Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. LinkedIn: The Series A Fundraising Story. May 26, 2011. This also appears as a guest post at Fortune’s Term Sheet. LinkedIn went public last week.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Agile VC

JUNE 30, 2016

Preface: As a consumer, I am excited by the prospect of autonomous vehicles and the individual and collective benefits they can provide. As an investor, I am also bullish about the innovation wave already in its early innings around mobility and autonomy.

Virginia 100

Virginia Acquisition California Global 100

Agile VC

OCTOBER 23, 2012

The VC industry (both the GP part and the LP part) pays attention to the sector’s returns, but the broader tech ecosystem only occasionally tunes in.

LP 176

LP Accredited Investor Carried Interest Portfolio 176

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Cliff Notes S-1: Kayak. April 17, 2011. I thought it was time to revisit my series of “Cliff Notes” S-1s. In 2010 I deconstructed the filings for GameFly and Quinstreet. Quinstreet priced at $15.00/sh

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Agile VC

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Startup IPO Market: A Fickle Mistress. September 15, 2011. The IPO market, she is a fickle mistress. In the first half of 2011, the IPO markets were looking strong for VC-backed companies.

IPO 100

IPO Marketing Silicon Valley Technical Review 100

Agile VC

MARCH 13, 2012

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. vs Facebook: Lame Lawsuit, Good Timing. March 13, 2012. Yesterday Yahoo! filed it’s much awaited lawsuit against Facebook for patent infringement.

IP 100

IP IPO Social Network Silicon Valley 100

Agile VC

JANUARY 4, 2012

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. GrabCAD & Professional Communities. January 4, 2012. Today one of our portfolio companies, GrabCAD, announced it’s Series A funding led by Matrix.

Community 100

Community Estonia Syndicate Syndication 100

Agile VC

OCTOBER 27, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. The Consumerization of Business Software. October 28, 2011. One of the themes that we’ve been most interested in at NextView over the last 12+ months has been the impact of consumer web trends on business software.

Software 100

Software B2B Silicon Valley Acquisition 100

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Groupon’s S-1: From Zero to Like… Billions in 30 Months. June 5, 2011. So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Agile VC

DECEMBER 4, 2014

I like to say that “there are only co-founders” — it’s extraordinarily rare for a successful business to have just a sole founder. But not all co-founders are equal in terms of title, ownership, responsibilities, and so forth.

Cofounder 255

Cofounder Equity Founder Sweat Equity 255

Agile VC

DECEMBER 19, 2013

I was recently talking with another member of LinkedIn’s founding team. It’s been awhile since we worked together on a daily basis so a lot was just general catch up, but one of the primary reasons for our chat was that this person was starting to become a more active angel investor and was just looking for feedback.

Angel Investor 265

Angel Investor Early Stage Syndicate Syndication 265

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

It’s widely known we VCs focus on just a couple of key dimensions when making our investment decisions: team, market, product / technology, and investment parameters or “deal” While all of these parameters are loosely connected and there are many paths to “yes” at the end of the day market size is the prime reason VCs (..)

B2B 246

B2B .Net Revenue Global 246

Agile VC

JULY 26, 2019

Reading Time: 2 minutes. This post also appears at NextView’s blog. Another phrase we use internally at NextView pretty often is that of a “favorite future”. Early in NextView’s history, when we were raising our first fund (e.g.

Limited Partner 100

Limited Partner Founder Partner Startup 100

Agile VC

MAY 16, 2019

Reading Time: 6 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. Slack dropped their S-1 a couple weeks ago. Even before that, we all knew that it was among the most rapidly growing SaaS companies in recent years and a product used (and loved) by millions of people.

Lock-up Period 100

Lock-up Period Retention Azure .Net 100

Agile VC

APRIL 30, 2019

Reading Time: 3 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. 2019 is off to an exciting start for IPOs of VC-backed startups. In just the last month or so we’ve seen Lyft go public ( my analysis of the company’s S-1 here ) and more recently, Zoom and Pinterest. Zoom is a B2B company Pinterest and Lyft are obviously B2C companies.

IPO 100

IPO B2B B2C Institutional Investors 100

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

Most consumer web/mobile companies focus on user growth and usage early in the company’s lifecycle before shifting to monetization. This is a logical thing to do… when we started LinkedIn, my mentor Reid Hoffman instilled a mantra of Growth –> Usage –> Revenue which still holds for many consumer companies.

Revenue 234

Revenue Product B2B Marketing 234

Agile VC

JUNE 17, 2015

I’ve observed what may be an emerging trend, at least in some startups, that I find somewhat unsettling. It has an impact at an individual level, a company level, and an ecosystem level. This is not an easy topic to discuss without coming off like a jerk or a crusty old dude, so I wanted to share two quick stories about my own career below.

Startup 188

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 188

Agile VC

MARCH 5, 2019

Reading Time: 7 minutes. This post also appears on NextView’s blog. I’ve been looking thru S-1s for many years, out of intellectual curiosity to better understand how remarkable businesses work.

Aggregator 100

Aggregator .Net Revenue IPO 100

Agile VC

JULY 16, 2014

One of our portfolio companies, Plastiq , announced yesterday that they raised a $10M Series B led by Khosla Ventures and are planning to move their headquarters from Boston to San Francisco.

Boston 208

Boston Silicon Valley San Francisco Cofounder 208

Agile VC

JANUARY 21, 2015

Note: This post also published at NextView’s blog for seed stage companies The View From Seed. The startup ecosystem is often full of hyperbole, which is perfectly understandable when you think about it.

Cofounder 188

Cofounder Seed Stage Employee PR 188

Agile VC

MAY 15, 2014

We’re launching a series of platform initiatives here at NextView in 2014. Today we’re pleased to announce the first in a series of Growth Guides. What’s a Growth Guide? Well our focus here at NextView is helping exceptional seed stage companies get things off to the best possible start.

Seed Stage 193

Seed Stage Engineer Community Sales 193

Agile VC

DECEMBER 4, 2014

I like to say that “there are only co-founders” — it’s extraordinarily rare for a successful business to have just a sole founder. But not all co-founders are equal in terms of title, ownership, responsibilities, and so forth.

Cofounder 173

Cofounder Equity Founder Sweat Equity 173

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

As many of you know, in the past I’ve done a series of posts deconstructing the S-1s of VC-backed internet startups going public. A few years ago this was sort of a novelty… not that many startups were going public and not that many bloggers or mainstream journalists took the time or had familiarity with combing these SEC filings.

IPO 194

IPO Aggregator B2B Internet 194

Agile VC

SEPTEMBER 22, 2017

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a bit over two years since Tim Devane joined us as a Principal at NextView. Tim joined our investment team as the first non-founder, and also as the first NextView team member based in our New York office.

New York 100

New York Cofounder Portfolio Founder 100

Agile VC

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

eBay announced today plans to separate itself into two companies, one the core eBay marketplace business and the other is the PayPal payments business. This is a move that’s been contemplated by folks both inside the company and outside for many years.

Mobile 157

Mobile Acquisition Revenue Management 157

Agile VC

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

GrabCAD today announced their acquisition by Stratasys (NASDAQ: SSYS). All of us at NextView extend our congratulations to founder Hardi Meybaum and the rest of the GrabCAD team.

Boston 154

Boston Acquisition Estonia Viral 154

Agile VC

JANUARY 22, 2014

Change Collective announced their seed round today , in conjunction with their broader launch of the company. I thought I’d share a little of what makes us enthusiastic to partner with Ben, Derek, and their team to help them as they build their business. I first met Ben about 5-6 years ago.

Term Sheet 173

Term Sheet Cofounder Mobile Cloud 173

Agile VC

MAY 27, 2016

Conventional wisdom is that when self-driving autonomous passenger cars arrive, they’re likely to decrease individual ownership of cars.

Framework 133

Framework Boston Demand Operations 133

Agile VC

MAY 22, 2014

My first two posts on this mammoth S-1 covered a high-level sizing of Alibaba and a deeper dive into some of Alibaba Group’s governance which in some ways mirrors the Politburo structure. Today I’m going to analyze monetization across Alibaba’s various businesses.

China 159

China Revenue Flash Affiliate 159

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 20, 2014

Like most folks in the tech ecosystem, I’m still slightly slack-jawed this morning by the announcement late yesterday that Facebook is buying WhatsApp for approximately $19 billion in total consideration.

Valuation 159

Valuation Acquisition Mobile Revenue 159

Agile VC

MAY 9, 2014

One of the first things that caught my eye when I started reading the Alibaba Group S-1 was a section on page 7 of the filing regarding something called the “Alibaba Partnership” It quickly struck me that the Alibaba Group’s corporate governance in some ways mirrors China’s Politburo.

Government 153

Government Silicon Valley China Cofounder 153

Agile VC

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Today Optimus Ride announced a $5.25M seed round of funding to continue developing their unique approach to autonomous transportation. NextView is pleased to co-lead this round along with our friends at FirstMark Capital as well as participation by other investors, and I’m excited to join Optimus’s board.

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Partner Software Networking 100

Agile VC

APRIL 28, 2014

I watched the first episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley last night. Yes I know I’m several weeks behind at this point, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to get into this series (still not sure actually). FWIW I’m a big fan of Mike Judge’s films like Office Space and Idiocracy, and also enjoyed his prior TV shows.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Acquisition Software Restful 150

Agile VC

AUGUST 1, 2016

“Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that’s the Dude…” – The Stranger , The Big Lebowski. Today we announced our investment in The Outline, a new digital media company founded by CEO Josh Topolsky.

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Media Internet Founder 100

Agile VC

JULY 19, 2012

Last week I wrote about some of the common factors that have led great VC firms to stumble or even fade from existence entirely. I wanted to follow-up with some observations of paths to greatness for a select group of firms.

Cofounder 193

Cofounder Limited Partner Early Stage LP 193

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 28, 2013

Yesterday was Apple’s shareholder meeting and as many of you know, there’s obviously been healthy debate about what they should do with the ~$137 billion in cash they’re sitting on. increasing dividends or issuing preferred stock).

Hungary 168

Hungary Dividend Vertical Preferred Stock 168

Agile VC

OCTOBER 1, 2013

I believe we’re going to look back in 2-5 years and realize that we’ve been in a once a decade boom for internet & software startups. It doesn’t feel much like a boom actually.

IPO 147

IPO Cloud Valuation Mobile 147