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SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

One of the least understood parts of the venture capital industry and venture capital firms is how investment decisions actually get made. The beauty of venture capital is that on any given deal I can only lose one times my money. I need to bet on things that could help create an industry.”

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Venture Capital Detroit Early Stage Partner 150

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FEBRUARY 6, 2019

I’ve heard a lot of people question whether there is too much money in venture capital chasing too few great deals. Others believe that new business models are emerging that could replace venture capital all together. We’re in a new tech bubble!” some have pronounced. Follow the money.

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APRIL 28, 2010

Tags: This Week in Venture Capital.

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Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

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MARCH 12, 2017

Recently Upfront Ventures published its outlook for the technology startup world and venture capital overall titled it “ WTF Happened to Winter ?” We are now publishing some of the VC survey data the report used and the results are clear — it’s a great time to be a startup raising venture capital.

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Venture Capital Artificial Inteligence LP Valuation 277

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

On the phone … Me: So, you raised venture capital? We raised a seed round. About $1 million. Me: At what price? Him: It wasn’t priced. We raised a convertible note. Me: With a cap? Him: Yes, $8 million. So you did raise with a price. It’s just a maximum price.

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Venture Capital Liquidation Preference Valuation Term Sheet 417

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JUNE 29, 2014

It’s not hard to find people willing to write the narrative that “venture capital is not an asset class” or “venture capital has performed terribly.” Having worked through the data with Glenn I am even more optimistic about venture capital than I was even a year ago.

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Venture Capital IPO LP Jordan 362

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FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Over the past month a colleague ( Chang Xu ) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

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FEBRUARY 6, 2017

It was only a year ago that many in the Venture Capital industry were predicting that “winter was coming” and to be fair the author of this post was chief amongst them. While this it total FDI as opposed to just venture, it should give you an indication of the international trend. Baidu alone raised $3.2

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Venture Capital Saudi Arabia Burn Rate Singapore 150

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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. She sent me this very powerful article that talks about how men have viewed the #MeToo movement and I found this instructional. Men must speak up, too.

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Venture Capital Redemption Naming Austin 254

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JUNE 5, 2016

The other major trend of 2012–2015 was the entrance of “non VCs” into late-stages of venture capital , which mostly consisted of hedge funds, mutual funds, corporate investors, sovereign wealth funds and even LPs doing direct deals. This works in a booming market or in a company that never hits any headwinds. Non VC Growth Rounds.

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley Burn Rate LP 150

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JULY 26, 2016

And if you do happen to be lucky and find the right mountain to climb, if you find that you’ve started ascending the peak before others have found the right trail — then venture capital is for you. But you need to understand venture economics. And if you want more daily startup advice follow me on Snapchat (msuster).

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Venture Capital San Francisco Startup Limited Partner 150

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JUNE 28, 2011

In this three-part series I will explore the ways that the Venture Capital industry has changed over the past 5 years that I would argue are a direct result of changes in the software industry, not the other way around. So it’s unsurprising that typical “A rounds&# of venture capital were $5-10 million.

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OCTOBER 20, 2011

Early today I gave a keynote at the VCJ Venture Alpha conference here in San Francisco. I was asked to speak about the topic of “what is going on in the venture capital world and what is the next big thing after social networking?”. Future of VC Internet – Tough topic, but what the heck?

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JUNE 29, 2011

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of the series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. In either case, venture capital will remain an attractive option for teams who want to pursue their business ideas and scale.

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Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

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OCTOBER 26, 2020

Venture capital is about backing the leaders of tomorrow who imagine the world as it should be and aren’t constrained by what it is today. As an industry we’re not always as good as we could be about our own “creative destruction” to create the tomorrow of venture capital.

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Partner Management Cofounder San Francisco 361

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DECEMBER 16, 2014

We’ve been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped by the always-in-the-know Dan Primack a few weeks ago. Why do they invest in venture capital? We raised $280 million.

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JULY 23, 2014

There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). The overall trends in our industry have breathed a new life into the venture capital industry. The iPhone was released.

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Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 398

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FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Others may not have the experience you want and they fill up a seat that makes retaining founder control more difficult if you ultimately raise large rounds of venture capital in the future. What happens at the A-round of venture capital? With that said, no venture capital firm really wants to replace a CEO.

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Venture Capital Startup Angel Investor Silicon Valley 236

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SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

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! It’s ok to raise venture capital and try to build a monster business.

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

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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. The Original Post (after the jump): Venture Capital, By Mark Suster (December 2nd, 2006). I don’t plan to write the authoritative venture capital blog, just some anecdotes.

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Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

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APRIL 13, 2011

Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. Brad’s start in Venture Capital. Venture Capital in Boulder and other smaller communities. “So National Venture Capital Group endorsed it. was starting.

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Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like.

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Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

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APRIL 8, 2010

I was on This Week in Venture Capital today with Jason Calacanis talking about the big VC deals at the moment and talking about the VC industry. It’s about a 30 minute video (or about as long as it normally takes to read my rambling posts!

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Venture Capital IPO Valuation Deal Flow 232

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APRIL 14, 2010

If you want to raise venture capital more easily the advice could be quite practical and counter-intuitive. Many companies that are raising B or C venture capital rounds right now raised their initial money in 2005-2008. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Raising Venture Capital Start-up Advice Startup Advice.

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Venture Capital Liquidation Preference Common Stock Pre-Money Valuation 289

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NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. I’m not even talking about your 12-page Powerpoint presentation that you need to raise venture capital or to talk with potential biz dev partners.

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Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened?

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Valuation San Francisco Ratchet Liquidation Preference 466

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DECEMBER 14, 2016

Today is amongst the proudest days I’ve had at Upfront Ventures — getting the chance to announce that Kevin Zhang has been promoted to Partner. years at Upfront has been both a pleasure and also has taught me a lot about venture capital. I mentioned at the start that Kevin has taught me something about Venture Capital.

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Partner South Korea Venture Capital Europe 150

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MARCH 24, 2014

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.

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Los Angeles Intellectual Property Venture Capital LP 387

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JULY 17, 2018

Strong relationships & trust based on transparency helps a great deal  —  @msuster 11/ Venture debt has its places (timing of AP vs. AR, inventory purchases, etc) but should be used very sparingly as a replacement for venture capital except at later stages of your business.

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Founder Dilution Software Review Later Stage 242

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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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Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

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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. What’s up with that? Our portfolio companies value us as sparring partners.

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Los Angeles Las Vegas San Francisco Baltimore 343

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JULY 26, 2022

In short, In Venture Capital, Size Matters Size matters for a few reasons. As a starting point we believe it is easier to consistently return multiples of capital when you aren’t deploying billions of dollars in a single fund as Fred Wilson has articulated consistently in his posts on “ small ball ” and small partnerships.

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San Francisco Early Stage Venture Capital Los Angeles 408

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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. Tags: Startup Advice This Week in Venture Capital. It was accept the terms or go into bankruptcy so we took the money. Heck, maybe we’ll even invite a lawyer on to do it with us!

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Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

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FEBRUARY 25, 2010

It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. It isn’t even a story about raising venture capital or M&A. Don’t over shop – If the deal you’re involved with involves raising venture capital or selling your company you naturally want some competition. Anybody who didn’t close was dead.

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Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Due Diligence 301

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APRIL 21, 2010

Tags: This Week in Venture Capital VC Industry.

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Venture Capital Social Network Angel Investor Chad 265

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MARCH 6, 2017

It’s hard to remember that in 2012 it was still hard for LA VCs to persuade investors into funds that LA was a viable market for great venture capital funds or convince many VCs that LA was a market worth investing dollars into startups.

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OCTOBER 15, 2009

This is a story of one of the risks of venture capital. But some companies have entrepreneurs that seem talented on paper, are in a space that seems interesting to investors and are able to raise venture capital early in the company’s existence. True story.)

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Founder Technical Review Startup Venture Capital 299