Genuine VC

MAY 5, 2015

Today, I’m thrilled to publicly announce NextView’s Talent Exchange, a program helping both top talent and NextView-backed startups connect with each other more easily, beginning with Boston companies (which make up just over half our portfolio). For our startups, we knew we could help them source better and move faster.

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Portfolio Startup Boston Seed Stage 100

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Given communication tools and an array of online services which foster and empower remote working, many startups are successfully building and creating product with teams all around the world. Fairly often I hear entrepreneurs pitch that their startup doesn’t have a headquarters – everyone works remotely and it works.

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Estonia Startup Distribution Chicago 130

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

This post doesn’t going into general tactical approaches of job offer negotiation, but rather focuses on the fact that with startups a significant part of compensation is related to equity or options. So optimizing a startup offer involves not just one key figure – salary – but also the option package. Good luck.?.

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Startup Equity Vesting Salary 121

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Given communication tools and an array of online services which foster and empower remote working, many startups are successfully building and creating product with teams all around the world. Fairly often I hear entrepreneurs pitch that their startup doesn’t have a headquarters – everyone works remotely and it works.

Estonia 100

Estonia Startup Distribution Chicago 100

Genuine VC

JUNE 12, 2012

A few weeks ago, a very good friend who works at a growing startup emailed me with the following question (in which I’ve masked just a few of the identifying details): What does it mean when almost all of a startup’s early employees have left the company? By almost any measure, [our company] is doing phenomenally well.

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Vesting Silicon Valley Startup New York 112

Genuine VC

MARCH 14, 2012

We at NextView have been thinking about and looking for investments in seed-stage startups which leverage the megatrend of transitioning computing away from a standard fixed-web PC world. Anytime a fundamentally new platform is introduced, it creates white-space… especially for startups.

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Search Boston Seed Stage Seattle 211

Genuine VC

OCTOBER 19, 2015

Now Boston’s largest regular tech conference, every few months it draws hundreds of attendees from the entrepreneurial ecosystem – including founders, software engineers, startup executives, and investors.

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Boston Cofounder Seed Capital Software Engineering 100

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Once you’ve figured out whether you want to find a very early stage startup or a late stage one (the topic of my first post in this series ), the real hard work begins. Whether it’s early or late, there are always a certain set of startups within a particular ecosystem that are generating all of the talk in the community.

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Startup Portfolio Later Stage Hiring 148

Genuine VC

MARCH 14, 2012

We at NextView have been thinking about and looking for investments in seed-stage startups which leverage the megatrend of transitioning computing away from a standard fixed-web PC world. Anytime a fundamentally new platform is introduced, it creates white-space… especially for startups.

Search 100

Search Boston Seed Stage Seattle 100

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Chad is the CEO of thoughtbot, a consulting firm that makes web + mobile apps for early-stage startups. When Chad Pytel introduced me to Bryan Helmkamp , CEO/Co-founder of Code Climate , I knew that I had to pay attention.

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Software Review Chad Ruby PHP 191

Genuine VC

JULY 19, 2010

In the sector of internet-enabled services where a majority of the Micro VC investment has transpired, startups can fundamentally do more with less. However, the causes of the Micro VC trend are more substantially attributed to the entrepreneur demand-side of the VC equation. That’s no secret.

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Seed Stage Technical Review Dilution Offshore 175

Genuine VC

JULY 23, 2007

And where there is change there is opportunity; the following seven identified trends are perfect opportunities for startups to leverage: Seven Coming Digital Uber-trends which Are Ripe for Startup Opportunities. To most readers, they likely may seem obvious, but perhaps serve as a reminder what’s likely in store.

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Green Bandwidth Startup Venture Capital 100

Genuine VC

AUGUST 27, 2015

If a startup were obvious, then everybody would be doing it. Tales become legends about founders of exceptionally transformative companies who truly struggled to get any investors’ attention early on. These rejection emails to the founder of Airbnb represent just one of the most recent example of this familiar theme.

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Software Review Portfolio Framework Distribution 100

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 9, 2011

Evaluating a startup as a prospective employee is tough, especially when you compare to VCs. Plus, VCs often will have met the Founder/CEOs of many of a particular startup’s competitors, so they’ll have an even richer understand of the market landscape. On one hand, of course, you’re joining a startup for the upside.

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Startup Burn Rate Technical Review Down Round 146

Genuine VC

MARCH 24, 2014

A couple years ago, my partner Lee penned a blog post about the milestone benchmarks for startups raising a Series A round of financing. There really isn’t a hard and fast prescription for start-ups to follow after they’ve raised their Seed round, so what’s a startup to do? Just plow ahead blindly and hope for the best?

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Seed Capital Metrics Cofounder Revenue 212

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Like a lot of students, I went into business school a decade ago with a set plan to start a company coming straight after graduation in co-founding an internet startup (… again ). MBAs are notorious for sheep-herding towards a particular category of startups (recently, daily deals and online new e-retailing).

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Cofounder Portfolio Venture Capital Reputation 256

Genuine VC

JANUARY 3, 2013

According to all of the blogosphere chatter over the past month, seed-funded internet startups are entering this year gearing up for the now-near-infamous Series A Crunch. Instead, startups are now empowered to create focused services which benefit a small niche audience. Happy New Year and welcome to 2013.

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Seed Stage Venture Capital Audience New York 166

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 12, 2012

Addressing both of those issues can stem from the motivations as to why someone would want to put their hard-earned cash into a risky early-stage startup in the first place. They will have the ability to “see” the opportunity that the startup is going after unlike anyone else, save the entrepreneur because they inherently get the space.

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Angel Investor Syndicate Syndication Early Stage 257

Genuine VC

MAY 29, 2014

Not all startups are the same. Seed stage” startups raising $1M-$2M rounds of pre-Series A capital come in very different flavors. The risk associated with raising a subsequent round of capital are different for different profile startups. Ability” to raise a subsequent Series A is only half the story.

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Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Valuation 166

Genuine VC

JULY 9, 2013

Although these startups are very diverse businesses themselves, they face similar requirements (especially in that they’re currently all in the seed to Series B range of company stage). We would have loved to have it when we were getting started.”

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Early Stage Boston Portfolio Silicon Valley 246

Genuine VC

JUNE 18, 2013

As a startup-tech industry, we’ve been talking about it coming right around the corner for well over a decade. And we’re thematically making new investments in startups which ride this momentous wave, like our two most-recently announced ones in Sunrise and tapCommerce. As it’s a salient one for any and all startups in our space.

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Mobile Web Boston Distribution 131

Genuine VC

JANUARY 23, 2012

And along the way we’ve met with or observed a larger number of seed-stage startups attempting to start them. What are the best practices for going from zero to sixty with a marketplace startup? One way to jump-start a marketplace with sellers is to attract them to a platform with carrots other than buyer demand.

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Engineer Vertical Portfolio Seed Stage 201

Genuine VC

MARCH 25, 2014

In his Boston-based career, he’s also worked for Google and local startup Dailybreak, in addition to co-founding the community group Boston Content which has grown to hundreds of members. My startup is part of the NextView portfolio. I don’t work for a NextView-backed startup. What does this mean for us? Why should I care?

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Boston Early Stage Portfolio Cofounder 123

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

They’re often positioned as simple diligence requests that (actually often genuinely) help an investor get a better sense of the startup and its prospects. These kinds of intros (if they’re actually apropos) can be beneficial to the startups, but they also give an investor the ability to first-hand see how a potential new customer reacts.

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Affiliate Partner Entrepreneur Customer 236

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Given that startups can fundamentally do more with less ( along with many other factors ), Micro VCs, like microbreweries, are currently emerging. Given that startups can fundamentally do more with less (along with many other factors [link] ), Micro VCs, like microbreweries, are currently emerging.

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Seed Stage Belgium Differentiation LP 191

Genuine VC

MARCH 16, 2015

A couple weeks ago my colleague Dimitri Dadiomov published a post on NextView’s “View From Seed” blog which answered the question “Should we take Harvard MBAs Seriously as Startup Founders?” From the group, over 260 founders have launched around 90 startups, raising more than $2.5B in capital.

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Cofounder Stealth Warrant Venture Capital 100

Genuine VC

MARCH 26, 2012

Over the past decade, VCs have been lamenting about the poor state of the IPO markets and that the number of real potential acquirers for consumer internet startups has dwindled down to a handful, if that. Over the past three years, the number of startups which have been acquired by these four companies is trending upwards.

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Acquisition Internet IPO Venture Capital 128

Genuine VC

OCTOBER 18, 2011

Whether a startup’s initial Seed round is comprised of individual angels, seed-focused funds, larger VCs , or some combination of the three, when it’s time for the entrepreneur to raise a true Series A round, of course the goal is run a process to “optimize” it.

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Valuation LP Boston Partner 154

Genuine VC

JUNE 22, 2011

In the past couple years, I’ve written a couple blog posts explaining how startup offices are like faces , which can basically be summed up in an excerpt paragraph – “they [startup offices] communicate what is going on in the inside. Just as all startups are different, their offices should be different as well.

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Seed Stage Boston Incubator Portfolio 123

Genuine VC

JULY 30, 2012

Although some investors will certainly recognize value in a startup which is raising at a modest valuation level, sharing this aspect as a feature to the investment (which I have seen) will likely result in the perception that the company is weak and undeserving of additional capital.

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Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Angel Investor Syndicate 136

Genuine VC

JUNE 28, 2011

But particularly in a startup, where time is of the essence, those reference calls fall to the bottom of the to-do list, and often are never made. All of that being said, it surprises me how infrequently startups, and especially startup founders, make diligence calls to pressure-test their decisions. 80/20 is key.

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Due Diligence Green Conversion Founder 159

Genuine VC

MARCH 26, 2012

Over the past decade, VCs have been lamenting about the poor state of the IPO markets and that the number of real potential acquirers for consumer internet startups has dwindled down to a handful, if that. Over the past three years, the number of startups which have been acquired by these four companies is trending upwards.

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Acquisition Internet IPO Venture Capital 100

Genuine VC

JULY 17, 2012

For the job seeker, instead of saying “I’m looking for new job opportunities,” rather communicate “I am looking for a VP Product role at a consumer-mobile startup.”

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Networking Seed Stage Early Stage Mobile 136

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 12, 2012

Addressing both of those issues can stem from the motivations as to why someone would want to put their hard-earned cash into a risky early-stage startup in the first place. They will have the ability to “see” the opportunity that the startup is going after unlike anyone else, save the entrepreneur because they inherently get the space.

Angel Investor 128

Angel Investor Syndicate Syndication Early Stage 128

Genuine VC

APRIL 12, 2012

For founders who have more working experience in large companies or at startups, those who resonate with authenticity are most often those who are addressing problems/opportunities which they have observed first-hand. From that observation, they are creating a real solution, not just a business for the sake of financial gain.

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Vertical Portfolio Search Internet 144

Genuine VC

OCTOBER 23, 2012

A few days ago, a friend who works at a growing startup emailed me with the following question (in which I’ve masked just a few of the identifying details): I caught up with a friend of mine from high school that has started a new company where my skills are very pertinent.

Equity 116

Equity Cofounder Early Stage Framework 116

Genuine VC

JANUARY 22, 2014

Active contributor to the Boston entrepreneurial community with extensive network across technology startups. Possessing hands-on proficiency with many online tools for managing social media interactions, event production, and project management. Self-motivated with dedicated work ethic and entrepreneurial attitude.

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Community Boston Seed Stage Venture Capital 113