A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

We have been seeing quite a few seed rounds getting done in and around $100mm post-money and that concerns me for a few reasons: Seed stage is when a company has a good team, a good idea, but has not yet proven product market fit and a go to market model, and has not yet demonstrated a sustainable business model. That makes sense.

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VC investment investing sustainability 363

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

APRIL 21, 2021

A well-known entrepreneur turned VC, who will go unnamed because I am not sure he would want me to share this conversation publicly, once told me “if you remove a founder, you must sell the company within a couple of years or it will start to decline in value.” Some founders are this rare breed of visionaries who can operate too.

leadership 279

leadership VC advice sustainability 279

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

The firm has an Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Tel Aviv presence, and now has a $160 million sack of funds to deploy across its focus areas: sustainability and technological innovation in the construction, real estate and manufacturing industries. Sebastian Peck and Talia Rafaeli are heading up the new sustainability fund for Kompas.

sustainability 99

sustainability real estate construction VC 99

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 11, 2021

Despite the huge and sustained growth in digital advertising (or maybe because of it), there are virtually no tools where a marketer or growth leader can understand their performance and spend across channels, nor where they can share best practices and insights with their peers so the platforms are at an information advantage.

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founder peer-to-peer sustainability VC 424

Hunter Walk

FEBRUARY 22, 2025

Ok, back to the VC content marketing. As a result I’ve seen hundreds of VC decks, all certain they will be among the top performers. Some force that pulls exceptional startups to you, directly or via intermediaries, in a privileged and sustainable fashion. What’s my needle magnet definition?

startup 97

startup VC strategy leadership 97

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Why someone did well previously is the first clue to figuring out whether or not that would be sustainable--but it isn't necessarily predictive. Can you sustain that going forward in a world that becomes more connected and more transparent? My job was to figure out why certain firms were winning and why they might continue to win.

sustainability 295

sustainability angel investing venture capital VC 295

TechCrunch

MARCH 2, 2021

But what if you don’t have unicorn dreams – or you don’t want to pursue VC money? Bootstrapping a SaaS company is not only possible – I believe it’s a saner, more sustainable way to build and scale a business. If you’re a SaaS founder who’s wary of VC funding, here are my best bootstrapping tips. startups are backed by VCs.

SaaS 139

SaaS VC founder data collection 139

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 24, 2013

The next set of investors, "people with balls" according to another VC I know--Shana Fisher, Kal Vepuri. It's a way for every apartment dweller with no patch of dirt to start participating in the sustainable agriculture movement. It wasn't until the third layer of cash came in that an institutional fund "got it".

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creativity sustainability venture capital VC 294

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Though some businesses may never be truly sustainable, a venture firm in Seoul argues that emerging climate-tech startups will help big manufacturers do better overall. I spoke with Sopoong chief executive Max Sang-Yeop Han , a serial entrepreneur who joined Sopoong in 2016 and acquired the firm in 2019, to learn about the VC’s plans.

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VC startup mentorship accelerator 99

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

I have been investing in developer tools since the earliest days of my VC career. If you build software that sits in the flow of something important (mission critical, recurring, etc) then it will increase in value over time, and sustain its value, much more significantly than something that “sits on the side.”

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VC sustainability financing finance 193

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Silicon-Valley based VC firm 500 Global and German’s economic development agency Gesellschaft fu?r r Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) will train managers of leading accelerators in Africa over the next two years, to help them establish sustainable business models that commandeer greater influence in their ecosystems.

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accelerator sustainability economic development VC 84

Revolution

APRIL 24, 2023

While many think achieving that goal is unlikely, as investors with capital to put to work, we have to have a ‘challenge accepted’ mindset.” — Kristin “I look for tech opportunities that enable sustainable B2B change versus small lifestyle changes. What industries are ripe for transformation from a sustainability standpoint?

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sustainability real estate startup ecosystem innovation 182

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 19, 2021

I think independent control is the most sustainable solution. Investors should be more open to observer seats and founders should have more say in which investors sit on their boards. I am not arguing that founders should control their boards, but I am arguing that investors should not control the boards.

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board financing finance sustainability 276

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 21, 2020

.” It says it builds a self-sustainable “privacy-friendly alternative to very popular and widely used surveillance capitalism web analytics tools”. However, the research shows a possible interesting trend away from the VC-backed startups of the last 10 years.

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VC startup venture capital sustainability 112

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

after the glory days and earned $300,000 in stead of $3 million and after taxes that $150,000 just sustained life and some amount of future savings. I often tell people in this scenario to focus on a VC “fixer upper.” Being the CEO of a fixer-upper gives you board exposure and VC relationships that will benefit you later.

advice 334

advice peer-to-peer VC board 334

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 20, 2013

That''s not really positive or sustainable for building a startup ecosystem. I was once someone who thought they had to move to the west coast to go to Stanford to become a VC and now who invests in my own backyard.

real estate 274

real estate creativity venture capital startup ecosystem 274

Revolution

MAY 11, 2023

Our findings confirmed a significant shift away from the traditional tech hubs of the Bay Area, New York City, and Boston, with the proportion of seed- and early-stage VC dollars funneling into the Bay Area falling below 30% for the first time in more than a decade.

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real estate energy innovation VC 296

AsiaTechDaily

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Register Philippine-based circular economy startup Humble Sustainability has raised $750,000 in Seed funding to enable it to bring companies’ excess inventory back to circulation through its technology services. Bookmark( 0 ) Please login to bookmark. Username or Email Address. Remember Me. No account yet?

sustainability 98

sustainability startup leadership VC 98

Founders Coop

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

The GFC kicked off the most sustained period of fiscal and monetary stimulus in modern times. But VC bubbles deflate slowly. For years after the dotcom bubble burst, being a founder was weird and hard. Things were just starting to pick up again when the bottom fell out of the global economy.

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VC innovation incumbents energy 143

StartupNation

JANUARY 6, 2022

Venture capital or VC. VCs provide guidance and mentorship and test your company’s direction by assessing its sustainability and financial potential. The post From VC to DeFi: 6 Realistic Ways to Fund Your Startup in 2022 appeared first on StartupNation. Angel investment. Decentralized crowdfunding. Crypto lending.

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VC incubation business incubator angel investing 110

TechCrunch

JANUARY 13, 2023

However, the VC market correction caught up with the continent in the back half of last year, when ticket sizes fell and fewer deals closed as investors tightened the purse strings. Overall, six mega-rounds were closed last year (all in the first six months), half of the number of such deals closed in 2021, when VCs invested record amounts.

sustainability 97

sustainability startup ecosystem VC ventures 97

TechCrunch

MAY 28, 2022

The firm is not always right in its prognostications — maybe why it stuck to internal musings instead of a Medium post this time — but it does do a service in providing a snapshot of how one of the most weathered, and successful, VC firms of all time thinks about a looming downturn. TechCrunch+ is having a Memorial Day sale.

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VC advice entrepreneurship sustainability 123

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

She worked for 5 years as a VC at Battery Ventures and co-headed M&A at IAC working with Barry Diller. Instead he championed our investment themes into sustainability and food technologies having invested in companies like Apeel Sciences and Ynsect. I promise you, he really said this out loud.)

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ventures leadership mentorship venture capital 361

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 31, 2019

2/ The massive experiment in using capital as a moat to build startups into sustainable businesses has now played out and we can call it a failure for the most part. What society does about this situation stands as the most important issue in tech at the start of the 2020s.

sustainability 278

sustainability technology media strategy 278

TechCrunch

JANUARY 7, 2022

Securing early-stage venture financing is usually the best way to accelerate and sustain growth, but with various funding options available, how do you figure out the best course of action? What is the best alternative to VC, and at what point in your company’s growth do other funding sources make sense?

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financing finance VC SaaS 92

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Elect 1-2 representatives and even invite a local VC to invest personally and sit on the investment committee or be an advisor. ” And if aspiring investment teams are looking to get together the SBIC has come back with a new VC focused program to help non-Silicon Valley communities fund companies beyond their initial angel money.

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communities startup venture capital capital 378

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

Luis Daniel Arbulú, partner at Salkantay, told TechCrunch via email that the fund is “the country’s largest VC fund” as per PitchBook and Crunchbase data. The firm invests across Latin America, with a focus on the Andean region, in the areas of maximizing human potential, economic inclusion and sustainability.

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VC venture capital ventures capital 85

Red Rocket

MAY 22, 2024

Once VC’s put their heads in the sand, it is pretty much across the board, with a few exceptions if you happen to be in a hot market like artificial intelligence, fin tech, retail tech and sustainability. So, that means you need to get your expenses down to the absolute bare minimum.

VC 110

VC venture capital real estate creativity 110

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

Being profitable certainly makes your company more sustainable in difficult times. Do you imagine eventually raising VC and trying to build a faster growing company?” The likely response of a VC to your company that raised $3 million and now is profitably doing $1.5 ” But they want to do it with leverage.

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startup VC investment investing 418

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 20, 2022

The winters are the time when a lot of those applications fall away and you can see which projects are actually long-term sustainable, like both in their models and in their teams and their people. Business models need to be sustainable. Teams need to stick together and ship things.

sustainability 251

sustainability leadership founder capital 251

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 15, 2019

In the last 15 years, VC has become an institutional asset class with the permanence and stature that brings seemingly endless amounts of capital to it. over ten years number, which produces high teens/low 20s IRRs, which is enough to sustain the sector. Before 2000, the venture capital business was a bit of a cottage industry.

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venture capital VC sustainability capital 184

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 28, 2020

The key priorities of the CTOs and CIOs of the Lab’s partner organizations include: cloud, cyber-tech, data, digital engagement, enterprise IT and sustainability. If you are building a fintech company and are focused on one or more of these areas, you should consider applying. Applications are due on December 1st. You can apply here.

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innovation sustainability entrepreneurs development 215

Entrepreneur's Handbook

DECEMBER 13, 2023

How can venture capitalists promote human sustainability in entrepreneurship? We know startups are bad for mental health. Continue reading on Entrepreneur's Handbook »

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health VC founder investment 88

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

I am a VC so this will be seen as self serving. But given that I’m not likely to back 99.999% of the people reading this (I do 2-3 deals maximum per year as a VC) I’m really just trying to offer honest advice. The days of easy money may be slowing down. It applies to all startups – not just SaaS.

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startup VC financing finance 269

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 18, 2020

A few weeks ago, Kickstarter launched Lights On , a call for projects that “sustain your cultural space, event series, creative organization, or independent business” [link]. Kickstarter is a platform to engage your community, reward them, and encourage them to support your work.

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culture creativity communities sustainability 300

TechCrunch

JANUARY 29, 2023

It wasn’t sustainable and economic correction was needed. It created an opportunity to exit the hype cycle, clearing the way for development that will ensure the growth of the ecosystem in a sustainable way, adding value.” “Bubble had to pop,” People of Crypto co-founder Simone Berry said. “It

VC 92

VC founder sustainability communities 92

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 25, 2013

Three companies from the Studiomates community-- Sherpaa , Tinybop , and Editorially --received VC dollars in 2012. I have a special relationship with Etsy, because I was at Union Square Ventures, the VC firm that backed the company, back in 2006. via Brownstoner.

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communities innovation creativity real estate 290