Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 2, 2014

When people ask me how they can become a VC, I point them to my partner Seth Levine’s excellent blog posts How to become a venture capitalist and How to get a job in venture capital (revisited). The post My First Experience As A Venture Capitalist appeared first on Feld Thoughts. An accidental one.

San Francisco 159

San Francisco Boston Venture Capital Angel Investor 159

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 27, 2018

If you know of any others, please put links in the comments or send me an email with the info. Accelerators and Crowd-Funding: Complementarity, Competition, or Convergence in the Earliest Stages of Financing New Ventures? Accelerators and the Regional Supply of Venture Capital Investment , Fehder and Hochberg, 9/14.

LP 106

LP Incubator Venture Capital Technical Review 106

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

I received a Silicon Flatirons email from Phil Weiser this morning in his role as Silicon Flatirons Founder and Executive Director. In addition to leading the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic that aids the startup community, Brad co-teaches a venture capital course at Colorado Law, along with Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group.

Community 238

Community Colorado Venture Capital Startup 238

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 4, 2023

Mark Goldstein sent me an email this morning titled your blog, an article i was in last week and yep in response to my post What Just Happened. We were in the middle of it (Softbank Venture Capital/Mobius invested in Bluelight.com and Spinway.) Once in a Lifetime was one of my favorites. Looking back, it was a Gen X anthem.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital America Internet Channel 107

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 20, 2020

The agenda ( full agenda here ) includes the following discussions: DEIS in Corporate Governance & Board DEIS in Human Resources & Talent Acquisition DEIS in Procurement DEIS in Edge Technology Product Development & Corporate Innovation DEIS in Go To Market DEIS in Venture Capital & Investment DEIS in Impact.

Equity 123

Equity Cofounder Venture Capital .Net 123

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2013

Feel free to drop me an email if you want to learn more about joining GAN. Accelerators business david cohen entrepreneur global accelerator network Seed money TechStars United States Venture Capital' Becoming a member in the GAN is not easy, but neither is operating a quality accelerator program.

Global 179

Global Networking United States Seed Money 179

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 8, 2013

” Now – this post isn’t about responding to emails. The first time it happened I was inclined to think it was the investor and that they just couldn’t find the time to send an email response saying, “sorry – no longer interested” Then, it happened again this month.”

Reputation 171

Reputation Venture Capital Matching Email 171

Feld Thoughts

JULY 12, 2014

This morning I ended up on an email thread about this. And, as our email exchange demonstrates, it lingers. Venture Capital actions behavior life startup life VC words' It was a generic rant that resulted from me watching a couple of VCs blow up their reputations with entrepreneurs I know because of how they treated them.

Matching 177

Matching Venture Capital Reputation PR 177

Feld Thoughts

MAY 27, 2014

I’ve known Hunter for a while although our relationship is mostly from a distance – email, blogs, and twitter. Venture Capital homebrew' In this case, the firm (Homebrew) came by, committed a full 24 hours to being in Boulder, and went deep with me and my partners.

Seed Stage 140

Seed Stage Venture Capital Partner Email 140

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 9, 2012

You may recognize Mahendra’s name – he wrote The Business of Venture Capital which I reviewed recently. It can be anonymous or include you name and email if you are willing to be interviewed in more depth. This book is part of my continuous effort to dramatically improve startup company boards.

Startup 121

Startup Venture Capital Naming Email 121

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

Over the years my partner Jason Mendelson and I have heard from numerous people that they’ve been exposed to our Venture Capital Term Sheet Series as reference material in a college course. Tags: Term Sheet Venture Capital. I promise we won’t send Jack Bauer your way.

Term Sheet 102

Term Sheet Venture Capital Programming Partner 102

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 10, 2011

If you are a VC firm and want a refresh on your website, drop the guys at Slice of Lime an email – I’m sure they’d be happy to hear from you. We love their work (they designed our Foundry Group website ) and they’ve done other VC firms sites, including Bridgescale.

San Diego 125

San Diego Cloud Hosting Finance 125

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 10, 2013

I walked home and spent a few hours grinding through email. Entrepreneurship business love culture Venture Capital' It was awesome and one of my favorite days of the month. When we split up around 3pm (we end when we are finished) I had a permagrin on my face. We had an amazing dinner as a group to end the day.

LP 152

LP Venture Capital Conversion Restful 152

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 21, 2014

We were in the middle of fundraising for Softbank Venture Capital (which became Mobius Venture Capital.) No phones, no email. As many of the Cylons from BSG are fond of saying, “All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” ” I remember a moment in time in 1997.

Stock 140

Stock Internet SEC Italy 140

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 2, 2015

After I sold my first company, I started a company called Intensity Ventures to make all my personal investments from. When I started making venture capital investments in 1997, the pace of things, and the amount of work I did, was massive. The name kind of says it all. I never once felt that things were moving slowly.

San Francisco 70

San Francisco Denver Venture Capital Boston 70

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Matt’s part of Pritzker Group Venture Capital which has offices in Chicago and LA as a result of where JB Pritzker and Tony Pritzker call home (Chicago and LA respectively). I came back to an email in my inbox from Troy Henikoff, the Managing Director of Techstars Chicago, which closed the loop on this thought for me.

Chicago 150

Chicago Community Startup Venture Capital 150

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Four day weekends are rare in the United States and even though the retail world is extremely busy on Friday, my Thanksgiving has a very different tempo as the email slows to a crawl, the calendar becomes empty, and Amy and I generally have a lot of hanging out time.

United States 70

United States Venture Capital Partner Email 70

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

I get up at 5am, catch up on email (holy s**t – is it already 6:37?), Fitbit launched two new products yesterday ( Fitbit Zip and Fitbit One ), Return Path launches three today (Email Intelligence!), Foundry Group adds $225M to its venture capital pool. I love this time of year. Or send her flowers. Or chocolate.

Oklahoma City 124

Oklahoma City Detroit San Francisco Vermont 124

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 28, 2016

The second, on why term sheets even exist, came out of our realization that many of the investments we’ve made in the past few years were done with handshakes and email outline of terms, rather than term sheets. We freshened up some of the examples.

Term Sheet 70

Term Sheet Cofounder Venture Capital Equity 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 2, 2012

I woke up to an email this morning from Isaac Squires of Ubooly which said “ Best Analogy Ever: I think it went something like – “VCs are like D&D players – I’m the psi mage, and Jason is the barbarian…” It was part of my rant about VC archetypes.

Venture Capital 140

Venture Capital Programming Finance Web 140

Feld Thoughts

JULY 11, 2010

Now, as someone who gets multiple calls and emails most days to contribute to campaigns as an election approaches, I can assure you that it has never occurred to me to support the campaign of our state treasurer. Tags: Politics first amendment pay to play sec Venture Capital.

SEC 133

SEC Pay to Play Colorado Campaign 133

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 19, 2015

It started ten days ago with an email from Sorusch in response to a tweet I wrote asking for a recommendation of a book on the history of Dubai. “More than 3 years ago, we had this brief email exchange and to this day I’m telling friends and colleagues what a kind and responsive person you are.

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Saudi Arabia Kuwait UAE Iran 70

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 18, 2011

If you are a leader in your entrepreneurial community and have something you want to add , email me 500 – 1000 words. Venture Capital Matters. I’m looking for feedback on this table of contents. The Power of Apprenticeship. Everyone Is A Mentor. Embrace Weirdness. Be Open To Any Idea. How To Get Started.

Community 142

Community Silicon Valley Incubator Colorado 142

Feld Thoughts

JULY 28, 2015

I got the following email recently, titled “Unicorns Without The Magic.” ” “With the rise in venture capitalism it’s hard to say the word “start up” and not be offered an abundance of accelerator programmes, free office space, free apartments & a free bible of connections.

Silicon Valley 70

Silicon Valley Algorithm Venture Capital Partner 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 19, 2017

This was an artifact of the last 30 years of venture capital, where VCs often would use the board meeting as the way to primarily engage with the company. I also like the Q&A that occurs (in email, or in a Google doc around the MD&A) to be driven by the CFO with support from the CEO.

Balance Sheet 70

Balance Sheet Metrics SEC Distribution 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 22, 2010

In between events, Mark gave a talk titled “How Does Venture Capital Work”, Sameer gave a talk titled “Business Plan 101”, and I gave a talk titled “Do You Have The Balls To Start A Company?”. Alex Moore is am working on Baydin with a partner from Dartmouth, making email clients smarter and more useful.

Massachusetts 99

Massachusetts Aggregator Boston Venture Capital 99

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 18, 2012

.” I’ve got a lot more stories like this from Feld Technologies and several other companies I co-founded, including Interliant and Email Publishing, along with long stretches of time at Mobius Venture Capital. All of them share The Struggle and when I reflect on it from my perch at 46.5

Software 167

Software Boston Venture Capital Networking 167

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 16, 2019

I recall a personal low point when a founder/CEO who is a close friend asked to go for a walk and started the conversation with “You could have told me that you were leaving my board in a more graceful way than a one paragraph email.” ” Very true. The lesson once again is things change, communicate clearly, and be proactive.

Cap Table 82

Cap Table Founder Conversion Email 82

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 14, 2017

I’ve met and emailed with many pre-seed and seed GPs in the past year. Over sushi last night with two of them, who are also long-time friends, one of them asked me “Brad, how do you think we are differentiated?” ” This generated a rant from me that went something like this. Maybe there’s a thousand.

Differentiation 147

Differentiation Later Stage Equity Founder 147

Feld Thoughts

MAY 27, 2016

If you have either taught or taken a class using Venture Deals and are willing to talk to our publisher at Wiley about what kind of teaching materials would make the book even more useful, please send me an email. The post Venture Deals 3rd Edition Teaching Materials appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Email 70

Email Venture Capital 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 7, 2018

If you want a referral to anyone, just email me. Facilitator : For stretches of time, especially early on in our working relationships, or during any rough patches, we’ve used an outside facilitator. Close to Home : We try to avoid the offsite becoming a boondoggle. We keep it close to home and relatively modest.

Portfolio 87

Portfolio Denver Colorado Chicago 87

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 23, 2016

As I crawled into bed last night after jamming through my email, I smiled and thought to myself that Seth and I had a good day with a bunch of people talking about the power of entrepreneurship – and how the entrepreneurs are the leaders – while getting to work with a bunch of entrepreneurs.

Minneapolis 70

Minneapolis Entrepreneur Community Partner 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 20, 2011

If we are missing anyone (I’m sure we are), please email me and I’ll add them. We’ll provide a little additional insight, or at least a pithy comment. We’ve also got a full list of known VC bloggers (at least to us) on the sidebar of AsktheVC.

Networking 128

Networking Email Startup Venture Capital 128

Feld Thoughts

JULY 9, 2011

They emailed asking for a reference on someone who indicated they knew me and had invested with me. I didn’t know the person, but knew a few people who did, and quickly sent emails getting addition info for my LP. The interaction was I had with one of my LPs over the last 24 hours.

LP 120

LP Email Conversion Entrepreneur 120

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 30, 2015

Jon Staenberg, a long-time friend from Seattle who did an interview with Harry on episode 034 , dropped me the following email at the end of April: He seems like a good guy, want to be part of his podcast? It was fast, started with an origin story, but quickly moved on to the present and then ended with a set of short questions.

Seattle 70

Seattle Cofounder Partner Email 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 29, 2015

A few days later, I sent out a few emails asking folks I knew at these sites why they hadn’t written anything, since they so quickly write Company X raised Y from A, B, and C. I reminded him that I signed up for TAGFEE when I invested, it was his company, and he could write whatever he wanted. ” I found that fascinating.

Atlanta 70

Atlanta Valuation Term Sheet Finance 70

Feld Thoughts

MAY 8, 2012

Yesterday I sent emails out passing on participating in two seed rounds for companies I really like. They had lots of investors trying to invest and each company was competitive with two other seed stage companies we’ve seen in the past 30 days.

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Seed Stage LP Warrant Syndicate 138