Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2017

We also know many of the entrepreneurs in their portfolio. From those founders, we are aware that FC takes their mission “to be the most aligned fund to founders at the seed stage” very seriously. If you look at the Founder Collective portfolio , you’ll see many well-recognized companies that they invested in at the very first round.

Founder 75

Founder LP Technical Review Seed Stage 75

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

Investment theses are just hypotheses; the portfolio shows how accurate the hypothesis was. Revenue-Based Finance and Flexible VC investors invest using “alternative VC” structures, as opposed to conventional preferred equity and convertible notes. VC theses are often so vague that they’re meaningless. 5) Structure-defined funds.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

VI: Revenue-based financing: The next step for private equity and early-stage investment. This is a summary of: Revenue-Based financing: State of the Industry 2020. Of Indie.VC’s portfolio, 60% of investments are not in NY, CA, or MA. The INTRO tool is available to non-portfolio companies as well. Details here.

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

And while it can often be the case that “lemons ripen early” (meaning that the unsuccessful companies fail early in a fund’s lifecycle), the harvest cycle for the winners in the portfolio can take what sometimes feels like an eternity. Your new book, Secrets of Sandhill Road , is literally subtitled Venture Capital and How to Get It ?

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. VCs crave the ability to help portfolio companies. I would say the norm for many early-stage companies is somewhere between 6-10 in-person meetings per year.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

When many venture investors are seeing their personal public portfolios tank it creeps into their business lives and creates an emotion that is less risk tolerant whether they’re aware of it or not. At least later stage investors. This could have an impact on later-stage valuations. So, too, investments.

Stock 150

Stock Finance Marketing Valuation 150

VC Adventure

MARCH 17, 2022

With the markets down significantly, financings (at least at the later stages) slowing down, and inflation and interest rates on the rise, perhaps now is a good time to talk about your burn rate. Hopefully, you took advantage of the robust financing markets of the past few years to put some money on your balance sheet.

Balance Sheet 121

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Valuation Metrics 121

VC Adventure

AUGUST 15, 2018

These reports are generally quite lengthy and not always particularly comprehensible to non-finance professionals. I thought it would be worth taking a look at the data across the Foundry portfolio. Similarly I assumed that later stage companies would also show a smaller gap. So what should this discount be? I was wrong.

Valuation 48

Valuation Common Stock Cap Table Software Review 48

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 10, 2014

So – I’ll start with that – this is not a prediction, rather it’s a hypothesis, which is as long as there isn’t a cataclysmic macro event, Q115 financing activity is going to be insane. The number of large, “later stage” financings are remarkable – both in size and velocity.

Later Stage 142

Later Stage Syndicate Syndication Portfolio 142

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

And seed VCs, especially as new firms were being established, were eager to encourage their portfolio startups to plant that flag in the ground publicly. It seemed like every other TechCrunch post was announcing a startups’s new seed financing round. Seed stage companies just aren’t announcing their rounds anymore.

Seed Stage 201

Seed Stage Stealth Seed Capital Later Stage 201

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

We both agree that the later-stage valuations are being driven up to a point that feels irrationally priced [he uses b-round SaaS valuations as an example and I am willing to be even more broad based]. He said that a16z prefers to invest earlier stage in these types of businesses. And we ended.

Valuation 309

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Later Stage Non-Compete 309

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Like many established finance & media companies, GLG knows that the tech startup sector is a growing part of the economy. For example, if you’re an early stage company dealing with complex regulation (think Uber in transportation, Oscar in healthcare, LendingClub in finance), we have people who can help.

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 29, 2020

Much of the growth in funding is attributed to later stage rounds (Next Insurance $250M, Snyk $200M, Gong.io $200, Redis Labs $100M, etc etc). Anecdotally, we see a lot of activity in seed and pre-seed financing at Remagine Ventures, with sizeable deals closing very quickly. billion) which was a record year.

Venture Capital 148

Venture Capital Angel Investor Later Stage 148

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The second wave of technology investors were Chinese banks, who provided the majority of the later stage investments in the Torch Program. By 1991, 70% of the Torch funded startups were getting bank financing for expansion and later stages of the new ventures, with local governments acting as guarantors.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 271

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

At Flybridge, we are wading into this uncharted territory as a result of one of our portfolio companies, Enigma , staging an ICO in the coming weeks. In short, token sales allow early stage companies to skip the series B round and beyond. Shift of value from equity holders to token holders. Fuzzy Governance. Seeking Liquidity.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

At Flybridge, we are wading into this uncharted territory as a result of one of our portfolio companies, Enigma , staging an ICO in the coming weeks. In short, token sales allow early stage companies to skip the series B round and beyond. Shift of value from equity holders to token holders. Fuzzy Governance. Seeking Liquidity.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Recently, I’ve been working with a few of our portfolio companies to help them think about how to recruit and interview their first analytics hire. Analytics vs. Finance?—?what’s In reality, these two domains require quite different skill sets (more on this later). what’s the difference (and what do you need)?

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

Genuine VC

MAY 20, 2013

Compared to most other areas of finance, venture capital is practiced as more of an art, as opposed to a science. To make money, VCs should aim to have meaningful target ownership in their portfolio investments, but 20% is by no means some kind of magic number. And it manifests itself in pernicious ways. number of investments).

Venture Capital 244

Venture Capital Cap Table Portfolio Early Stage 244

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2016

I was speaking recently to the team at NuOrder , an LA-based company we’re an investor in about “realism in startups” — an impromptu talk I have given to any of our portfolio companies who ask. During the Q&A I was asked about how I make investment decisions in early-stage businesses. Early stage.

Early Stage 254

Early Stage Non-Compete LP Later Stage 254

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 9, 2022

I’ve been asked by portfolio companies and plenty of others about how they should be changing their strategy given the stock market pullback and what they’ve been hearing on “VC twitter”. It was super hard to get any kind of financing before, and it will remain so. IT was still pretty hard, even though it didn’t seem like that.

Stock 97

Stock Marketing Valuation Later Stage 97

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

.” There are a lot of data points that one can observer to get a sense of the venture capital markets – both LP fundings into venture and VC financings of startups. They point to some widely known facts: financings & valuations are up massively over the past 7 years and non-VC money has entered the system.

LP 150

LP Valuation Burn Rate Pre-Money Valuation 150

VC Adventure

MAY 5, 2022

BUT (and you knew there was a but here given the post title…) it’s a poor way to compare the relative performance of funds early, and even into the mid/later, stages of a fund’s life. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping funds or LPs from touting IRR as the gold standard for evaluating relative fund performance.

IRR 116

IRR Metrics Valuation LP 116

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The second wave of technology investors were Chinese banks, who provided the majority of the later stage investments in the Torch Program. By 1991, 70% of the Torch funded startups were getting bank financing for expansion and later stages of the new ventures, with local governments acting as guarantors.

Venture Capital 163

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 163

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

VC Financings: 1. Other players such as Obopay have set out to focus on mobile person-to-person cash transfers, mFoundry (a GRP portfolio company) has focused on mobile banking and a mobile wallet and one of my favorite companies m-via is focusing on mobile remittances (right now between the US and Mexico). 4mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

Most are sitting on large portfolios of private companies that are raising money now or will need to do so in the future and they know that they’re up against some headwinds. So the multiples paid by publics matter and when they drop, the late-stage markets drop, too. Why Financing in Falling Markets is So Damn Difficult.

Valuation 150

Valuation Down Round Startup Later Stage 150

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

trillion, it is by far the largest of its sort in the world and financed projects that in other settings may not have passed investment criteria screens. [3]. CALPERs, for example, has devoted over $4b of portfolio to infrastructure related projects. [4]. Some attribute the lag to the uniqueness of the U.S. municipal bond market.

Private Equity 129

Private Equity New York City Chicago Investment Bankers 129

Hunter Walker

JUNE 21, 2014

One question entrepreneurs sometimes don’t ask when raising seed financing is “will this investor be able to follow on in future rounds.” ” That is, assuming they have pro rata rights, will they look to maintain their ownership stake in the A Round, B Round, etc.

Institutional Investors 91

Institutional Investors Dilution Later Stage Portfolio 91

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

There’s been a lot of talk recently about what will happen to startup financing in 2016, including here on this blog. The consensus is definitely negative, but one thing that has buoyed my optimism about the prospects for our portfolio is the number of new funds raised in London recently.

Marketing 60

Marketing Institutional Investors Venture Capital Later Stage 60

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

For later-stage, it’s a high-priced financing round, tipping scales on widespread adoption, rapid hiring, or credible information on successive revenue-growth quarters. Look back at all of the companies which have announced financings (in your geography and target stage) with new outside investors in the past quarter.

Startup 148

Startup Portfolio Later Stage Hiring 148

David Teten

JANUARY 13, 2015

I also was fortunate to gain a lot of insight on this topic from Don Charlton, Founder/CEO, TheResumator *, a ffVC portfolio company. For early-stage founders, I suggest AngelList and Crunchbase. For later-stage companies, I suggest the Association for Corporate Growth online community, Axial , and Preqin.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Advisory Board Greece Cofounder 60

Version One Ventures

MAY 22, 2018

Some of the best later-stage investors walk founders through an institutionalized “reverse” pitch. What are the experiences of other founders in the investor’s portfolio? Lastly, dig down into how an investor behaved during new financing rounds or during exits.

Cap Table 60

Cap Table Cofounder Syndicate Syndication 60

View from Seed

JUNE 16, 2015

And third, that it’s already starting to happen (or happening to a higher, more scalable degree, for later stages). How will my company be compared against others in your portfolio when your partners are making follow-on financing decisions with limited fund reserves? Second, that you’re the team to do it.

Boston 120

Boston Syndicate Syndication eCommerce 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

When he entered the industry he caught the tail end of the dot com bubble and then was immediately thrust into a 3-year period of “triage&# where VC’s had to deal with problems in portfolio companies. He says they are just as selective on seed investments as they are in later stage deals.

San Francisco 230

San Francisco Los Angeles Cofounder SMS 230

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

Why the Unicorn Financing Market Just Became Dangerous…For All Involved. By the first quarter of 2016, the late-stage financing market had changed materially. Investors were becoming nervous and were no longer willing to underwrite new Unicorn-level financings at the drop of a hat. This is uncharted territory.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

Rob Go

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

In addition to reporting on the progress of our funds and the exciting stuff happening with the portfolio, we shared some thoughts on the broader market environment for VC’s and venture backed technology companies. But, looking further downstream, the later stage funding landscape has been incredibly robust.

Later Stage 28

Later Stage Marketing Early Stage Ratchet 28

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

Other signs of engagement are: they ask you to meet with portfolio companies (they want feedback on your product and you), they ask you to meet a colleague, they set up a call to go through a product demo / financial walk-through, they ask to speak with customers, etc. Sometimes engagement at the later stages seems to go dry.

Term Sheet 332

Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

Professor VC

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Often times those involve trading within a venture capital portfolio or between two venture firms portfolios. I originally got to thinking about this when I received a 485 page information statement on a previously announced merger between Clean Power Finance and Kilowatt Financial. Hope that changes in 2016.

Merger 28

Merger LP IPO Redemption 28