socalTECH

JUNE 28, 2021

Newport Beach-based Ankona Capital, a new, venture capital company founded by Josh Harmsen, Brian Mesic, Newth Morris, and Jared Smith, has raised $66M in its first, venture capital fund.

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TechCrunch LA

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

New research has found that San Francisco and London have become two of the world’s leading hubs for VC investment into tech solutions that address one or more of the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), more commonly referred to as “Impact Tech” They are followed by Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Shanghai and Beijing.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Picking a VC is hard. So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Most VCs are book smart. VCs should be more of a coach than proscriptively telling you what to do. You want a VC who will spar with you but then STFU and let you get on with things.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca For the first 5 years or so after I became a VC I didn’t talk much about what I thought a VC should be excellent at since frankly I wasn’t sure. It’s easy to think the role of a VC is to have strong opinions about markets, trends, tech dynamics and so forth. The role of VC is sparring partner.

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Venture Capital Capital CTO Coach Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

But what IS the right amount of burn for a company? Burn rate in case you don’t know is the amount of money a company is either spending (gross) or losing (net) per month. (it Conversely if you’re burning $600,000 per month (yes, some companies do) then you only have 5 months of cash left. Gross Burn vs. Net Burn.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. What was the post money on your last round (and how much capital have you raised)? So why does a VC ask you? In the first place they’re looking for “fit” with their firm.

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Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 324

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I was having dinner with a friend last night and we were chatting about venture capital and a bit about what I’ve learned. Today we’re in a world where 10 accelerators are bombarding you with emails to meet their 10-15 companies. Products that ship late and place entire companies under serious stress.

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Venture Capital Invest Press Startup 374

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 28, 2018

There’s a quick litmus-test conversation any early-stage VC will have with the founder and it’s one that you should be as prepared for as your elevator pitch. It goes something like this … VC: “How much money are you raising?” Founder: “$8–10 million” VC: “What’s your current burn rate?” A VC is looking for reasonableness.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

We’ve been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped by the always-in-the-know Dan Primack a few weeks ago. If you want to understand how the VC industry is changing there is a great primer in the link.

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Venture Capital Funding Technical Review Startup 396

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued? With the enormous changes to our economies and financial markets?—?how

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Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2018

If you’ve read any of my ongoing series on fund raising from venture capitalist (episode 1?— ?controlling controlling your psychology ) you no doubt have heard me say that raising capital is a sales & marketing process. VC Partnerships Start by understanding how many partners are at the firm you are approaching.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Invest Slides 314

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2014

I was at a dinner recently in Chicago and the table discussion was about building great companies outside of Silicon Valley. It’s not the great companies you build, it’s the silent killer of those that should have been build locally and weren’t. Klout was an LA company – sold for $200 million to Lithium.

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TechCrunch LA

NOVEMBER 10, 2018

Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. The SaaS VC gap: China & other markets trail the US. Early-stage SaaS VC slip snaps recovery as public software stocks soar. But how do these cities stack up as clusters for companies raising supergiant rounds? Contributor.

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Venture Capital SaaS News Los Angeles 231

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. an investment in your company.

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socalTECH

JUNE 17, 2021

The Alliance for Southern California Innovation said on Thursday that it is launching a new program, the SoCal Venture Pipeline. According to the company, the new program will provide companies that have demonstrated clear market traction and provides targeted introductions to venture funds.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Over the past month a colleague ( Chang Xu ) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture.

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Venture Capital Invest Seed Funding Startup 328

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 6, 2020

There is so much confusion and misinformation out there about the government sponsored “payroll protection plan” loans to companies that the heads of every small business CEO in the country must be spinning. But I have been in close contact with the NVCA, many of the major law firms and many of the major VC firms. shouldn’t I?

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Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Doc 279

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened?

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Venture Capital Startup Marketing Pricing 466

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. That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. At the time I pointed out: “If I had realized exits almost certainly it would be because I invested in a company that failed.

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Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2016

Many first-time founders seek advice when thinking about what ideas would be great for a startup company and receive the wrong advice that you need to focus on a billion-dollar idea. Twitter was a podcasting company. But you need to understand venture economics. So what should you do? Facebook was just about college campuses.

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Venture Capital Startup Capital Ideas 150

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.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5 There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.).

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Seed Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 399

socalTECH

OCTOBER 8, 2019

Pasadena-based Thin Line Capital announced this morning that it has launched a brand new, energey and sustainability fund, which will invest in cleantech investing. Fyke previously had been CEO of multiple companies for Idealab, and also was a cleantech investor at Starfish Ventures in Australia.

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Capital Funding Idealab Venture Capital 213

TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 26, 2020

“Kobe was loved in Los Angeles,” wrote Mark Suster , managing partner of the Los Angeles-based venture capital firm Upfront Ventures , in a private message to TechCrunch. Bryant launched his venture career with partner and serial entrepreneur Jeff Stibel back in 2013, according to Crunchbase.

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Venture Capital Los Angeles Legalzoom Calabasas 359

socalTECH

MARCH 29, 2019

MiLA Capital , the venture capital firm that is behind the Make In LA hardware accelerator, says it has raised its first official venture capital fund, officially closing its first fundraise. Source of the funding for the new venture capital fund was not announced. Size of the fund was not announced.

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Capital Funding Startup Venture Capital 191

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. We not only have our Series A funds that can write $500k?

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Venture Capital IP Startup Google 223

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

Generally speaking in venture capital financings the legal documents will specify that only “major investors” (a threshold set in the agreement – which can be $500,000 investor or more). We led an investment round in a company a while ago in which we wrote a seven-figure check and have taken a board seat.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

Cincinnati, like many startup communities in the US over the past 5 years, has revitalized important regions in its urban core, created accelerators, built co-working facilities, pooled together angel capital, attracted VCs, involved educational institutions and solicited the help of important corporations in a more cohesive ecosystem.

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Startup Venture Capital Capital Funding 390

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 16, 2019

With a focus on female venture capitalists and founders, All Raise hosts an annual conference, several in-person and virtual fundraising workshops and networking sessions and, recently, the group began creating curated peer groups for investors. The two All Raise members now sit on the company’s board of directors.

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Venture Capital Ideas Los Angeles Tool 184

Both Sides of the Table

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 We strive to invest in companies that are consciously working to create a diverse leadership team?—?one Ours is: upfront.com/inclusion.

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Venture Capital Coach Ideas Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Investment experience (5 years a VC at Battery Ventures). Helped merge company with Seedling – on track to do $20 million combined revenue in 2015 – will now become Chairman). Upfront Ventures VC Industry' Competitive (Athlete: skier & rowed at Princeton, hates losing at everything she does).

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Venture Capital Startup Outsource Development CitySearch 408

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures (no, Evan is not standing on a box) Last year marked the 25th anniversary for Upfront Ventures and what a year it was. 2021 saw phenomenal returns for our industry and it topped off more than a decade of unprecedented VC growth.

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Startup Venture Capital Writing Invest 408

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. Contrast that with a VC conversation I had. I even once met with one very, very well known VC who told me, “I don’t attend LP meetings. If they want to invest that’s great.

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Customer Custom Venture Capital Software Review 341

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

He spoke about ROCE (return on capital employed). But “on capital employed” encourages companies to push more off balance sheet and thus into offshore & outsourced situations. Venture Capital. We spoke about the disruption of VC through crowd funding. I don’t believe it.

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TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 29, 2018

Los Angeles is becoming one of the more interesting destinations for startups and the investors that provide money for venture capital firms to place bets on young companies are increasingly starting to take notice.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2017

I am so proud and humbled to be able to formally announce that Upfront Ventures has raised its 6th venture capital fund in the past 21 years. A huge thank you to all of the Limited Partners who have entrusted us with your capital, time and reputations. This brings our combined funds under management to nearly $2 billion.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

If you track the venture capital industry it would be hard to miss the conversation going on this week over AngelList “Syndicates.” My favorite new VC blogger, Hunter Walk, weighed in with some thoughtful comments about how Syndicates might actually pit, “ angel vs. angel.” Bowery Capital).

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