Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 27, 2013

6 or 7 years ago when TechCrunch was at its peak market share (they are still strong but many more tech blogs have also popped up) there was a term for getting covered there called “the TechCrunch bounce.” that they probably read the main tech blogs. Frankly, every VC’s, too. Perception = reality.

Blogging 309

Blogging Journal Press Startup 309

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2010

They had received a term sheet from a VC and were wondering whether to work with this firm. I often tell people that raising venture capital is more difficult than getting married. Not so in venture capital. You’re tied at the hip to your VC. But what was the VC like when the chips were down?

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Capital Help 298

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. Think about it – most entrepreneurs who manage to raise seed money or venture capital usually raise enough money for 12-18 months maximum. And I’m happy as a VC. And why I woke up at 4.50am. And yet you have to.

Blogging 420

Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. But take prompts from the VC.

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Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

I’m often asked by people, “how do I get into VC?&# Well, I know 3-4 VC jobs that are publicly available. Every time I do recruiting I get somebody who says, “I’m willing to take a step back in my career to work in VC.&# This isn’t likely to appeal to us. Tags: VC Industry. Yesterday.

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I was reading Chris Dixon’s blog tonight. I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. I just completed an exercise where I went out to hire a new associate for my VC firm, GRP Partners.

Startup 337

Startup Venture Capital Study Course 337

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 6, 2017

I titled this post “We Must Have Zero Tolerance in Venture Capital” but of course I could just say “zero tolerance anywhere” because that’s true. As a VC let me specifically just speak out for our industry. I have known Shervin, liked him and respected his big bets as a VC like Uber and Hyperloop. I was wrong.

Venture Capital 254

Venture Capital Capital Course Report 254

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The typical VC process is as follows: They say there are three rules in property: Location, location, location. The surest sign a fund-raising process has stalled is when you aren’t getting follow-up meetings or hearing from the VC or hearing from friends that they got a phone call or email asking about you. Same with VC.

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

InfoChachkie

MAY 22, 2012

The steps outlined below represent an ideal approach to raising capital from sophisticated investors. You might be at Step 2 with one VC and Step 3 with another. VCs collude all the time, it is only fair that entrepreneurs compare notes every now and again as well.”. Subscribe to their blog. The keyword here is authentic.

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Venture Capital Capital Research Custom 236

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. I just want to figure out what a fair valuation is.&# I figured all the VC’s talked so we should. But this example above is all entrepreneur math, not the VC’s.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When I was new at Venture Capital I was trying to figure out the business. As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. I eventually stumbled on to the best source of high-quality deal flow imaginable – blogging. What kind of deals should I be doing? What stage? What price?

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Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

I have blogged about some of the downside consequences of the changes and the private information I have says the consequences are much worse than is reported in the press since few people publicly talk about. Does he blog about venture capital and try to advise entrepreneurs? Has written a book on venture capital.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

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FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She hasn’t raised any venture capital. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. So Tracy began keeping a blog about … (what else?) She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. That may soon change.

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Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2011

On my blog I’ve been hesitant to take the topic head on. But last week I noticed a blog post by a woman, Tara Tiger Brown, that asked the question, “ Why Aren’t More Women Commenting on VC Blog Posts? In it she observes that only 3% of the comments on this blog are from women. Please watch this.

Entrepreneur 341

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Blogging 341

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. In 2010 somebody posed the question on Quora, “Is Mark Suster a Successful Venture Capitalist?” “Ok, so this guy can write a blog and source deals but can he make any money?” 5 years ago.

Venture Capital 387

Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

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MARCH 8, 2018

If you’re an entrepreneur who would like to see this clause in more startups please ask your VC to include it in future term sheets and link to it from their home page. “We Ours is: upfront.com/inclusion. We strive to invest in companies that are consciously working to create a diverse leadership team?—?

Venture Capital 284

Venture Capital Coach Ideas Startup 284

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NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Nearly four months ago we rebranded at Upfront Ventures. You can watch the video above for a very brief overview of why we rebranded and where we see our place in the VC ecosystem along with what has changed in our industry. Relaunching our brand is part of our larger initiative to build a VC firm of the future.

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Startup Blogging Platform 324

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

Brunson’s short and to-the-point blog post, “ It’s Called Networking, Not Using.” It’s why I wrote the blog post on 50 Coffee Meetings. It’s why I talk about building VC relationships early – Lines, Not Dots. “I’ve never been a VC before. ” Be authentic.

Venture Capital 407

Venture Capital Press GRP Partners Blogging 407

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. “I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. Their data looks at tech VCs.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2014

And what’s up with this crazy new blog design? But for now … Every year we run a big VC, LP & Tech Summit in Los Angeles (this year downtown) to showcase the best of our community and invite others from around the country. I look forward to being back to blogging next week. You disappeared? I will tell more.

Startup 290

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Los Angeles 290

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Union Square Ventures (USV) has been one of the most successful venture capital firms of the past 10–15 years and continues to be a leader in our industry. Lindel is no stranger to thorny venture capital issues — he was arguably amongst the most successful LPs of his generation. Maybe that’s USV, too.

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Venture Capital Funding Capital Startup 161

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

It’s apropos because there is so much noise these days with email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, web shows, etc. I was thinking back to a few previous “insider baseball&# blog debates that raged for several weeks: AngelGate (aka Bin38 secret cabal), convertible debt vs. equity, bubble vs. not, and now the AngelList discussion.

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2014

My blog had been looking tired for a year or two. I considered changing to a blog publishing platform that would allow me to change the visual design more easily myself. He wrote a nice blog post describing the project to redesign my website. He was able to take Jess’s design concepts and get them built into my blog.

Blogging 294

Blogging Design Venture Capital Screening 294

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

I have Twitter chats, respond to blog comments, trade emails, respond to comments on This Week in VC. I remember! &# You’re the guy who built the Twitter plug-in for blogs. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice. I do dinners too often as my waistline can attest. You get the picture. I remember.

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Venture Capital Blogging Conference Email 288

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

I must have pitched 40-50 VCs over the years. As I talked about on many occasions when I was an entrepreneur – and blogged publicly about - I learned a lot about my business and myself in these meetings. I realized it was part of the process because it’s such a high-volume activity being a VC. Possibly more.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Blogging Conference Google 292

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

There has been much discussion about VCs doing seed funding in the past year. I’ve written about it myself (Is VC Seed Funding Dead?) and (Is There Really a Signaling Problem with VC Seed Funding?). There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages, 2. Short summary of my posts: 1.

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Seed Funding Funding Venture Capital GRP Partners 298

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DECEMBER 17, 2012

But honestly there are times when being a VC can feel like that, too. VENTURE CAPITAL. And finally that brings me to obvious topic of venture capital. Coincidentally my good friend Roger Ehrenberg wrote a post this past week on founders having trust in their VCs. After I posted I saw the following Tweet.

Startup 363

Startup Venture Capital Coach Press 363

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I wanted to also post the series here to have it as a resource on my blog for future entrepreneurs who stop by. One of the questions I’m most often asked as a VC is what I’m looking for in an investment. I once had a debate with a prominent VC on a panel. How to build relationships with a VC. Yeah, right.

Entrepreneur 338

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Google 338

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

If you’ve been following the press about VC funds you’ll know this is no small feat. Perhaps the biggest piece of new news is that after 17 years of operations we’ve changed our name from GRP Partners to Upfront Ventures. Well, the venture capital industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years … and we have too.

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Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

I always try hard to make this blog a place where you can learn lessons rather than an advertisement for portfolio companies. I hope you’ll excuse me when I do the latter in combination with the former to try and explain how I see macro trends and help you think about the mind of a VC. But the masses didn’t want to blog.

Invest 303

Invest Companies Company Web 2.0 303

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. I was thinking about all of this as I looked at the logs from my WordPress blog this evening. People who comment to me privately about how surprised they are by how rapidly I’ve “built a name for myself in VC&# remind me of this fallacy. I did that?

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros. Partner Leverage.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Platform Startup Resource 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

I wrote a blog post on how to work with lawyers at a startup nearly two-and-a-half years ago. He knows every startup & VC in town.” This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. I told David, “Look at the changes we’ve seen in the VC / funding market.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Startup Los Angeles GRP Partners 299

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

I was reading Danielle Morrill’s blog post today on whether one’s “ Startup Burn Rate is Normal. ” Stay lean and only raise a big round if you DO find product / market fit and which point you want to loosen the belt quickly and raise the capital to do so. .” ” I highly recommend reading it.

Startup 383

Startup Companies Company .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and subsequently Wall Street) who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses. It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. Why Shouldn’t Most Services Businesses Raise VC? Even tech blogs know this.

Services 332

Services Venture Capital IP Startup 332

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

One of the advantages of blogging, using social media, public speaking, etc as a VC is that you get a more nuanced view of these shifts by watching your own successes and failures. They know that there some implicit legitimacy (rightly or wrongly) to your story since a VC just wrote you a $10 million check. ” Why?

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Startup Funding News Press 355