This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
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. Wait, didn’t you just raise a fund? Was it hard to raise the fund?
We are often asked how companies get funded, why VCs make the decisions we make and what we’re looking for in entrepreneurs. At Upfront we’re totally fine fundingentrepreneurs who have done multiple businesses in the past – in fact we like it. But I’m guessing the narrative is similar elsewhere.
If you’re funding the same stuff as everybody else and if you started your activities when the clues were obvious you’re much less likely to drive enormous returns. When Fred Wilson funded Twitter I guarantee you it wasn’t obvious that it was a billion dollar idea. Venture Capital is a tricky industry. Far from it.
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. Upfront VI is our latest core fund and is $400 million to invest in early stage entrepreneurs. This brings our combined funds under management to nearly $2 billion.
” It’s the most common refrain I hear from investors and even entrepreneurs these days. Over the past 4 years LA’s tech fundings have growing at a 30% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) which is > 4 times the US average VC CAGR (7%). “There’s something going on in LA.” Success begets success.
The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. One of the most important aims of a fund-raising process is to keep similar firms at the same stage of your process. Why 8–10 and not just 3–4?
As a mentor to startups and new entrepreneurs, I continue to hear the refrain that business plans are no longer required for a new startup, since investors never read them anyway. For aspiring entrepreneurs, or if your last startup failed, it’s all about standing out above the crowd of others like you, and demonstrating your readiness.
Fund raising. But it’s critical for your business, for you as a leader and people who excel at fund raising have an extreme advantage over those who do not. The best entrepreneurs in our industry focus on it year-round as opposed to just once every 18 months. It definitely has a “d” in it, as in it’s really not fun, raising.
the most counter-intuitive fund-raising advice you’ll ever get I’m about to offer you some fund-raising advice that flies directly in the face of what most conventional wisdom will tell you. Let me start out with my premise: “Data rooms are where fund-raising processes go to die.” I mean, in a real fund-raising process?
This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. My view: “Spending any time or energy trying to game the ‘definition’ of your round of fund raising is a total waste. Nobody cares. No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. .”
So, to help other female entrepreneurs, they founded TuesdayNights (www.tuesdaynights.org), a group in LA which helps female entrepreneurs connect with capital and each other to improve their access to capital. What is the most difficult challenge that women entrepreneurs face? They have to be able to lean in on raising money.
I was recently with an entrepreneur and talking with him about his fund raising process. link] Another entrepreneur was recently in my office. She had emailed with a partner at a big VC fund and he had passed the request to a junior associate. But confidence is CRITICAL in fund raising. This isn’t rude?—?it’s
A new program, run by the Alliance for Southern California Innovation, is looking to connect startups with Series A funding, according to the group. According to the two, the program recruits and selects top SoCal-based startups that have demonstrated clear market traction and provides introductions to leading venture funds.
Small companies most often scrape by with borrowed or invested funds, doing everything possible to grow and prosper with limited resources. To most entrepreneurs, this often leads to an event whose resolution by a governmental agency or even a court seems unfair and illogical.
In my Twitter bio is says that I’m “ looking to invest in passionate entrepreneurs ,” which almost sounds like I was just looking for a cliché soundbite to describe myself. Yet along with “authenticity” they are two of the key attributes I look for when I meet with companies I may consider funding one day.
The Los Angeles ecosystem is $76 million stronger today as Fika Ventures , a seed-stage venture capital firm, announces its sophomore investment fund. The pair raised $41 million for the debut effort, opting to nearly double that number the second time around as a means to participate in more follow-on fundings.
As I was watching the investor show, Shark Tank , on TV the other night, I was struck by how quickly and how extensively the sharks focused on the background and character of the entrepreneurs, compared to time spent evaluating their products. Demonstrate social intelligence and concern. Always proclaim and deliver a positive attitude.
One of the most frequent questions I get as a mentor to entrepreneurs is “How do I find the money to start my business?” If you have the urge to be an entrepreneur, I encourage you to think seriously about each of these, before you zero-in on one or two, and get totally discouraged if those don’t work for you.
One of the biggest myths I have found in the entrepreneur community is that every startup needs one or more outside investors for credibility and success, and perhaps is even entitled to at least one. Searching LinkedIn, for example, is a must for contemporary entrepreneurs. Maybe it’s time to rethink your startup funding strategy.
The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that most aspiring entrepreneurs never even imagined.
As an angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and assume no strings attached. If the entrepreneur wants total control of their own venture, with no one looking over their shoulder, they should work within the limits of their own resources, a process called bootstrapping.
In an attempt to boost diversity and inclusion efforts and civic engagement between the growing technology industry in Los Angeles and the community that surrounds it, over 80 venture capitalists and entrepreneurs joined the city’s mayor, Eric Garcetti, and the non-profit Annenberg Foundation to announce PledgeLA.
Every entrepreneur I know is dismayed by the number of friends who approach them with a line such as “I have an even better idea that will change the world, and one of these days I’m going to get around to starting my own business.” Focus” is the key to success as an entrepreneur. There must be something deeper that slows people down.
An entrepreneur lifestyle that continues to gain in popularity these days is being a “social entrepreneur.” Whether the objective is to generate profits or social capital, the common element for all entrepreneurs is the recognition that there is a problem which needs solving, or there is an opportunity to improve the status quo.
Most of you aspiring entrepreneurs probably have long searched for that special idea that will catapult you and your startup to success. For example, most people thought Twitter was a total snoozer, when Jack Dorsey was looking for funding, especially with MySpace already owning that territory. True entrepreneurs are born, not made.
And there is so much money around being thrown at so many entrepreneurs that many firms don’t even care about board seats, governance rights or heaven forbid doing work with the company because that would eat into the VCs time needed to chase 5 more deals. And the truth is that several entrepreneurs prefer it this way. of the fund.
Being called a lifestyle entrepreneur should be a point of pride, not an insult. Of course, even lifestyle entrepreneurs want to be happy, and want their business to be “successful.” Startup funding comes from personal savings and family. Non-equity funding has to come from personal sources, or government grants, or bank loans.
Many years ago, John Hamm published some definitive work on this subject in " Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale " in the Harvard Business Review. This is generally a required quality for a successful entrepreneur, but it can turn into an unhealthy stubbornness during the scaling stage. Investors don’t want to fund your stumbles.
Entrepreneurs who require funding for their startup have long counted on self-accredited high net worth individuals (“angels”) to fill their needs, after friends and family, and before they qualify for institutional investments (“VCs”). I still don’t see it happening any time soon. Neither does David S.
It’s only 12 minutes long and if you’re a first-time entrepreneur (or second time, frankly) I encourage you to watch it if for nothing else than to get a sense that your struggles are universal. This naive optimism is why I believe younger entrepreneurs are more likely to produce insanely big outcomes.
Over their longtime personal and professional relationship, the two Los Angeles-based serial entrepreneurs have invested in each other’s companies and investment firms, but never worked together until now. With that in mind, the Watertower Ventures group, which launched in 2017 with a small, $5 million fund, is a return to those roots.
I then got my MBA at University of Chicago so I secretly pull for local entrepreneurs as long as they don’t make me visit in the Winter any more. A few years later they announced $150 million in a funding round at $1 billion+ valuation and are ramping up jobs to secure their market-leading position. Perhaps – who knows?
Even using one of the strategies just mentioned, the risks of having enough cash to fund daily operations or growth can be daunting. Here’s the ultimate thing about entrepreneurism. The post Entrepreneurism is all about personal risk. But the risks don’t stop there. The same is true about marketing.
Some aspiring entrepreneurs are so desperate for funding, or naïve, that they ignore the obvious signs of scams and rip-offs on the Internet, praying for a windfall. Phantom fund investors. Work at home to fund your startup. Cash transfer assistance funding. Marty Zwilling.
Over my many years of mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs and business professionals, I often hear a desire to start a new business, with a big hesitation while waiting for that perfect idea and perfect alignment of the stars. Most aspiring entrepreneurs don’t have the resources alone to “bootstrap” or fund their new business alone.
I was in it for the love of working with entrepreneurs on business problems and marveling at technology they had built. You had the entry into our ecosystem of hedge funds, cross-over funds, sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds, family offices and all other sources of capital that drove up valuations. billion fund.
With the cost of entry at an all-time low, and the odds of success equally low, more and more entrepreneurs are starting multiple companies concurrently. Other prolific entrepreneurs, like Richard Branson and Elon Musk , simply have several startups on the table at any given moment. Many entrepreneurs love investing in other startups.
We all know that funding markets have changed for startups. The trends are well understood: more angels, more seed funds, more crowdsourcing and so forth. They asked LPs to rush to get into their next side-car fund to have access to this great deal plus the LPs also get the “benefit” of investing in their next fund.
New entrepreneurs are always looking for a shortcut in getting their venture story and plan across to investors, and closing on the funding they need. As a former angel investor, I look for this level of alignment and understanding in every funding presentation I hear. No startup or entrepreneur is an island.
Even if you ignore all the hype around crowdfunding, there can be no doubt that it is a real alternative for entrepreneurs to achieve visibility and funding today. m are not for crowdfunding, but actually are matchmaking sites between entrepreneurs and professional investors or banks, or incubators.
Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam , led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry , announced a $10 million round of financing. Here I make the case that entrepreneurs must stay focused on the prize, not the doubters. Entrepreneurs. ” **. It can be one of the strongest motivators.
.” Struck Capital, which is currently investing out of a $55 million second fund, would not disclose the size of DiCaprio’s stake, but said that the investment is significant. In addition to his commitment to the fund, DiCaprio will be making co-investments alongside the Struck Capital team.
In the eyes of investors like me, to be an entrepreneur, it’s not enough to create an innovative solution – you need to convince me that you can build a profitable business. Great entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are always talking about their next venture to another planet, underground transportation, or electric vehicles.
Bootstrapping: This term describes your ability to start a business with little investment and grow it using internally generated funds. And even with the significant cost of credit card debt, many entrepreneurs aggressively use existing cards to finance a startup. There is a lot to say about retaining control.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content