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MAY 22, 2019

Announcing Projector?—?A Startup I’ve Been Excited to Tell You About for Years A few years ago I spent time in prison with Trevor O’Brien , the founder of Projector. Yes, I always imagined announcing the company that way. We were of course there to work with incarcerated men on developing entrepreneurial skills on behalf of Defy Ventures. We had met previously when Trevor was a product manager at YouTube and Upfront had funded the largest video producer on YouTube, Maker Studios.

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Cofounder Social Media Startup Video 191

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MAY 21, 2019

Managing Your Startup Board?—?A Short Presentation I was invited to do a keynote presentation at the Khosla Ventures CEO Summit this week in Sausalito. It was an amazing gathering of some of the most ambitious early-stage CEO’s looking to make a dent in fields related to healthcare, biology, AI and other transformative fields. It’s encouraging to know that there are still great VC firms like KV that are looking to make these short of big bets on shaping the future.

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Management Startup Dividend Early Stage 234

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APRIL 18, 2019

The Truth About the Scooter Economy?—?An Insider’s Perspective “Bird Zero” that are custom designed by the company There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has quietly re-emerged as a powerful force of growth where few really appreciate the speed and scale of what has happened.

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South America Global New York City Software Review 250

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MARCH 11, 2019

Photo by Juliette F on Unsplash Networking is a critical part of relationship building and there is no event more valuable to building relationships than the proverbial “breaking of bread” with people. I personally run many group lunches & dinners and I attend even more so I’ve developed a set of tips I often pass along in how to make these the most effective they can be.

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FEBRUARY 25, 2019

I’ve sat on many boards over the past 2 decades and seen my share of high-functioning boards and low-functioning boards. Here are some observations I have from this exposure: If a company moves from strength-to-strength with predictable outcomes, easy financings, low staff turn-over, limited competitive threats then the composition of the board probably doesn’t matter as much.

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FEBRUARY 24, 2019

I have been writing a series on how startup boards get selected, who sits on them and what to avoid. I will also delve into how to prepare for them, how to make the meeting effective and how to best follow up to make sure people take action. Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash In response to one of my posts I saw this great Tweet by Bilal Zuberi and it resonated.

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Cofounder Conversion Management Founder 251

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FEBRUARY 22, 2019

Should You Allow Board Observers on Your Startup Board? Photo by Antenna on Unsplash A board observer is somebody who attends your board meeting but doesn’t have a voting right. There are also certain points in a board meeting where you can ask the board observers to step out of the room unless they’ve negotiated specific rights that preclude this.

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Strategic Investors Startup Stock Options Venture Capital 255

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FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Should All of Your Management Team Attend Board Meetings? The age old question for every startup is whom to involve in the board meeting. The reality is that there are some board meetings in which having a broad set of management present is a great idea and there are some meetings where in can be a hindrance. Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash The goal of the best run boards ought to be to balance information dissemination with using the brain trust of the company to guide critical decisions.

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FEBRUARY 8, 2019

As you may know we run an annual conference called The Upfront Summit in which we try to bring together the world of investors, entrepreneurs and interesting people from the world of sports, politics, music & film. We do this to showcase what is uniquely LA and to create a more cohesive network in our community. We have sought ways to make it more open while not turning it into a mega conference so while we have capped it at 1,000 attendees, starting a couple of years ago we opened up the ev

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Portfolio Networking Community Video 170

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FEBRUARY 6, 2019

I’ve heard a lot of people question whether there is too much money in venture capital chasing too few great deals. “We’re in a new tech bubble!” some have pronounced. “Valuations are out of control” is the mantra of others. Others believe that new business models are emerging that could replace venture capital all together. Every year I try to answer the question of “what has changed in the Venture Capital industry” and this year my colleague Chang Xu and I took a deep dive through the data and

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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?” Founder: “$250k / month.” VC: “So at a constant rate of burn rate you’d be raising enough for 2.5–3 years.

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MAY 24, 2018

If you’ve read any of my ongoing series on fund raising from venture capitalist (episode 1?— ?controlling your psychology ) you no doubt have heard me say that raising capital is a sales & marketing process. You company is the product and you’re selling an equity ownership in your company but much more broadly you’re selling trust & confidence that you’re going to build something enormously valuable and that you’re going to be enjoyable to work hand-in-hand with over the coming decade of

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Technical Review Due Diligence Partner Term Sheet 314

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MAY 21, 2018

I was recently with an entrepreneur and talking with him about his fund raising process. He was in a later-stage financing round and was talking with many investors. Some started asking him for very specific analyses to be completed on his data and wanted his company to crunch the numbers. I told him he shouldn’t bother and that it was likely a junior person at the firm whose job is was to find holes in the data / narrative.

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MARCH 3, 2018

León Krauze from Univisión gave an impassioned keynote presentation at The Upfront Summit on the topic of “invisibility” of immigrant workers in our society. It moved people to tears, was widely Tweeted and several people asked me to share this video. Invisibility. The millions of immigrant workers who silently wash dishes in restaurants, are prep cooks, pick the agriculture that feeds us, build our houses, clean our houses, watch our kids and do our gardening are vilified as criminals by those

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FEBRUARY 25, 2018

If I had just one wish for VCs it would be that they would preview the Ted Bunch “Man Box” talk at the Upfront Summit at their Monday Partner Meetings. I would love it if startup leadership teams would preview it to their executive leadership. We need to learn from women and listen to them. We also need to start having a conversation amongst men about how men talk and behave and about the silence that leads to consent if we’re going to make necessary changes.

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Non-Compete Conversion Leadership Video 210

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FEBRUARY 22, 2018

At the recent Upfront Summit my partner Stuart Lander had the opportunity to show some California Love and interview three of the wealthiest Bitcoin owners, each of whom were some of the earliest owners in the asset class and who haven’t sold any of their holdings. It’s an extraordinary story ranging from Jaime who studies cryptography in college to Bryan who was early in selling products on Silk Road to Steven owns 179,000 Bitcoin worth more than $2 billion.

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California Video Conversion Partner 303

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DECEMBER 13, 2017

Men use similar tropes on why #MeToo may go too far. It’s time to break these down. It’s time for more men to start saying, “enough is enough,” “I believe her,” and “I will step out of my comfort zone and speak up so that others feel empowered to follow me.” Men will make mistakes. But mistakes are much better than silence. Mistakes are better than condoning misconduct, harassment, bias or abuse.

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SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

Why the Former President of Nickelodeon Joined mitú as CEO. (Hint: 60 million US Latinos driving US growth engine) I am beyond excited to announce the Herb Scannell has agreed to move from NYC to Los Angeles to take on the role of CEO at mitú, the fast growing Latino digital media company, serving more than 100 million monthly unique viewers. Herb is a Puerto-Rican American media executive who was previously the President of Nickelodeon.

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SEPTEMBER 17, 2017

In more than a decade of writing about the Internet and tech-enabled businesses I’ve learned that mobs don’t do nuance well. If you read the headlines or talk with zealous friends you may well think cryptocurrencies are either our savior from bureaucratic, ossified governments or are purely speculative Ponzi schemes. The reality is that cryptocurrencies can be both and can be liberating and corrupting at the same time.

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JUNE 17, 2017

There are certain topics that even some of the smartest people I talk with who aren’t startup oriented can’t fully grok. One of them is whether profitability matters. It’s common cocktail party chatter to hear people confidently pronounce that some well known startup is sure to blow up because, “How could they succeed when they’re not even profitable!

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Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

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MAY 21, 2017

I am wired to discount people who have total assuredness in their point-of-view, have dogmatic positions or use data as a crutch or substitute for logic. I appreciate people who have strong opinions or conviction but expect them to constantly be testing their opinions and refining their approaches as they encounter new people, facts or logic. I have long believed that humans (myself included) err on the side of over-confidence in their own abilities and thoughts.

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Venture Capital Mobile Video Conversion 182

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MAY 17, 2017

I’ve been involved with several startups where a giant incumbent attacks you and tries to sue you out of existence. When you first receive the threat it feels like the local pizza shop when they first get a call from the local mafia boss and you can feel the shake-down coming. The first instinct is fear, then dread, then panic. You begin to think about how hard it will be to fund raise, sign customers, hire employees, etc. with the cloud of a lawsuit hanging over you.

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APRIL 20, 2017

Just over a year ago I wrote about how MakeSpace had raised $17.5 million in capital to build out its operations in 4 cities: New York City , Los Angeles , Chicago and Washington D.C. I pointed out that the storage market in the US alone is ~$30 billion / year and there is no dominant provider — the largest player has < 10% market share. If you have a storage need in one of these cities please consider checking out MakeSpace.

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Technical Review Los Angeles Software Review Artificial Inteligence 268

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APRIL 12, 2017

The modern world is filled with constant distractions. Only those with maniacal focus on results and a willingness not to engage in every activity achieve extraordinary results. As executives we’re all seemingly accessible at any moment to anybody via email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Text. We are over-intro’d and at the same time under-resourced in terms of staff to handle the barrage of in-bound requests.

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Conversion Email Networking Developer 297

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MARCH 12, 2017

Recently Upfront Ventures published its outlook for the technology startup world and venture capital overall titled it “ WTF Happened to Winter ?” The conclusion of our report was that winter did come, but it was mild and short. This was driven by the influx of corporate VCs, foreign VC money, sovereign wealth funds and the new war chests of VCs who raised new funds in the past 18 months.

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Venture Capital Artificial Inteligence LP Valuation 277

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FEBRUARY 12, 2017

BuzzFeed. It conjures up a range of emotions anytime I’ve privately expressed my opinion to thought leaders in our industry that I believe it is one of the most innovative companies in digital media. Some, of course, agree with me that BuzzFeed has been and continues to be the gold standard innovator in digital media to emulate. Others are skeptical, “Ha!

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Media Los Angeles Russia Viral 210

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FEBRUARY 7, 2017

Mark Cuban opened the Upfront Summit in an epic interview by Jason Hirschhorn , founder of Media REDEF. Machine Learning / AI They discussed many topics ranging from protection of the press to what Mark looks for in an entrepreneur to investing outside of Silicon Valley and of course Trump and sports. But perhaps to most insightful was their discussion about Machine Learning / AI.

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Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley San Francisco Technical Review 105

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FEBRUARY 6, 2017

It was only a year ago that many in the Venture Capital industry were predicting that “winter was coming” and to be fair the author of this post was chief amongst them. Yet as we enter February 2017 the VC funding markets are booming, Snap, Inc has filed for its IPO, AppDynamics was just purchased for $3.7 billion by Cisco and the only winter that can be found is at the ski resorts following California’s epic snowy and rainy January.

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FEBRUARY 5, 2017

Glenn Beck holds court at the Upfront Summit with legendary VC Vinod Khosla and UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla (not related) If you asked me a year ago when we were hosting the 2016 Upfront Summit the odds of Glenn Beck speaking at the next Summit I would have emphatically said ZERO. The first sign that there might be more to Glenn Beck than the impressions I had had from occasionally watching a clip from his show was when he wrote a very thoughtful piece about the Facebook algorithm and I was s

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DECEMBER 14, 2016

A room full of some of the top tech leaders in our country: Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Amazon, Tesla and so forth. It’s a breath of fresh air to see that Marc Benioff, who has become a beacon for protecting the rights of our most vulnerable citizens, is not in attendance. But I actually fall on the side of the issue that it’s good that our tech leaders are meeting with Trump for 2 reason: Whether I like it or not (I most certainly do not like it), Donald Trump will be

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DECEMBER 14, 2016

Today is amongst the proudest days I’ve had at Upfront Ventures — getting the chance to announce that Kevin Zhang has been promoted to Partner. Watching him develop over the past 4.5 years at Upfront has been both a pleasure and also has taught me a lot about venture capital. Kevin joined Upfront in 2012 as an Associate. We generally look for associates who are deeply quantitative, have great research & analytical skills and often have the tool kit for framing and making complex decisions.

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DECEMBER 12, 2016

Today it has been announced that I’m leading a $15 million funding round in Tact , a new generation of Enterprise Software company along with other investors including Microsoft Ventures and previous investors Accel and Redpoint Rather than just waxing lyrically about how great the company is I thought I’d provide some context about why I invested and also about a fundamental change I see in the coming years in the way enterprise software is used.

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Software Artificial Inteligence Mobile SMS 105

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NOVEMBER 12, 2016

This election has been hard on our country. I have had numerous conversations with people who struggle to call home and speak with family or friends because the divisions are too raw. These are people who now live in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York City but grew up in Cincinnati, Central Florida, Utah, Michigan and similar places where their parents, families or friends may have different political views.

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NOVEMBER 6, 2016

It’s hard to feel any positives these days: We’re in the eye of the storm. We’re at peak anxiety. Maximum rancor. We’ve already blocked family members on Facebook or unfollowed obnoxious people on Twitter. We’ve scratched our heads at how one of Silicon Valley’s brightest could back a candidate so overtly racist. And we’ve pulled out our hair trying to explain how the FBI Director could have decided to weigh-in / non-weigh-in to an election 11 days before voting with what turned out to be a whol

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Los Angeles LP Nevada South Korea 150

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OCTOBER 12, 2016

I was asked to be the host at this year’s CoachArt Gala of Champions event on October 27th at the esteemed Beverly Hilton hotel. The goal is to raise money to help children with chronic illness get ongoing instruction in sports, art, music or whatever endeavor would help them get fulfillment in life. You can book tickets here (or make a donation if you can’t make the event) If you happen to live in LA (or in the Bay Area — we’re only an hour’s flight) I would love if you would consider attending

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San Francisco Hosting Video Conversion 150

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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. I was mostly doing my job and trying to figure out how to be better every day. After a decade on the job I’ve started to speak more openly when newer industry colleagues now ask me what I’ve learned.

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SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

Rolf Winkler wrote a piece in the WSJ about A16Z’s returns in which he says they “lag behind Sequoia, Benchmark and Founders Fund.” Scott Kupor of A16Z responded with a comprehensive overview of valuation methodology in a post that while accurate feels more targeted at sophisticated Limited Partners (LPs) who invest in funds. Let me offer you an insider’s take.

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