Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion. Here’s my take: 1.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 18, 2012

1) Expect the angel and seed stage market to continue to stay hot. Newly wealthy Facebookers will likely contribute massively to early stage companies, which means building relationships with companies early and actually rolling up sleeves to add value will be a must for investors. If you're just money, you are toast.

IPO 115

IPO Seed Stage Early Stage Green 115

Agile VC

MARCH 8, 2012

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. Tech IPOs Are Back – So Now What? Three of the five “blockbuster” tech IPOs I predicted have happened (LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga) and the biggest of all (Facebook) has filed and will likely go public within the next 90 days. What’s the impact for early-stage startups?

IPO 100

IPO Silicon Valley Revenue Seed Stage 100

Agile VC

MARCH 13, 2012

And at PayPal we were hit with a couple patent disputes while in the midst of our IPO process. With Facebook in the late innings of its IPO process, Yahoo! in court if necessary even if it meant delaying their IPO slightly. So put in the context of Facebook’s IPO process and a new Yahoo! execs involved.

IP 100

IP IPO Social Network Silicon Valley 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

A fund size of $100 million – $200 million is likely to either be an A round investor or “stage agnostic&#. A round investor implies they are the “first institutional money in the deal.&# GRP Partners is stage agnostic. But you can do some focused Internet-based research before approaching the firms.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Early Stage Software Review 269

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2018

It never hurts to start networking personally with all levels of investors early, but sending out teasers and business plans to every name you can find on the Internet is a waste of your time and theirs. Investors call this the seed stage , where money is required to build a market and a real product.

Angel Investor 184

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 184

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. Facebook S-1: The Most Anticipated IPO in a Decade. Here’s my first look at Facebook viewed through the lens of their IPO filing. Plus Facebook has ample cash on hand today and will get a huge slug more from the IPO. How To Think About The Future. February 2, 2012. Read More ».

IPO 100

IPO South Korea Venezuela Revenue 100

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2011

Today, the signs of the new bubble are the Linked-In initial public offering (IPO), Facebook’s stratospheric valuation and the rapid rise of early-stage startup valuation. The Linked-in IPO valued the company at $8.9 It sent a signal that there is an irrational demand for tech IPOs.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley Stealth Valuation Mississippi 327

Mucker Lab

JANUARY 1, 2014

Apple finally decides to spend its cash hoard on buying internet companies instead of just on building cool campuses (RIP Cupertino Village and Fantasia? ). Huge funding gap appears for seed stage companies as seed stage VC firms look for series A traction and accelerators look for seed stage traction.

Seed Stage 84

Seed Stage Early Stage Distribution Bootstrapping 84

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 4, 2014

It never hurts to start networking personally with all levels of investors early, but sending out teasers and business plans to every name you can find on the Internet is a waste of your time and theirs. Investors call this the seed stage , where money is required to build a market and a real product.

Angel Investor 232

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 232

Mucker Lab

JANUARY 1, 2014

VC’s accelerate investments in “internet of things” except sometime in Q4, wake up and realize it’s no different than “consumer electronics” – and that we still need to innovate around the manufacturing infrastructure, distribution economics, and consumer liability of the consumer goods business to really make this a venture fundable category.

Seed Stage 60

Seed Stage Early Stage Distribution Bootstrapping 60

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2016

It never hurts to start networking personally with all levels of investors early, but sending out teasers and business plans to every name you can find on the Internet is a waste of your time and theirs. Investors call this the seed stage , where money is required to build a market and a real product.

Matching 120

Matching Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers 120

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. It also puts another chink in the armor of the meme that monster internet companies can only be built in Silicon Valley (LivingSocial, Kayak, Gilt Groupe, CSN Stores, et al doing damage here too). AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

But what made the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. Out of that total, they funded 967 Internet deals with $6.7 Out of that total, they funded 268 Internet deals with $3.2 To compare the two, in 2011 U.S.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Agile VC

JANUARY 27, 2012

Something has clearly changed within the last 5-6 years in terms of the speed with which monster startups are created in the software and internet space. What if the new paradigm is simply that software and internet startups accelerate much faster than before, but terminal velocity so to speak remains the same? Author howerl.

Hockey Stick 113

Hockey Stick Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 113

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 24, 2014

One of the most recent success story is the IPO of QIWI plc on the NASDAQ in May 2013. Since the date of the IPO, the company has tripled in size. Much of the slack at seed stage funding is taken up by the Russian state. One only has to look at some of the recent successful exits of several Russian VC firms.

Russia 140

Russia Europe Government Vertical 140

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

But what made the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. Out of that total, they funded 967 Internet deals with $6.7 Out of that total, they funded 268 Internet deals with $3.2 To compare the two, in 2011 U.S.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 159

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Increasingly it became difficult to tell any system integration company apart and there was a whole new breed of competitors in the market helping companies build Internet businesses. Andersen had lost its long-time CEO, George Shaheen, was hemorrhaging staff and wasn’t exactly known as being an Internet pioneer.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

We’ll look at the model stage-by-stage. Concept and Seed Stage In the Concept and Seed Stage, founders capture their passion and vision for the new company and turn them into a set of key ideas, which quickly becomes a business plan, sometimes on the back of the proverbial napkin.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

And thanks to the radical transparency enabled by the internet, the quality of these proposals is actually constantly rising, to the point that it’s almost impossible to judge the quality of the final product – because all the proposals look polished and professional, even the terrible ones.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I would point readers to Martin Kleppmann’s useful blog post with graphs illustrating the effects of a valuation cap on entrepreneurs, seed investors and later-round (typically VC) investors. Valuation caps can come into play in settings other than seed-stage convertible note financing rounds.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

Burr, Egan, Deleage [Boston] –> Huge wins in the 1980s and early 90s included Continental Cablevision (sold for $5.3B – now a big chunk of what is Comcast), Qwest Communications, Cephalon (biotech IPO, acq by Teva), and Powersoft (Burr, Egan made 35x when it went public and then was acquired by Sybase). Read More ».

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2012

The Internet sector dominated for the first time in the past decade and saw a large increase of investment, attracting $482 million or 23% of total capital raised by high-tech companies (115 total investments), compared to $222 million or 18% raised in 2010, and $147 million or 13% raised in 2009. Mid and later stage companies attracted $1.48

Technical Review 111

Technical Review IPO Seed Stage 111

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2012

The Internet sector dominated for the first time in the past decade and saw a large increase of investment, attracting $482 million or 23% of total capital raised by high-tech companies (115 total investments), compared to $222 million or 18% raised in 2010, and $147 million or 13% raised in 2009. Mid and later stage companies attracted $1.48

Technical Review 60

Technical Review IPO Seed Stage 60

allthingsd.com

JULY 16, 2012

It’s clear that factors like the greater American economy and the bumpy tech IPO market don’t necessarily have a direct and/or timely correlation with venture capital spending. In the largest sector, Internet, median deal size increased at every stage of funding for the first time ever, CB Insights said. Mike Isaac.

Venture Capital 71

Venture Capital Technical Review RSS Charlotte 71

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

And going even further back there have been a few random ones have been built before like Salesforce.com and e-tailer RedEnvelope (IPO’d in 2003 though now defunct as a company). If my memory serves me, <10% of our pre-IPO employees at PayPal lived in SF and literally 1 of the first 40-50 folks at LinkedIn were city-dwellers.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Startup 185

Mucker Lab

SEPTEMBER 7, 2015

They made sure that high-speed internet was widespread early on and gave tax deductions to citizens wanting to buy computers. Maybe after Everipedia IPO would be the best time to do it…). Are there any cool, Mucker / YC esque accelerators in Sweden? What made you abandon your gaming empire to do Everipedia full-time? Is he weird?

Cofounder 60

Cofounder Iran Sweden Silicon Valley 60

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

During the Internet Bubble there were a number of startups founded by business people who then wentlooking for hackers to create their product for them. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels." the seed stage, investors dont expect you to have an elaboratebusiness plan. This doesnt work well.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

I still think it’s best to take money from Dave when you’re also partnered with a more focused, hands-on seed-stage VC who brings different things to the table – like more ability to write larger checks in a downturn (for one) or solving a deep crisis that involves super hands-on involvement.

Valuation 292

Valuation Deal Flow Lead Investor Cofounder 292

VC Cafe

JANUARY 15, 2013

Groucho Marx could have been talking about the Israeli hi-tech sector when he said “I made a killing on Wall Street a few years ago…I shot my broker”. In 2012, as Israeli exits topped $5.5 billion, [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

Seed Stage 162

Seed Stage IPO Venture Capital 162

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Seed Stage Valuation Guide. Likelihood of Confusion -trademark, copyright and Internet Law. Internet trends. Internet TV. State of the Internet. Useful blogs and links for startups. Best of Y-Combinator Startup Advice. Best of Y- Combinator Startup Advice. Raising Venture Capital. VC Experts. Ipoint-Media.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Meanwhile, the rash of early liquidity and recent IPOs — unsatisfying as they were — gave liquidity to thousands of employees at large companies, and a subset of those made very real money. This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93