Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

There was a lot of consumer internet activity again…resurgence of things, but it was still mysterious, venture capital was still kind of closed, 1st time entrepreneurs had a lot of questions that were unanswered, and there was still some sort of hand waiving around all the financing stuff and so we took it on….”. Is that when it became big?

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. Similar to the explosion of seed funds in the past decade, we (and some limited partners too ) believe these Flexible VCs are on the forefront of what will become a major segment of the venture ecosystem. Of the Inc. 5000 companies, only 6.5% return cap.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

For early stage VC ‘s, Syndication is the process of sharing investments with other potential co-investors. The classic scenario is when a VC has a signed term sheet to lead a round, but has left room open for another meaningful investor. When I started in venture, syndicating deals was fairly common.

Syndicate 207

Syndicate Syndication Term Sheet Cofounder 207

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013

Many Asian entrepreneurs tell me that they want to raise funds from Silicon Valley firms because they perceive the valuations to be higher. But the problem with this is that most VCs in the Valley, especially early stage ones, only like to invest in companies that are within driving distance from their offices.

Asia 132

Asia Silicon Valley India Term Sheet 132

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

This also appears as a guest post at Fortune’s Term Sheet. I also joke with Reid Hoffman that this was back in the days before he was “Reid” Reid’s an incredible entrepreneur, startup investor, and human being. How To Think About The Future. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. May 26, 2011.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

Often if it’s a bigger firm (say 4 partners or more) and it’s a super small investment for their fund size (let’s say $250-500k when they normally invest $5-7 million) they will just require 1 or 2 partners to decide. What happens next feels like a black box to outsiders. ” Some firms are collegiate.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Detroit Early Stage Partner 150

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

From a company milestones perspective, entrepreneurs who take on venture debt are almost always thinking about raising that next round of capital from other institutions. Use good judgment, talk to your co-founders/investors/lawyers, and partner with a bank that values transparency and relationships such as SVB.].

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

I recently read a post over on VentureHacks titled, “ Top Ten Reasons Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers &# written by Scott Walker (who blogs on legal issues for entrepreneurs ). They want to lock in future clients at an early stage. I know that people have an allergy to lawyers out of fear of being screwed.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318

Mucker Lab

AUGUST 27, 2014

As an entrepreneur himself, founding and operating printed circuit board factories in Taiwan, my father was debating between two places to immigrate to and build his next new venture: Los Angeles (“The Valley” aka San Fernando Valley) and Santa Clara (“Silicon Valley”). That number in the Valley might be closer to 10%.

Los Angeles 138

Los Angeles Southern California Silicon Valley Technical Review 138

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 28, 2015

by John Vrionis, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. This past summer, the Lightspeed Summer Fellowships program invited selected guests to provide aspiring entrepreneurs a perspective into all aspects of starting a new company. Lightspeed is in the business of encouraging entrepreneurship.

Convertible Security 100

Convertible Security IP Technical Review Software Review 100

OnlyOnce

OCTOBER 31, 2013

Fred Wilson has been a venture investor and director in Return Path since 2000, first with Flatiron Partners and then with Union Square Ventures. If you’re fortunate enough to have built a really strong early stage company, you will find yourself in the position of being able to pick from a number of potential venture investors.

Valuation 133

Valuation Term Sheet B2C Security 133

View from Seed

AUGUST 16, 2019

With the proliferation of multiple seed rounds prior to a Series A, these situations are coming up increasingly in the early stage startup ecosystem. That story is built brick by brick through subtle cues of amounts of insider participation, who issues a term sheet, structure of the financing, etc.

Term Sheet 149

Term Sheet Syndicate Syndication Early Stage 149

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

Austin Startup

JULY 22, 2021

It’s hard to describe in words the palpable energy when a room is this packed full of incredible female entrepreneurs at the Women in Tech Summit at Capital Factory. On October 4th, five technology startup finalists will pitch to a panel of advisors and judges made up of successful investors, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders.

San Antonio 107

San Antonio Dallas Houston Founder 107

Up and Running

JANUARY 26, 2012

Ideally you’ll look to partner with an investor who has knowledge of your specific sector, as well as a network of contacts that can be called upon when needed. It is also worth understanding at an early stage how active a role the investor wishes to play in your business. What is their preferred exit strategy?

Term Sheet 94

Term Sheet Exit Strategy Software Review Early Stage 94

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

In 2019 we partnered with several revenue-based lending providers, effectively creating a marketplace. “. According to Brian Parks, “Bigfoot provides RBI, term loans, and lines of credit to SaaS businesses with $500k+ ARR. We have a special program if you are pre-seed and need product development. Bigfoot Capital.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Version One Ventures

AUGUST 28, 2019

The venture capital market has become very noisy over the past few years, especially on the early-stage side. Entrepreneurs have an increasing amount of financing options – that’s good news, but it also makes it harder to choose the right partners for your journey. Not a day goes by that a new fund isn’t being announced.

Founder 109

Founder Term Sheet Early Stage Venture Capital 109

Startup Company Lawyer

MARCH 14, 2010

Founders Institute Plain Preferred Term Sheet (by WSGR – disclaimer, I represent the Founders Institute and was involved in drafting this document). My general opinion is that anything that makes the financing process faster and easier or otherwise educates entrepreneurs is a good thing. (A “ . Legal fees.

Finance 70

Finance Software Review Term Sheet Liquidation Preference 70

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

Entrepreneur DNA. Entrepreneur turned VC. Share and Enjoy: Mark Suster is a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner after selling his company to Salesforce.com. He focuses on early-stage technology companies. Entrepreneur Advice (3).

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs end up learning that lesson the hard way. To learn some common legal pitfalls we’d all be better off avoiding, we asked nine founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) what unexpected things they found themselves needing lawyers for in the early stages of their startups.

Non-disclosure Agreement 97

Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Term Sheet Early Stage 97

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

So many had names of partners (Kleiner Perkins) or local favorite identifiers like trees (Sequoia). You could argue that choosing the name “first round” paints them into a corner in case they want to ever do a late stage fund, but I suspect they named it FRC precisely because they wanted to excel at early-stage investing.

Community 304

Community Los Angeles Startup Silicon Valley 304

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

I know many super experienced entrepreneurs who don’t understand the basics of how fund size and age can affect them so I thought it was worth establishing a baseline. First, if the VC does 15-20 of these under one partner then it is certain he can’t spend any time with these investments. And they don’t.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Term Sheet Early Stage Silicon Valley 265

Austin Startup

MARCH 16, 2021

The challenge will occur on May 21 at Houston Tech Rodeo in partnership with Houston Exponential and will feature five technology startup finalists from greater Houston that will be evaluated by a panel of successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. One will walk away with a $50,000 investment! Application deadline is April 26.

Houston 80

Houston San Antonio Dallas Texas 80

David Teten

JULY 20, 2011

Ten Tips for Entrepreneurs when Working with Lawyers. One of the biggest sources of friction between entrepreneurs and their attorneys comes from a lack of clarity surrounding billing expectations. I recently worked on the sale of a company by an entrepreneur. Cash is like oxygen in early stage companies.

Intellectual Property 128

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Term Sheet Venture Capital 128

Rob Go

AUGUST 29, 2016

When I first started out as a VC nearly 9 years ago, most early stage company valuations were expressed as pre-money valuations. Most term sheets talked about the valuation in these terms, and you added the dollars invested to get a post-money valuation. I don’t expect this changing any time soon.

Post-Money Valuation 52

Post-Money Valuation Valuation Cap Table Term Sheet 52

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. But the larger funds usually have lower returns because they are often investing bigger dollars at later stages with less risk and therefore lower returns.

LP 374

LP Later Stage IRR Term Sheet 374

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 28, 2012

Startups in NextView’s portfolio frequently receive inbound interest from other VC investors who are intrigued about what they’re doing, and I often talk with other early-stage entrepreneurs how to approach similar situations. My perspective is basically to make an informed decision on a case-by-case basis.

Early Stage 100

Early Stage Syndicate Syndication Silicon Valley 100

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

× At Greylock , my partners and I are driven by one guiding mission: always help entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter whether an entrepreneur is in our portfolio, whether we’re considering an investment, or whether we’re casually meeting for the first time. Entrepreneurs often ask me for help with their pitch decks.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages, 2. Many (Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, True Ventures, GRP Partners, Mike Hirshland at Polaris Ventures) do it the right way – we treat it as a normal investment and we don’t have a “options&# strategy with our investment.

Post-Money Valuation 298

Post-Money Valuation Term Sheet Warrant Partner 298

Gust

OCTOBER 8, 2014

This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.). Why the latter?

Cap Table 136

Cap Table Silicon Valley Term Sheet Non-Compete 136

Eric Friedman

JUNE 11, 2019

This keeps the firm and final answer on investing nebulous and entrepreneurs moving the firm in their tracking sheet or CRM around for no reason. Exclusivity – This can be great if you have another partner, or frame things in a way that could leave them out.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Stock Options Early Stage Agile 68

Rob Go

JULY 17, 2014

NextView Ventures II is $40M, twice the size of our first fund, and we continue to be exclusively focused on seed-stage companies pursuing internet-enabled innovation. As former operators and product-oriented entrepreneurs, Dave, Lee, and I tend to think of our firm as a startup company and our approach to investing as our product.

Seed Stage 69

Seed Stage Early Stage Due Diligence Liquidity Event 69

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

Sure, if you’re Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter, you can dictate your terms, but last I checked, most of the entrepreneurs First Round and most of the seed stage firms back don’t have that same kind of track record. I think the entrepreneurs were just happy to close and move on to building great companies.

Equity 104

Equity Term Sheet Seed Stage Angel Investor 104

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2010

Dan Primack, who is now writing a great column at Fortune called Term Sheet used to do this; there are now guest writers (including me) who do this column. By 1987 I had a partner, a mentor (my father) and a company that was capitalized with $10. Ive been blogging–along with my partners–for a number of years.

Term Sheet 106

Term Sheet Seattle Angel Investor Bootstrapping 106

Genuine VC

MARCH 25, 2010

I had coffee with an entrepreneur friend the other day who is in the early stages of putting a company together, and he recounted how his informal conversations with a venture capitalist had quickly escalated into a full partner pitch in just a few weeks.

Early Stage 123

Early Stage Venture Capital Term Sheet Conversion 123

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

But in business, you want a lot of partners. In the private equity universe, most Partners have primary training as deal-makers, not as managers. Small investment firms often have interns and entrepreneurs in residence passing through, each of which is a security risk. Most of us want one spouse and we’re done. 2) Market .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

BeyondVC

OCTOBER 13, 2004

I was speaking with a friend of mine today who mentioned that his term sheet for his Series A round fell through. Rather than leave this open to chance, the VC and the early stage company did the right thing and decided to clean up the ambiguity. Today, the IP is about to get assigned in the proper manner.

Software Review 60

Software Review Intellectual Property IP Due Diligence 60