View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

VC Cafe

APRIL 4, 2024

While investments to generative AI startups are red hot, founders have to battle quite a few investor biases. Identify a specific niche or use case where your AI technology can provide unparalleled value, and become the go-to expert in that domain. As pre-seed investors, it’s never too early to have a conversation.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Technical Review ChatGPT 78

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

At seed-stage startups, especially companies with well-networked founders and investors, finding applicants who can do a job on paper is not overly difficult. To help you more effectively build your early teams, we asked a group of founders to share their favorite interview questions when they build new startup teams.

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Founder Seed Stage Cofounder Boston 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

What most founders don’t realize is: Every stage of a startup requires a different set of metrics and milestones and founder skills. Knowing these will help a founder position her pitch to get investors’ attention. Founders need to keep their eye on the prize — not just the next funding round. Business Model.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. From RBI, Flexible VCs borrow the ability to reap meaningful returns without demanding founders build for an exit. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

(co-written with Stephane Nasser , co-founder of OpenVC , an open-source initiative to collect and analyze all VC theses.). OpenVC is a new, open-source initiative to collect and analyze all publicly available VC theses, to help founders more efficiently find the right investors, and vice-versa. Technical founders .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

SiliconHills

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Austin-based Perigon has closed on a $5 million seed stage round of financing led by LiveOak Venture Partners. Josh Rickel, co-founder, said the company plans to use the money to hire key employees and further develop its technology.

Austin 71

Austin Seed Stage Cofounder Finance 71

ReadWriteStart

MAY 22, 2023

According to Rolf Illenberger, co-founder of VRdirect, a virtual reality platform in Munich, none of the big European tech companies are currently relevant to the future of the Metaverse. Talent retention is one of the biggest challenges facing Europe’s Metaverse industry.

Finland 187

Finland Europe Estonia Silicon Valley 187

The Next Web

OCTOBER 23, 2013

There aren’t a tonne of funds focused on seed-stage funding worldwide, but we can add a new one to the list today. SparkLabs , the company behind the accelerator program in Korea , is expanding its scope with its first seed-stage fund that will “help great startups go global.”. Asia Entrepreneur Insider News sparklabs'

Seed Stage 139

Seed Stage Asia Silicon Valley 139

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Thanks to all of the amazing founders, advisors, co-investors, corporate partners, and others that helped make 2018 an amazing year. To that point, we are most excited when our founders are able to go from slide deck to product-market fit and Series A and beyond. We are truly grateful for your support. First check to Series A?—?congrats

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. In the early 80’s he left academia to work on venture capital investing with Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies. I'm a huge fan of this innovation.

Pre-Money Valuation 284

Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review Cofounder Cram Down 284

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

Some disgruntled younger partners left in the mid-90s… two co-founded Benchmark Capital (Bruce Dunlevie & Andy Rachleff). Technology Venture Investors [Silicon Valley] –> Claim to fame… sole VC investor in Microsoft, which turned out ok. Paul Ferri @ Matrix) though the vast majority had multiple co-founders.

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

David Teten

JULY 10, 2019

We want to use our proprietary technology and network to tap the relevant players to take the relevant steps forward; and identify, document, and disseminate best practices. Although we envision we initially use our technology for a political purpose, that’s only the test case and that alone is nearly a $20 billion market. .

America 60

America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

And, there’s a good reason why; it includes back-to-back essays on mobile, high-growth startups and technology. This is the home of Jason Cohen, software startup founder, bootstrapper, investor, and mentor. His blog is full of personal stories, gentle advice, and guidance that will be useful to any startup founder. A Smart Bear.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 60

Hearpreneur

MAY 4, 2019

It starts with a pilot, with often is pretty small: just one or two teams of co-founders dedicated to growth opportunity areas for six months or so. But honestly, five years is a long time from now and I always say you can’t predict markets, business models, or technologies beyond about three years and a day.

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Entrepreneur Venture Capital 66

View from Seed

AUGUST 2, 2017

Some conclude that certain sectors or technologies — like AI, blockchain, VR — will define the next decade. Others take bets on certain verticals or business models, such as marketplaces, SaaS, or enterprise technology. The impact of civilization-shaping technologies unfolds over many decades.

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Seed Stage Portfolio Cofounder B2B 273

Rob Go

MARCH 2, 2013

Every now and then, I get a big reminder of just how helpful it is for entrepreneurs to have co-founders. Of course, having the wrong co-founders is really damaging. Also, there are many successful founders who have done great without a meaningful co-founder. Couple examples.

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Seed Stage Early Stage Partner 66

Haystack

JANUARY 12, 2020

For those following this blog and the seed market over the past decade, you may have noticed that every year, we see increases across the board — more investors, newer funds, and funds that get larger. Much has been written about the fact that traditional seed stage funds have grown in size and dollars under management.

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Seed Stage Cram Down Early Stage Cofounder 106

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

Founders laud their own “end-to-end” thinking. He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. IBM didn’t actually have that technology.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

by Jason Mendelson and Brad Feld, co-authors of “ Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist “ So, you’ve got a brilliant idea and you’re ready to launch a company. For example, assume you are a seed-stage company that needs $500,000 but you go out looking for $1 million.

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Venture Capital Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence 100

Up and Running

DECEMBER 13, 2021

Fundraising isn’t easy for most founders. No longer are founders being asked to drive up and down Sand Hill Road, meet in small coffee shops throughout SF or NYC, or spend a meaningful amount of money getting around to all of these meetings. Don’t interrupt your co-founder or the investor. Know when to stop talking.

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Founder Cofounder SMS Seed Stage 85

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann Miura-Ko is a founding partner at Floodgate , a seed-stage VC firm. She’s also a founding member of All Raise, a non-profit committed to improving diversity in both funders and founders. We were originally called Maples Investments, because my co-founding partner is Mike Maples, and we had that as a placeholder.

Founder 68

Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

techcrunch.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Today, AngelList is debuting Docs, which lets seed-stage startups close their round online. As CEO and co-founder Naval Ravikant tells me, when he and co-founder Babak Nivi started VentureHacks a few years ago, their goal was to educate companies on how to negotiate venture term sheets. 2011 Holiday.

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Term Sheet San Francisco Technical Review Seed Stage 70

David Teten

DECEMBER 12, 2017

VCs are at the forefront of technological disruption, funding many of the latest cutting edge productivity tools. Clint Korver, Partner at Ulu Ventures , remarked: “I’d compare this technology transformation as akin to what happened in public company investing. But what tools are they using themselves to automate their own processes?

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 60

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

This post was co-authored with Omri Stern and originally appeared in Harvard Business Review. The founders have started companies before. More recently, Israeli founders are themselves moving to the U.S. So how early should the founders pack their bags and ship out to the U.S.? Israel has been branded the “startup nation.”

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

The web and technology bubble has a lot in common with the rest of the business world in that there are essentially two disparate groups — the haves and the have nots. For the first-time entrepreneur or founder looking for seed stage funding, this circle can be especially difficult to penetrate.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

Hunter Walker

DECEMBER 25, 2016

So, we actually don’t think most new funds or seed investors are competitive with Homebrew in the traditional sense of “we’re all looking at the same deals and need to ‘win’ deals away from new funds.” And it’s probably one of the biggest differences in seed investing when you compare 2006 vs 2016.

Seed Stage 74

Seed Stage Cofounder Engineer Reputation 74

View from Seed

MAY 27, 2015

We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business. Yes, there are other tech podcasts out there that do a great job talking about industry trends, strategy, and founders’ stories.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Early Stage Non-Compete Silicon Valley 120

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

The 2013 Joah didn’t realize he was about to run into the buzzsaw that was being black while fundraising in 2014 and 2015, two of the best years for a seed-stage startup to raise funds in Silicon Valley. I never did find a VC to lead a round of funding for Localeur, but two things happened by the end of 2015. But is it correct?

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley Technical Review Venture Capital San Francisco 48

Ben's Blog

JANUARY 31, 2012

That excitement took a sharp downhill turn when one of the top partners said to me, in front of my co-founders, “When are you going to get a real CEO?”. As we set out to design a venture capital firm that would enable founders to run their own companies, we began by asking: In what ways are professional CEOs superior to founder CEOs?

Venture Capital 78

Venture Capital Portfolio Cofounder Partner 78

Mucker Lab

SEPTEMBER 7, 2015

Interview with my Everipedia Co-founder Theodor Forselius (AKA “Tedde”) by Mahbod Moghadam. One of the main reasons I got involved with Everipedia is that I really like the ethnicities of my cofounders. Sam is a Persian Prince – and you know I am deeply proud of our shared Iran roots – and Theodor is Swedish.

Cofounder 60

Cofounder Iran Sweden Silicon Valley 60

Genuine VC

MARCH 4, 2013

With all of our seed stage investments here at NextView, we both look at the market opportunity as well as the team behind the startup. Today Triple Lift announced their $2M seed round financing. We at NextView Ventures are happy to join co-investors True Ventures, iNovia, and the rest of the syndicate.

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Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication Cofounder 124

View from Seed

APRIL 23, 2015

In the startup world, one POTAJ that’s easy and worthwhile to defend is the need to focus on building great products and innovative technology instead of trying to over-sell lousy solutions. ” Founders must address distribution in their pitches both overtly and succinctly. Accidental VC'

Founder 120

Founder Distribution Viral Seed Stage 120

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

Facebook Co-Founder’s Startup Asana Launches Publicly. Joshua Baer is the co-founder and CEO of Otherinbox , a prolific angel investor and the director of Capital Factory , Austin’s seed-stage incubator. Trending Stories. 13 Halloween-Themed Facebook Timeline Designs [PICS]. video games. viral video.

Social Media 80

Social Media Startup Angel Investor RSS 80

Scott Edward Walker

JUNE 26, 2012

16) GEORGE ZACHARY, Partner at Charles River Ventures “I look for founders at the seed stage and Series A stage who basically can quickly explain to me what it is that they are doing, why it is so important, and in a way that the passion comes from them authentically, not like somebody taught them how to make a presentation.” - George Zachary (p.27)

Term Sheet 72

Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence Cofounder 72

View from Seed

MARCH 16, 2016

Want hardcore futuristic technology? I’ll discuss the latter in a second, but first, the increase in investors… A number of super-angels and angel groups institutionalized in the past year, creating a broader set of seed-stage funds, like Converge Venture Partners. Want the next TripAdvisor or Wayfair?

Boston 215

Boston Early Stage Artificial Inteligence Semantic 215