Both Sides of the Table

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Venture Capital is About Human Capital

Both Sides of the Table

Fundamentally venture capital is about human capital. The explosion of mobile phones has led to a boom in inbound click-to-call traffic that has proven to convert at a higher close rate and increase average-order-value over web-only sales & marketing. Venture Capital is a people business.

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This Week in Venture Capital – Episode 4

Both Sides of the Table

ShoeDazzle was already profitable and growing and had already taken capital from Polaris Ventures and Crosscut Ventures. Jeremy Liew, a respected VC from LightSpeed, obviously saw the change to ramp up sales. Investors: Mayfield Fund (lead), with existing investors: InterWest Partners, Storm Ventures.

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Is Going for Rapid Growth Always Good? Aren’t Startups So Much More?

Both Sides of the Table

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. After all, growth equals high valuations and loads of venture capital! In revenue terms our first two years of sales were $2.1 And headlines.

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It’s Morning in Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. Looking ahead at the next decade I am excited by what I believe will be viewed as one of the best and most rational investment periods for venture capital due to seven discrete factors: 1. Bottom of the sales funnel.

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Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC

Both Sides of the Table

After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post titled “ Raising Venture Capital &# in which he linked to my blog. Thus is venture capital. Tempus Fugit.

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If You Don’t Respect Your Customers You Won’t Be Successful

Both Sides of the Table

I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. Given customers & sales are the lifeblood of any organization you’d imagine everybody would respect their customers. Contrast that with a VC conversation I had. Startup Lessons'

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How I Got the Monkey Off My Back – Today Was a Good Day

Both Sides of the Table

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. In 2010 somebody posed the question on Quora, “Is Mark Suster a Successful Venture Capitalist?” That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. 5 years ago.