Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

If you haven’t yet heard about Female Founder Office Hours it is an initiative you should be aware of whether you’re male, female or any other gender identify. Female Founder Office Hours gives founders the mentorship and the role models to see that it is in not only possible but also to have a plan to make it a reality.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

In our industry we always talk about funding big ideas or funding things with more meaning. It’s something Yves Sisteron & I have been talking about for years at Upfront Ventures.

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Technical Review Software Review Founder Boston 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

This blog started from a series of conversations I found myself having over and over again with founders and eventually decided I should just start writing them.It I see founders who think they can be at every conference, advise multiple companies, do side investments in angel deals, leave the office at 6pm and have a balance life.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2011

I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# Either you’re not technical and you think you need a technical co-founder or vice-versa. It is increasingly popular to have “founder dating&# or “startup weekend hackathons&# of some variety or the other. Hire your co-founder. Vested over 4 years.

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Cofounder Founder Vesting Founder Vesting 393

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

This week I wrote about obsessive and competitive founders and how this forms the basis of what I look for when I invest. And that’s what differentiates founders and early employees. So even after raising a $16 million A-round I still paid myself a paltry salary. So I did, in fact, invest in myself. They choose a different path.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

and of course a relentless pursuit of helping founders succeed. So mostly we just had to listen to customer feedback from founders, VCs and LPs. She made the right decisions not joining back then because that founder empathy is the “++” that makes a difference in this business. So why now?

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Partner Management Cofounder San Francisco 361

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

One of the things that founders have the most angst about is whom they should have on their board and at what stage of the business. Why you should set up a board at the seed round of funding I know these days with SAFE documents and rolling convertible notes many founders prefer not to set up a board early on.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

I left the meeting and had to attend a 3-hour board meeting where two founders have been fighting and each want the other one fired. But your co-founder had been senior at one of the big enterprise software companies and if I remember correctly American Express had run a big pilot with you. Some were interesting, some weren’t.

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Software Review Churn Rate Due Diligence New York 381

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2017

I read commentary or Twitter or blogs and realize that there are also strongly held convictions that there are these evil VCs who do terrible things to mostly altruistic founders. But unlike the popular press reporting of this conflict — 80% of the time it is founder-to-founder conflict and not investor-to-founder conflict.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 18, 2009

Yesterday I wrote a blog post ( here ) in which I urged people to not have too many founders. These situations are only compounded if you have 3 or more founders. I know that many people reading this will be in companies with 3+ founders and aren’t having any friction. They agreed to all be co-founders.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 18, 2009

Yesterday I wrote a blog post (here) in which I urged people to not have too many founders. This is part of my ongoing series, “Startup Lessons.&#. Best case scenario in my mind is just 1, but at most I recommend 2. I knew this topic would be controversial because when I tell people this [.].

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2014

In the most recent episode, I interviewed Joe Perez , Founder of Tastemade. I also added a little Soundcloud widget on the sidebar (if you’re viewing on web – not on mobile or RSS reader) that you can listen to each episode with. If you don’t know Joe, you should.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As the idea went from innovating on software & systems to launching a company to rolling it out in the field brought on Rahul Gandhi as his co-founder to physically launch the company. Sam & Rahul have worked closely together on “innovate & operate” since the earliest days of MakeSpace. Seriously, this happens.

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Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2017

One of the most exciting thinkers at Summit was Rebecca Kantar, the founder of Imbellus. How This Founder Wants to Apply Her Technology to Help Save the Planet’s Resources was originally published in Both Sides of the Table on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. Very few founder CEOs go into the job ever expecting to give up their seat. We set out to find Jonathan’s “co-founder.”

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Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2016

Amongst the most often asked questions I get from founders is, “How much money should I raise?” Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job of asking, yet again, for money.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 28, 2018

There’s a quick litmus-test conversation any early-stage VC will have with the founder and it’s one that you should be as prepared for as your elevator pitch. Founder: “$8–10 million” VC: “What’s your current burn rate?” Founder: “$250k / month.” Founder: “Um. Why are you raising so much?” Let me check my plan.”

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

The founders had been responsible for gaining staggering scale in the past 3 years, having been trail-blazers in building a network of talent and an unrivaled understanding of the YouTube ecosystem. ” Dana & I took a chance on the founders early on. Mr. T (DeStorm) vs. Mr. Rogers. Babe Ruth vs. Lance Armstrong.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

The meme was kicked off by Chris Dixon with this post saying that term sheets need to be simplified and align investor / founder interests. This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC“ There’s a great meme developing this morning on the need to simplify funding terms and documents.

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Founder Vesting Vesting Founder Term Sheet 252

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. I don’t think VCs care as much about co-founders & economics as people think. Can always appoint other startup CEOs to the board to take founder seats (which you control) and/or bring in industry experts as independents. For the wrong reasons.

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Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 17, 2018

You get to have interesting conversations with founders and review business plans and then see how these businesses evolve over the years. 1/ From vantage point of being able to see hundreds of companies, good & bad I have some advice for founders - Get to know and love "gross margin."

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Founder Dilution Software Review Later Stage 242

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

We had Farb Nivi , who is the founder & CEO of Grockit , a website that enables online group learning. Farb is the founder & CEO of Grockit.com. Current round: $3.35mm in Series A by TomorrowVentures (Eric Schmidt’s personal investment vehicle), Saban Ventures, Founder Collective, SK Telecom Ventures. LibreDigital.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

I first met Andrew Stalbow , the founder & CEO of Seriously in August of 2013. and Petri was co-founder and head of creative at Remedy Entertainment that launched the hit PC games Max Payne and Alan Wake. I think this is a Seriously great example of how this process works for at least one VC – Upfront Ventures.

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Technical Review North America Los Angeles Cofounder 373

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

What is a founder to do? I’m pretty sure I’m right based on my own experiences as a startup founder for reasons A, B, C. That’s why you’re a founder. Many startups now go through accelerators and have mentors passing through each day with advice – usually it’s conflicting. Triangulate.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Our founder, Yves Sisteron, was my mentor and board member at my first startup. Stuart was a co-founder at my first startup company and ended up running global operations. We already had a genius tech founder in Nick Halstead. Tim Barker worked with me at my first startup and left with me to be co-founder of the second.

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CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

When I hear the realism that comes from founders with setback it elicits an understanding of what it takes to be successful at a startup that frankly can’t exist unless you’ve walked in those shoes before. In London when founders failed they were ostracized in the press and culturally I believe it became harder to raise capital.

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South Korea Silicon Valley Los Angeles Japan 261

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

We then help surround founders with other talent who want to join important causes but don’t have the startup idea themselves. It’s the founders who are willing to let you join their boards. I can try to be as smart as possible on market trends, industry dynamics and so forth. It’s the people who want to work with you.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. Founder’s perspective. You’ll get empathy. Experience. Relationships.

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Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

I often worry about founders who have a deep-seated need to be loved because it can lead to bad decisions. In some senses it can be worse because the financial & career stakes for success or failure are much greater. Your most talented developer quits because he thinks his boss is a fuckwit and he can’t work with her any more.

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CTO Hire Entrepreneur Technical Review Leadership 385

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2018

Investors are human, after all Come up with a valid reason because they know in communicating with founders if there’s no reason to say “no” you can generate bad will Risk missing out on an inflection point: Investors of course are also concerned about saying “no” too early in the process when they can “hang around the rim” and see what happens?

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LP Software Review Europe Founder 189

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

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Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

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San Francisco Valuation Technical Review Los Angeles 256

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 27, 2012

By now you probably know that David Sacks , co-founder of PayPal and founder of both Geni & Yammer made some observations on Facebook that Silicon Valley “as we know it” was coming to an end. “In order to create a successful new company, you have to find an idea that. (1) I described that here in this post.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder 299

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

Another founder … “When I pitched the idea to Adam, he was super on board,” Mr. Sloyan said. If anything it felt like a public service to founders to me. Founder fighting, IP lawsuits, high-profile resignations, trouble fund raising, bad product release, 409a complications, community is rebelling against the CEO: You.

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Cap Table Cofounder Silicon Valley Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2011

He was the founder, after all. I sure wish the founders of Yahoo! When that happens it is no longer acceptable to be the founder on the board trying to reinvent yourself. He realized he needed to leave. He told me his motto, which is one that I’ve always lived by. I was no longer leading, so I became the problem.”

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2016

We also look for a cultural fit with Upfront, which includes the gravitas to deal with executives and founders at the startups we back as well as the other board members. Yves Sisteron, our founder and still a full-time and very active member of our partnership, has the opposite style.

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Partner South Korea Venture Capital Europe 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

This week I sat down with Chris Dixon, co-founder / CEO of Hunch and Partner at Founder Collective in the most recent installment of This Week in Venture Capital. 2. Chris then discussed his time as founder and CEO of SiteAdvisor, his first venture-backed startup.

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