never liked and no early-stage VC should – investment bankers. With which other investors?

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. Very few founder CEOs go into the job ever expecting to give up their seat. It’s your baby. You took the biggest leap of faith.

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American Entrepreneurship

JUNE 19, 2025

With an initial close of $30 million, Lioncrest is positioning itself as a next-generation venture firm, offering both equity and credit capital to meet the evolving needs of founders building in complex, regulated markets. Non-dilutive financing options that preserve founder ownership.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 13, 2019

Using the proliferation of newly GPS-enabled mobile devices to enable taxi hailing and beat out stagnant incumbent providers was always going to be a big win for consumers. It provided a better service than existing cabs were going to be able to do for at least several years—cutting out lots of unnecessary overhead in the system.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Magic’s CEO and co-founder, Eric Steinberger, says that he was inspired by the potential of AI at a young age. Despite securing millions in VC backing, Kite struggled to pay the bills, running into headwinds that made finding a product-market fit impossible. So what’s its story? The short-term goal (i.e.,

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American Entrepreneurship

MAY 21, 2025

Creator Ventures, founded in 2022 by cousins Sasha Kaletsky and Caspar Lee , is uniquely positioned to invest in the next wave of AI-enabled consumer applications, marketplaces, creative tools, and SaaS platforms reshaping the digital landscape. As a creator, Ive lived through the digital evolution firsthand, said Lee. Thats what we bring.

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Hunter Walk

AUGUST 23, 2023

Our participation in Anchor ( later acquired by Spotify ) generated both a return and a friendship between us and the founders. Specifically I’ve had the chance to spend meaningful time over the years with Michael Mignano as he went from startup CEO to Executive/Angel Investor and now VC Partner at Lightspeed. Was I right?

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TechCrunch

MAY 18, 2022

billion industry this year, startups in the e-commerce enablement software space are looking to carve out a niche in this huge market. Founder and CEO Ashland Stansbury explained that e-commerce companies are spending a collective $1.3 With global e-commerce sales poised to be a $5.5

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2015

As a VC (especially based in LA), I see hundreds of video apps. I first met the Ferris founders ( Paul Boukadakis & Chris Shaheen ) more than a year ago. The backend services to enable scrolling, click-and-watch, scroll forward with minimal buffering, etc. So Why Did We Invest? If you’re captivated you click and watch.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

” If you don’t read any more of the post, the summary lesson learned for entrepreneurs is this: Product-centric founders often over-intellectualize their communications and therefore fail to sell their concepts to the masses. In a VC pitch this type of messaging will do just fine. Simplify Your Message.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 26, 2023

AirOps , an early-stage startup, is in the right place at the right time, helping companies take advantage of these new capabilities to build AI-enabled applications on top of large language models. AirOps is helping companies build AI-enabled applications on top of LLMs by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

2021 saw phenomenal returns for our industry and it topped off more than a decade of unprecedented VC growth. We are proud to announce the close of our 7th early-stage fund with $280 million to invest in seed and early stage founders. What do you do with a $650 million platform? We will continue to work hard to make you all proud.

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 28, 2022

VC firm Baukunst led the Five Flute investment, and I sat down with Axel Bichara and Tyler Mincey to learn how they evaluate a potential early-stage deal. In VC, we are looking for the outliers.” ” Axel Bichara, co-founder and general partner, Baukunst. You’re evaluating the founders. ”

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

Image Credits: Co-founders Gloria Lin and Joel Poloney / Bonnie Rae Mills Photography. Last week I wrote about two startups that had female co-founders and CEOs and I was so impressed with them both. This is also at least the fourth construction tech company I’ve written about in the past year with a female co-founder.

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 3, 2021

To understand why Draper Esprit not only decided to stay public but doubled down on its structure by moving to the main boards in London and Dublin, we got on the horn with the firm’s co-founder, Stuart Chapman. So, by stepping up, we enable ourselves to go into more generous funds as well as tech funds [that] have a minimum bar.

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2022

AM: We went to a builders community we’d built the year before, and to [Stanford’s] engineering school [where I teach], and to the CS department at a number of universities and said, ‘Hey, if you’re interested in being a future founder, and you’re a great builder, then we are interested in talking to you.’

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Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 16, 2024

When Marc and I started the firm in 2009, the conventional wisdom in Venture Capital was that in any given year, only 15 companies would ever generate $100M in revenue and those 15 companies would drive almost all of VC returns. At that time, the conventional wisdom was right.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 5, 2022

It has a robotic camera, combined with a subscription service, which enables real estate agents and brokers to generate high-resolution photos of properties, floor plans and virtual tours. It’s now raised $16 million in new funds led by Founders Fund, the San Francisco-based VC, whose portfolio boasts names such as Airbnb, Spotify and SpaceX.

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Hunter Walk

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

An Investor and a Founder Postmortem a Mistake. The common VC passes are pretty cliche. Now, the situation here that enabled such a frank discussion is a bit atypical. People ask me what do I think makes a successful founder and investor relationship and I always respond: trust and context. The Four (!!!)

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TechCrunch

APRIL 17, 2023

in a seed investment round led by La Famiglia VC , out of Berlin, the €250M fund raise for which we covered just last month. Other investors include Lightbird, Anamcara and Angels including Ignaz Forstmeier, co-Founder at Personio, and Charlie Songhurst, former Head of Corporate Strategy at Microsoft. It’s now secured $3.8M

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

These changes will create opportunities for founders across the entire stack of computer-aided design tools for architects, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools, and finally integration with 3-D environmental models to understand and design the lifetime impact of the buildings.

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