I met with a group of very experienced and sophisticated investors yesterday who make up the investment committee of a large charitable foundation that is an investor in USV.   Then I took questions. This group doesn't spend a ton of time on AVC, Techmeme, Hacker News, or the tech industry in general. I've got scars from this one. MORE >>

The days when you locked and loaded your career in school, and then blasted away down that same narrow path the rest of your life, are gone, never to return. Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn, helped me crystallize these similarities with his new bestseller “ The Start-up of You.” Finished” ought to be an F-word for all of us. Marty Zwilling. MORE >>

Back in October, Techcrunch announced that Dropbox had raised $250mm at a seemingly absurd valuation. Many firms, including my firm Benchmark Capital, participated. When this happened, many people asked us why this was a special company that would cause us to break our standard investment paradigm. MORE >>

(Powered by LaunchBit ). Raising money is a dirty job, but someone has to do it right? Very true, but it’ll go a lot easier if everything behind the scenes is clean, well-organized and ready to go. If you get to the point where you’re about to marry a VC and take their money, there will be a due diligence process. Accounting. Technology. MORE >>

The single biggest mistake web analysts make is working without purpose. We work very hard. We torture SiteCatalyst. We send out a lot of data. Then we resend it again and again. And yet our work results in very little impact on the business in terms of action taken by company leaders. Why this sad state? We never ask questions. No questions. Ready? MORE >>