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JUNE 27, 2013

Perhaps the biggest piece of new news is that after 17 years of operations we’ve changed our name from GRP Partners to Upfront Ventures. Well, the venture capital industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years … and we have too. But you may ask: “What else have you done other than change your name?

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OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post titled “ Raising Venture Capital &# in which he linked to my blog. It became a huge kerfuffle with many VC partners writing to thank me for the post, which exposed those that gave their industry a bad name. Thus is venture capital. Tempus Fugit.

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OCTOBER 29, 2014

Our product name is P.S. XO and we launched our eCommerce experience through this website as “party in a box” as well as individual sku’s that are super high quality and well executed. And we didn’t want brand confusion so we will harmonize the brands under the well-respected Seedling brand name.

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NOVEMBER 12, 2009

This is part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital. Some examples: A large company has told you that you need to change your brand name or they’ll sue you for trademark infringement (this is a real world, recent example).

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SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued? What Does this Mean for a Venture Capital Firm?

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JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. I told them that True Ventures had stuck to their brand name and submitted a totally clean term sheet. Tags: Startup Advice This Week in Venture Capital. No gotchas.

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FEBRUARY 16, 2017

It was a “disappearing text app” where the founders told me that they named the company because the idea came from how Tiger Woods got caught cheating on his wife because all of his mistresses had evidence that he cheated because they saved text messages from him. I didn’t do that. Any other angle is just sour grapes.

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NOVEMBER 9, 2009

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. Many businesses that pitch to me have White Elephant issues and I’d like to tell you how to deal with these when you’re raising venture capital. One of the people who came to see me was named Nick. I sometimes call these White Elephants.

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APRIL 20, 2011

In the early 80’s he left academia to work on venture capital investing with Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies. The discussion with Howard Morgan starts off by acknowledging Josh Kopelman as a co-founder of First Round Capital. He then went on to teach Computer Science at Cornell, Caltech, and University of Pennsylvania.

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APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. I’m happy to say that in 2006-2008 we has some good exits including BillMeLater, DealerTrack, UGO Networks and PrePay Technologies to name a few. Tags: Pitching VCs Raising Venture Capital VC Industry.

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DECEMBER 6, 2013

He wanted to work in venture capital and I was new to the industry and in no position to hire anybody. In this case somebody named Todd Adamson. Not only two Jewish boys from Philly, but Aaron was born on the exact same day as me (April 30th) in the same town (Philly) exactly 10 years to the day after my birth. And thank you.

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NOVEMBER 19, 2015

The biggest difference I cite is that Venture Capital often feels like an “individual sport” while startups are a “team sport.” The first step we took was to choose a brand name that we felt represented our shared values and that we felt helped force us to live our values. Branding & Shared Values.

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OCTOBER 11, 2009

It’s OK to have the advisor slide where you glance quickly over the names. Tags: Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capital. Just don’t lay it on thick. OK, so I’m sure some of you have wonderful experiences with your advisers. Others must echo my experiences. What do you think?

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JUNE 28, 2021

This is Venture Capital. In the current market it’s not that hard to find executives leaving: Facebook, Google, Airbnb, Netflix, Snap, Salesforce.com, SpaceX … you name it?—?to In our funds we do about 12 deals / year and see several thousand so the funding rate is somewhere between 0.2–0.5% to start their next company.

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OCTOBER 22, 2010

He created his own domain and gave out email address with the name@chamillionaire.com nomenclature. Tags: Startup Advice This Week in Venture Capital. He would do anything he could to capture people’s email addresses because he knew that they served as a valuable tool for future marketing purposes. He was trailblazing. .’

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JUNE 8, 2010

Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA. We learned this weekend that it was named after his East Hampton home. I’m typing this from the lawn of Alan Patricof’s “Greycroft” home in East Hampton – my first time in the Hamptons.

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JANUARY 22, 2014

And so is venture capital. call the companies that are doing well but not yet household names. I’ve seen other VCs who seem to never have time to get their hands dirty. I’ll let you decide which you’d want. Commitment. Startups are hard. Neither class of people should give up easily.

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NOVEMBER 9, 2014

Generally speaking in venture capital financings the legal documents will specify that only “major investors” (a threshold set in the agreement – which can be $500,000 investor or more). Does he blog about venture capital and try to advise entrepreneurs? Has written a book on venture capital.

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Venture Capital is a tricky industry. If you’re funding the same stuff as everybody else and if you started your activities when the clues were obvious you’re much less likely to drive enormous returns. When Fred Wilson funded Twitter I guarantee you it wasn’t obvious that it was a billion dollar idea. Far from it.

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Technical Review America Partner United States 362

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FEBRUARY 14, 2010

So they took 3 reports, read them, put them into their own spreadsheet, made fancier graphs, had professional PowerPoint departments make killer pages and then at the bottom of the graph they typed, “Research Company Data and Consulting Company Analysis&# (fill in brand names) or some derivative. Even more so with journalists.

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Investment Bankers Mobile Software Review Japan 415

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OCTOBER 8, 2014

Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly. billion in venture capital to LA’s technology startups and 2014 will shatter that figure. In the last full year where we have data LA attracted $1.5

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JULY 13, 2013

So then when I wanted to go into venture capital, they said, “You can’t do that, you need to be in EIR.” So when I got into venture capital, I thought, “Well, what can I do that’s different?” You’re two guys in a garage, two guys across campus trying to make a name for yourself.

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DECEMBER 17, 2012

I cringed so much I couldn’t bring myself to publish his name. VENTURE CAPITAL. And finally that brings me to obvious topic of venture capital. The most active person responding negatively said, “so an ENITRE industry is undervaluing their services? Not possible. ” Or there was this one.

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Startup PR Venture Capital Angel Investor 363

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FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Sometimes that’s venture capital generally (like last year’s conversation with Reid Hoffman ) and sometimes it’s in a space where I’ve invested (like mobility and city innovation with Bird’s Travis VanderZanden , one of our portfolio founders.) Between the heavy hitters at the helm, the more than $1.4B

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APRIL 17, 2012

Brad wrote up his answer here – you should read it because it’s very instructive for how I believe communities ought to think about naming conventions. Still, I kind like the name, well, um, … Santa Monica. Think about venture capital. And the name to me speaks of clarity. I hate Silicon Whatever.

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Community Los Angeles Startup Silicon Valley 304

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JANUARY 25, 2014

Tom Perkins is one of the founding members of the venerable venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins. He just had his Mitt Romney moment and his name will forever be etched in the collective consciousness of the tech community for this terribly insensitive and tone deaf letter to the Wall Street Journal. Kleiner Perkins.

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APRIL 27, 2013

Just ask the people of Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Iowa, Princeton, Dallas or countless other cities that don’t have enough venture capital. If you don’t live in a major VC zone, I have some tips for how to make it easier to raise Venture Capital. Ask SuperCell. Or UrbanAirship. Not easily.

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DECEMBER 6, 2017

I titled this post “We Must Have Zero Tolerance in Venture Capital” but of course I could just say “zero tolerance anywhere” because that’s true. Having no names of accusers makes it harder for the rest of us to weigh in; however, I trust the veracity of Emily’s reporting and I therefore BELIEVE the accusers.

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Venture Capital Redemption Naming Austin 254

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JUNE 28, 2018

name your city]? You enter your credit card information and driver’s license once and then it’s $1 to start in and currently 15 cents per minute. I get why it works in Santa Monica, but will it really work in …. Yeah, I know your first thought. That’s what we all thought about Uber, too.

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San Francisco Valuation Technical Review Los Angeles 256

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NOVEMBER 14, 2010

They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. We jockey to make sure the press release has our names on it. For venture capitalists this isn’t troubling. Logic tells me the following: It is hard to make money angel investing.

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Florida Technical Review San Antonio Los Angeles 299

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NOVEMBER 25, 2014

The founders of DropBox, Airbnb, Uber – you name it. So if you’re going to raise venture capital and compete in large, growing, winner-take-most markets you had better be prepared for other people to want to knock you off your stool, steal your limelight, grab your customers and muck you up. Zuckerberg.

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Founder Non-Compete Venture Capital Leadership 394

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NOVEMBER 11, 2013

It’s something you must earn over time by living up to the name you define. If you choose your name well and it represents what your customers value in you then it will be memorable, differentiated and meaningful. We felt nothing embodied these attributes more than the name Upfront Ventures.

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NOVEMBER 16, 2010

I’m less good at names. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice. People are often surprised at the small details I sometimes remember from our initial meetings. Little tidbits, random facts. I’m especially good with numbers – for some reason that’s how my brain is wired. So here’s the thing.

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SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

He reached out to younger founders and offered to help via his network at AT&T, Google, media agencies … you name it. Hamet started his career in Venture Capital working for the first post-apartheid VC fund in South Africa. And he followed through. So he had had a taste of it.

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SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

Fred Wilson wrote a blog post yesterday called “Real Names” in which he talked about a commenter on his blog who preferred not to comment because he didn’t want to use his real name. If you want to have a public debate then at least have the decency to do it using your real name! It’s a powerful concept.

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APRIL 27, 2014

I was having dinner with a friend last night and we were chatting about venture capital and a bit about what I’ve learned. I don’t need to name companies for you to come up with your own examples. I guess if you’re in high-volume, low-differentiation mode perhaps this is efficient for you. I don’t.

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JULY 10, 2010

This episode of This Week in Venture Capital featured Michael Montgomery, president of Montgomery & Co. Shame they didn’t like his suggested name for the company: DreamWorks SKG-MM. Should you use investment banks to raise venture capital? Tags: This Week in Venture Capital. We discussed: 1.

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