VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

I touched on this in my post “ Founder Investor Fit “ Passing the initial filtering process. Most of these can sound like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many founders skip this initial research. Stake – can the fund secure it’s minimum stake in the business? How to make your pitch deck stand out.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder Portfolio 166

View from Seed

MAY 11, 2016

Investors love the idea of backing second-time founders, especially if they have had success in their last company. etc… In addition, first-time founders I speak to often talk about how much they have learned and how they resolve to do things differently and better the next time. Is there a sophomore slump to avoid?

Founder 159

Founder Cofounder CTO Hire Early Stage 159

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

You have 5-10 years of professional experience as a technology operator, founder, and/or investor. You have an edge in the highly competitive world of early stage investing that comes from some combination of your experience, industry knowledge, and personal network. You act as an “ invited guest.”. You are hungry. A Final Note.

Technical Review 156

Technical Review North America Seed Stage Bandwidth 156

VC Cafe

JULY 21, 2020

If you’re a startup founder, you’re probably looking at Google in some way, maybe in terms of partnership or acquisition, but maybe some level of suspicion and fear. A relationship with Google can take many forms, which I will detail in this post as a guide for founders exploring their relationship with big tech.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Startup Early Stage Cloud 131

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Most founders reported (in several different surveys) that knowledge and belief in their industry/sector and personal connection is one of the key reasons they would choose one investor over another. See the recent reports by Frontline Ventures and Creandum on what makes founders choose one offer over another.

Venture Capital 215

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Institutional Investors 215

View from Seed

APRIL 27, 2020

We can stay busy by expending time and effort supporting the existing portfolio, which is the right thing to do and a good use of time. Founders do not have this luxury. Founders do not have this luxury. Most founders are going through hell right now, and that is not going away any time soon. Wait and see.

Cofounder 194

Cofounder Software Review Portfolio Technical Review 194

David Teten

JULY 25, 2017

As I’ve worked to build out HOF Capital ’s portfolio acceleration platform , the #1 question I think about is: how do we scalably support our companies? Many VCs offer (or strive to offer) a bundle of levers and support structures to help their portfolio companies. We have lower AUM, therefore lower management fees.

Portfolio 60

Portfolio Technical Review Private Equity Database 60

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Bessemer started the idea of the “anti-portfolio” – the companies that you passed on, but ended up doing very, very well. . After Honey was acquired by PayPal for $4B a few weeks ago, we thought it was a good time to share the Version One anti-portfolio: Honey. This was not our early-stage sweet spot and the $100M valuation felt rich.

Portfolio 202

Portfolio Cap Table Early Stage Valuation 202

Hunter Walker

MAY 13, 2023

Especially in the early days of mobile/iOS engineering, if you hired strong technical talent into your early stage company, you basically created an acquisition outcome floor. I was on both sides of these transactions – buying startups for Google/YouTube and angel investing in high quality technical founders.

Early Stage 117

Early Stage Cap Table Acquisition Sales 117

Genuine VC

JULY 9, 2013

Recently, we surveyed our Boston-based NextView portfolio Founder/CEOs asking them about which service provider firms they’ve been using. When we took the poll itself, one founder said: “This is a great idea. We would have loved to have it when we were getting started.”

Early Stage 246

Early Stage Boston Portfolio Silicon Valley 246

VC Cafe

JANUARY 22, 2021

In addition, Amazon launched two dedicated funds: Alexa Startups – The Alexa Startups team engages founders and investors through startup programs, business development, and technical support. AI startups in the Alexa Fund portfolio. Amazon and AWS take a hands on approach to supporting startups across stages. Physical space.

Technical Review 174

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital Incubator 174

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

These usually play a role in the very early stage of your business, primarily pre-revenue. I have interacted with a lot of founders who funded their initial business expenses through credit cards. The seed stage is focused on building the core team, product optimization, exploring avenues for monetization. ? Early-stage.

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

techcrunch.com

AUGUST 12, 2012

Zachary Bogue And Matt Ocko Launch Data Collective, An Early Stage Fund For Big Data Startups. Data Collective has already made 46 investments from its first fund, which it calls “comparable with other seed and early stage funds” (Ocko and Bogue wouldn’t reveal fund size.). Headphones. CrunchBase.

Early Stage 70

Early Stage San Francisco Los Angeles Southern California 70

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

The Innovation Portfolio. Companies manage these three types of innovation with an innovation portfolio – they build innovation internally, they buy it or they partner with resources outside their company. Ventures that are further along and now executing their business model are no longer startups, they are now early-stage companies.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 28, 2023

It’s still in the very early stages there, but there is definitely an enthusiastic community to build on. 4) Building pre-seed companies As we reflect upon our own sweet spot of “backing mission-driven founders at the earliest stages,” one important point of clarity is that this truly means at inception or pre-seed.

Technical Review 73

Technical Review India Canada Early Stage 73

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

And this era ushered in by Amazon changed everything from the age of founders to the skill sets required to the structure of the VC industry and even to the layout of cities (yes, I would proclaim that boldly that Amazon AWS affected city development). The “A Round” of my startup in 1999 was $16.5 What Does This All Mean for Seed Investing?

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. Competition from other startups and established incumbents, constraints on time and capital, and limited access to talent and technology resources are just a few of the hurdles nearly every first-time founder faces while trying to build a business.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Obviously the funding environment has changed considerably in 2022 but as early-stage investors our daily jobs stay largely unchanged. We are proud to announce the close of our 7th early-stage fund with $280 million to invest in seed and early stage founders.

San Francisco 408

San Francisco Early Stage Venture Capital Los Angeles 408

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 8, 2017

Although Ginny is new to the team, she has many connections to the NextView family, as she started her career at our portfolio company Shareaholic , and worked closely with both Jay Acunzo (our first head of platform) and Joe Chernov (the VP of Marketing at our portfolio company Insight Squared ). Establishing an excellent early team.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Boston Early Stage Portfolio 120

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 8, 2017

Although Ginny is new to the team, she has many connections to the NextView family, as she started her career at our portfolio company Shareaholic , and worked closely with both Jay Acunzo (our first head of platform) and Joe Chernov (the VP of Marketing at our portfolio company Insight Squared ). Establishing an excellent early team.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Boston Early Stage Portfolio 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 5, 2016

At the beginning, a startup team is typically just a couple of co-founders. What we suggest at this juncture is that founders get acclimated to the tactics of scaling beyond the founding team. What to Address During Genesis Team Building: How do we divide and conquer responsibilities as co-founders? Below, I take a look at each.

Founder 120

Founder Cofounder Startup Early Stage 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

When we create new platform initiatives, our team tries to think about how we can be the most impactful with our portfolio companies. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a new program that we hope will help our portfolio companies with two of these bullets. Pierre Valade, Co-Founder of Sunrise & Mobile Designer at Microsoft.

Operations 176

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 176

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

It’s the antithesis of how founders want to build a business. And they are all very different from the business-to-consumer or business-to-business markets most founders and their investors are familiar with. How do you get your early customers to advocate on your behalf? How do you know you’re in a regulated market?

Washington 271

Washington Government Marketing Silicon Valley 271

Version One Ventures

MAY 3, 2023

But India is such a welcoming country that it only took a few weeks of preparation to fill a weeklong schedule with meetings – from a dinner arranged by Shiva with approximately 15 founders in Delhi to a talk about crypto at Builders Circle in Bangalore. group pic from meet-up w/ Delhi founders

India 87

India LP Silicon Valley Vertical 87

View from Seed

MARCH 11, 2020

When a founder is raising money, he/she should expect that any serious investor will conduct some level of due diligence before getting to yes. Seed stage companies will mostly face questions around the team and market. The types of diligence they should be doing are hopefully relatively costless to the founder.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Seed Stage 279

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

They are disciplined about their time, their strategy, the way they engage with founders, and the way they fight to develop an independent point of view. And early stage investing is about finding outliers, which requires some flexibility to stretch beyond your rules to test your beliefs without going too crazy.

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Florida Deal Flow Venture Capital 120

Austin Startup

MAY 19, 2018

As Bryan stated below, there are no shortage of “How to pitch” or “How to behave” articles by VCs but really very little advice for VCs by founders. Anyone notice there's a ton of VCs giving founder advice, and almost no founder advice for VCs? Lines Not Dots Raising money from a fund is a process, most founders get that.

Founder 75

Founder Early Stage Software Review Deal Flow 75

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

Every potential early-stage Venture Capitalist should take a year and do it before he or she makes partner. Rolodex/deal flow (deal sourcing/ability to make connections for the portfolio). Early-stage Venture Capital firms grow their partnerships in different ways, some hire: partners from other firms. Here’s why.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. I have seen bad behavior from later-stage VCs, believe me. But I have seen equally bad behavior from super early stage investors. As always a balanced perspective is in order.

Technical Review 336

Technical Review Later Stage Early Stage LP 336

Austin Startup

MARCH 8, 2021

Pictured left to right: three Sputnik-backed female founders?—?Jennifer Jennifer McEwen (founder of Datum), April Dominguez and Nikki Dominguez (co-founders of Handsome) As a female-led and majority female-run VC, today and every day we celebrate women. Here’s to the strong, bright women we’ve backed and many more to come!

Early Stage 63

Early Stage Cofounder Washington Startup 63

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders? VI: Revenue-based financing: The next step for private equity and early-stage investment.

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. 3) Raise capital. They read reviews of the products of target investments.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

VC Cafe

APRIL 26, 2023

We know a lot of founders in this space choose to remain in stealth and expect the actual number of Israeli startups working on generative AI to be much larger and grow quickly. At Remagine Ventures we started investing in the generative AI space very early back in 2019. We’ll continue updating the landscape on a regular basis.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT 78

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

But the nature of early startup work does lend itself to enough of the in-person conditions discussed above for me to believe that having meaningful time together *is* a competitive advantage. This does err towards founders in the same city and if not, then founders who have worked together before and know how to manage the distance.

Early Stage 146

Early Stage Seed Stage Startup Software 146

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2013

Every early-stage startup should explore this new funding alternative. New “up-and-comer” VCs focus on early-stage companies. VCs are finding that they don’t need the “large” funds of $100M to $500M to support a portfolio, if they focus on early-stage startups.

Angel Investor 231

Angel Investor Entrepreneur Early Stage Silicon Valley 231

View from Seed

APRIL 2, 2024

At the time, this metaphor really rang true and resonated with both founders and LPs. Similarly, I’d argue that the early-stage venture “product” has elevated across the board. VC’s across the board have generally upped their game and are much more involved in the startup ecosystem and with their portfolios.

Merger 343

Merger Non-Compete Early Stage Venture Capital 343

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. of venture capital deals.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78