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This Week in Venture Capital – Episode 4

Both Sides of the Table

Zong is obviously doing something right since they are now the preferred mobile payment platform for Facebook’s mobile credit offering but will compete against some serious guns – Boku has raised nearly $40 million from Benchmark, Index, DAG and Khosla Ventures – the A list of who’s who VCs. 15mm in Series A.

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Corporate Acquisitions of Startups: Why Do They Fail?

Steve Blank

In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations. If they acquire later stage companies who already have users/customers and/or a predictable revenue stream, they are acquiring companies which are executing.

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Want to Know How VC’s Calculate Valuation Differently from Founders?

Both Sides of the Table

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. The more senior members you have (say you already have a CEO, CTO, VP marketing, VP Biz Dev, VP Products) then the less options you’ll need and vice versa. That’s normal.

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Playing the Long Game in Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

But markets have changed and I think investors, founders and experienced executives who want to join later-stage startups can all benefit from playing the long game. And the third founder, Colin Kelley , remains an important contributor & CTO of the company. It literally drove FOMO.

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This Week in VC with Rick Smith of Crosscut Ventures

Both Sides of the Table

I spoke about the need of the CEO, CTO and head of Products to be in the same location. Convertible debt is a loan to the company that doesn’t typically get paid back but rather “converts&# into equity when you raise a larger round at a later date. What advice do you have for people who want to get into venture capital?

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Why Uber is The Revenge of the Founders

Steve Blank

If the founder was lucky, he got to stay as chairman or CTO. And in later stage rounds an explosion of corporate VCs and hedge funds now want in to the next unicorns. Schmidt had been the CEO of Novell and previously CTO of Sun Microsystems. Filed under: Venture Capital.

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From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Johnny Good post.