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. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed.

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Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

Feld Thoughts

JULY 28, 2014

The SBIC was instrumental in the creation of the venture capital business. If you want to see a fun quote on it, read A History of Silicon Valley which quotes: “ …many venture capital pioneers think the SBIC program did little to advance the art and practice of venture investing.

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SBIC Venture Capital Colorado SBA 142

VC Cafe

JULY 4, 2022

What’s happening in the venture capital world? The WSJ confirmed what we already know: Q2 venture capital investments declined both in size and in valuation. Venture Capital Feels the Stock Market’s Pain, Wall Street Journal. Declining investment: U.S. VC funds invested about $47.5

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Venture Capital Valuation Private Equity LP 167

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Looking for Funds in All the Right Places: The Definitive Guide to Austin Capital By David Altounian and Stephen Straus OVERVIEW For entrepreneurs: We’ve compiled a definitive list of sources of capital in Austin to help focus your fundraising efforts. We’ve compiled a definitive list of sources of startup capital in Austin.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

They have seen one side of a market where many of us have seen the ebb and flow multiple times. Still, market amnesia by ordinarily rational actors always surprises me. I believe a bubble occurs when a market is willing to pay greater than intrinsic value for an asset class. I spoke about a lot of things during the keynote.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 3, 2012

he's only been in venture for two years and only through one market, an up one!" I've been in venture capital (with the exception of a year in product management and two years as an entrepreneur) since 2001, when I started doing late stage venture and fund investing at a big financial institution.

Technical Review 102

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Venture Capital 102

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion. What accelerated this was the collapse of the public stock markets.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

VC Adventure

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Here’s the graphic I used from that post: These data are now getting old and VCs, LPs, and entrepreneurs have to ask if anything has changed – especially given the strong markets we’ve experienced over the past few years. Are ventures outcomes trending higher?

Marketing 91

Marketing Venture Capital Finance Portfolio 91

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 30, 2015

One of the first things I did when I joined the venture asset class as a lowly institutional LP analyst in 2001 was to build the VC fund cashflow model. You incorporate expected company returns, mortality rates, and fee structures to try to predict how a venture capital fund works from a cash in, cash out, and NAV standpoint.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation IRR Valuation 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. China Venture Capital. If it’s driven by profit then the ecosystem needs both entrepreneurs as well as Venture Finance. China has the biggest Venture Capital industry outside the U.S. Given the closed market to U.S.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

Investments from capital markets to real estate plummeted. Belnick founded BizChair.com with $500 in 2001. These shares propelled him to billionaire status in 2015 when the firm’s market value soared. Carlson founded Polychain Capital in 2016. Peter is the founder of Bay Street Capital Partners.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Venture Capital India Valuation 142

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

We are purpose-built to not only invest pre-product but also to help accelerate your path to product-market fit with our decades of entrepreneurial and investing experience along with our active CXO advisory board. congrats to Blockdaemon on their seed round led by Comcast Ventures and Wallaroo Labs on its seed led by RRE Ventures.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

If you didn’t notice that the stock markets in the US dropped nearly 4% today (after falling last Thursday and Friday) then you were probably completely off-the-grid and on vacation. And by this I assume he meant that “market prognosticator twitter” was vomitous. It was a nerve racking morning. Neither do I.

Stock 150

Stock Finance Marketing Valuation 150

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. China Venture Capital. If it’s driven by profit then the ecosystem needs both entrepreneurs as well as Venture Finance. China has the biggest Venture Capital industry outside the U.S. Given the closed market to U.S.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 159

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 2, 2014

It''s easy to be right about market predictions eventually. My godfather got me IBM stock right after that, so that''s how I knew that a stock market and investing existed. I started a business newspaper in 1998 in college covering the stock market and the economy. I got my first job in venture--at GM--in February 2001.

Venture Capital 110

Venture Capital Stock Naming Technology 110

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

TL:DR : This post aims to recap significant changes in the venture capital industry over the past ten years, and then make some [biased] predictions as to major forces at play in the next five years. However, all three shifts are related and can be summed up simply as: Geeks are Taking Over Venture Capital.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 26, 2014

As further market proof of the power of Drupal in the enterprise, Acquia has received about $100 million in funding in the past 3 months, which puts its valuation at over $1 billion. Drupal was launched in 2001, and Acquia started in 2007. There’s a lot of buzz about the Amazon acquisition of TWITCH this week. Acquia, Inc.

Founder 42

Founder Los Angeles PHP Open Source 42

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Recently I’ve been debating with a number of young startup companies that are raising money in the next few months, “what is the right about of capital to raise at a startup?&#. It’s a tricky question with no clear answer. There are trade offs.

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Venture Capital Startup Silicon Valley Warrant 319

Growthink Blog

MAY 14, 2012

Because golly, when it comes to the IPO market and public market returns in general, help is needed in a big way. Since the Internet bubble burst in 2001, the number of IPOs hasn’t recovered to even 1980s levels. For perspective, before 2001 over 40% of all venture capital exits were via initial public offerings.

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IPO Private Equity Initial Public Offering Balance Sheet 78

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

(Though after the dotcom collapse of 2000-2001, there are many more than there were! And his previous startup failures may have been the result of non-technical business issues like failure to find funding or missed market timing.) And why would you hire a technology guy who launched a failed startup? Try Google.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 18, 2011

Last month, Teva Pharmaceuticals , has announced the launch of a corporate venture capital fund. In a recent Business Strategy Review article, London Business School professor Gary Dushnitsky notes that corporations across a wide array of industries are adopting a venturing approach. By Gary Dushnitsky.

Venture Capital 87

Venture Capital Global Marketing Product 87

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

2) New market (less common form, examples are Lyft and eShares) and 3) New business model (least common, non-K9 portfolio examples are PriceLine and SolarCity). At K9 we focus on the first two, either core new technologies and technology platforms or new markets. New Technology or New Market, meaning no “me too” ideas.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Early Stage Portfolio Software Engineering 48

Pascal's View

AUGUST 12, 2009

First, the National Venture Capital Association has published data revealing that over 90% of the jobs created by venture-backed companies occur AFTER they go public—and this relationship holds over the past 40 years. Investors take risk in order to reap rewards.

IPO 28

IPO Silicon Valley Merger Sweat Equity 28

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

One of the points I tried to make is that as venture capital investors as an industry we seem to have a healthy disdain for public market investors. The truth is that the brutal reality of public markets is that they self correct much more quickly than our shitty little private equity illiquid corner of the universe.

Burn Rate 150

Burn Rate San Francisco Private Equity LP 150

VC Adventure

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

In response to a comment to my post earlier this week about the Profit Imperative, I rattled off some ideas about the current state of the markets. There are clearly headwinds in the markets – I’m not at all suggesting that there aren’t. As you know, markets tend to perpetuate themselves and pendulum.

Marketing 48

Marketing Balance Sheet Valuation Venture Capital 48

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

genylabs.typepad.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Even the best venture capital firms have a lot of failures and few successes. The best start-up I ever invested in went bankrupt in 2001. They had a great managment team, A list VCs, great technology, excellent sales traction and market leadership in a very exciting space. CRM Magazine: 2011 CRM Market Leaders.

Equity 40

Equity Technical Review San Jose Stock 40

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 5, 2019

According to a study by CB Insights (2017), a software that gathers essential data from investors, companies and industries, more than 70% of startups do not exceed the first stage of venture capital investment. The rounds were conducted from 2008 to 2010, starting from seed capital. Why do so many companies fail?

Venture Capital 77

Venture Capital Cofounder Finance United States 77

abovethecrowd.com

JANUARY 24, 2014

Even though things were frothy enough that the head of the federal reserve felt the need to talk down the market, the top was in fact many, many years away. And the venture capital firms that pulled back in 1996 missed the best three years of return in the history of venture capital industry. And this is not it.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Employee Internet 74

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

When I first started in venture capital, back in 2001, I used to fund funds. I worked for an institutional investor that invested in both venture capital funds and later stage growth deals. My job was to figure out why certain firms were winning and why they might continue to win. Plus, it's a lot of work.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Institutional Investors Later Stage Product 60

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 26, 2015

After a tumultuous week in global markets, today the US stock market ended higher on the session. As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 26, 2015

After a tumultuous week in global markets, today the US stock market ended higher on the session. As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

thebarefootvc

JULY 26, 2015

After a tumultuous week in global markets, today the US stock market ended higher on the session. As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 26, 2018

Transcript of Honest Startup Advice From Somebody Who’s Been Through It written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, I visit with Rand Fishkin. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape marketing podcast. Back to Podcast. Transcript.

Silicon Valley 32

Silicon Valley SEO Startup Technical Review 32

Mucker Lab

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Most brilliant “Internet of Things” ideas are quicksand for capital unless you have the branding, vertical integration and customer lock-in that Apple achieved. 20 years ago, a majority of “Sand Hill” venture capital went into enterprise-focused startups. The iPod model will separate IoT platforms from fads.

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Vertical Widget Distribution China 60

finance.fortune.cnn.com

AUGUST 21, 2012

FORTUNE -- Its no secret that venture capitalists were hit hard by last decades dotcom bust, considering that median returns for 1998-2001 vintage funds are all underwater. Commonwealth Capital Ventures III (2000): 110% (56%). Crosslink Ventures IV (2001): 246% (104%). General Catalyst II (2001): 149% (53%).

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Naming Term Sheet Private Equity Equity 49