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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. NOTE: In the video I talked about how VC’s and entrepreneurs decide the total number of shares at the first major funding round and why it’s often a high number.

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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 LP Venture Capital 387

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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! Burstly ( Led by … me! - IPO market is back. We discussed some of the recent IPOs.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2011

I interviewed Eric for an hour for - This Week in Venture Capital.

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Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

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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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JANUARY 25, 2015

How many video companies went through the roof when FB promoted video only to go into a free-fall dive when they don’t promote the app and when core users aren’t addicted to the product. If venture capital is propping up your business performance – good luck when the spigot slows one day.

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Product B2B Warrant Technical Review 150

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APRIL 21, 2010

And if you find some pictures or video that you like with somebody that you follow it is easier to publish this to your blog and share with your friends. Tags: This Week in Venture Capital VC Industry. This focus on sharing is what makes Tumblr interesting. I like to call it a cross between blogging and Tweeting.

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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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FEBRUARY 16, 2017

If you believe that more great firms will be created out of the successes of Riot Games, Maker Studios, Snapchat, Tinder, Dollar Shave Club and all the other wealth creation activities over the past 5 years — then you have to believe that LA Tech is on the rise and LA Venture Capital is well positioned to be a part of that future success story.

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IPO Los Angeles Technical Review Silicon Valley 214

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SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

On the former I mentioned a video that I shot for This Week in VC talking about how Farb Nivi solved this problem: “Farb talks about how he got Rob Lord on board at Grockit. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis Term Sheets. He first worked hard to get him to be an advisor to the company.

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JULY 25, 2010

If you want to hear an entrepreneur talk about this topic listen to Farb Nivi tell the story of how he got Rob Lord to invest in Grockit and how that led to Reid Hoffman and in turn Benchmark Capital, Integral and Atlas – more than $15 million in total. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice. Go get your anchors.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Southern California Angel Investor 293

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OCTOBER 21, 2009

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA). What are your predictions for the road ahead.

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Technical Review IPO Southern California Venture Capital 241

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JULY 12, 2011

I think you’ll really enjoy this video , but as always I have summary notes for those with less time. These notes graciously provided by Adam Besvinick , who is a summer associate at ff ventures run by the affable John Frankel , who will also be on the show soon. Such that during that time, Chris “learned how to learn.”.

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Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Cofounder API 281

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OCTOBER 22, 2010

The labels said he could do live streaming himself but they didn’t want him to stream any music or videos since ustream wasn’t paying them. Reminds me of how the networks today announced they were blocking their video content from being shown on Google TV. Tags: Startup Advice This Week in Venture Capital.

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Entrepreneur Los Angeles Norway Audience 356

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FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Union Square Ventures (USV) has been one of the most successful venture capital firms of the past 10–15 years and continues to be a leader in our industry. Lindel is no stranger to thorny venture capital issues — he was arguably amongst the most successful LPs of his generation.

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Leadership LP Venture Capital Silicon Valley 161

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AUGUST 12, 2010

I always wanted to have Dan on This Week in VC with Dan Primack ( to see video click link ) because he’s blunt, honest, opinionated and well informed. Tags: This Week in Venture Capital. In the VC & Private Equity world there’s a small number, too, with one of the most respected being PEHub. Minutes 36- 38.

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Seed Stage Valuation Private Equity Venture Capital 232

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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.) And so it is with video. Between the heavy hitters at the helm, the more than $1.4B

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Los Angeles Silicon Valley Mobile Video 244

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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. The deck is below and I’m attaching a link to video that has a very similar presentation (he spent more time in our session on “customer development” than apparently he does in this video).

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PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

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JULY 16, 2010

One is the “denominator problem&# which says that if an LP invests X% (the denominator) into “alternative investments&# such as venture capital and if their total amount available to invest (the numerator) goes down by 30% then the amount they allocate to VC will by definition need to go down by 30% to stay the same percentage.

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LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

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JUNE 27, 2021

We try to balance deals across (amongst other things): cyber-security, FinTech, computer vision, marketplaces, video games & gaming infrastructure, marketing automation, applied biology & healthcare systems, sustainability and eCommerce. Early-stage venture capital is about extreme winners. We do other things, too.

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Bankruptcy Bridge Financing Portfolio Angel Investor 294

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APRIL 20, 2011

But now you can learn the origins first hand on this YouTube video as well as how to approach them, how they make decisions and what innovations they've introduced. In the early 80’s he left academia to work on venture capital investing with Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies.

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Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review Cofounder Cram Down 284

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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 Where do all of these engineers end up?

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Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

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MAY 30, 2013

If you haven’t watched the video, please do. Because the videos show exactly what life would be like if a young Elon Musk came to pitch VCs today and said I want to transform P2P finance, get people driving electric cars and send a man to mars in our lifetime. Raising Venture Capital Tech Market Analysis'

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Cofounder Video 315

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FEBRUARY 7, 2011

If you have an hour to watch the TWiVC video of Seth I promise you won’t regret it. So some show notes if you’re a bit busy to watch the video. He grew up in Connecticut attended Yale undergrad and worked for IBM after graduation doing M&A, strategy and venture capital.

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Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

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JUNE 22, 2011

But a certain amount gets lost in the headlines – especially when not everybody actually heard the video and knows the nuance of the message. It’s what I love about entrepreneurship and about venture capital. I suppose I should have imagined that this line would get more press than all other comments combined.

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Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Venture Capital is a tricky industry. This was certainly the case when I invested in a small YouTube video production company called Maker Studios that recently sold to Disney for just shy of $1 billion. Internally at Upfront Ventures we talk about “high consensus” vs. controversial deals with “high conviction.”

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Technical Review America Partner United States 362

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JULY 13, 2013

Here is the link to the video interview. If you want a sneak peak on that it’s in the video or transcript. Below is an edited transcript if you prefer to video – easier to scan I guess. [00:00:06] So then when I wanted to go into venture capital, they said, “You can’t do that, you need to be in EIR.”

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

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JULY 15, 2010

If you enjoy this blog I think you’ll enjoy watching the first 14 minutes of this video (just click on the image of me below). If you watch the video I go into greater detail. What advice do you have for people who want to get into venture capital? If you’re interested check out the last section of the video.

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Southern California Venture Capital Seed Stage Angel Investor 210

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JUNE 18, 2010

To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures).

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Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

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MARCH 25, 2016

Marketing with long payback is precisely what requires venture capital. If you figure out how to scale a video product inside of Facebook really, really, quickly they’re likely to allow it to happen for a while so they can study the positive & negative impacts on user experiences.

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Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

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APRIL 19, 2011

if you don't have experience with venture debt you might want to listen to this bit in the video - we talked a lot about how it works]. if you don't have experience with how it works when you sell your company, you might want to listen to this bit in the video - we talked a lot about how it works]. - combination of factors –.

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Acquisition Warrant Customer Term Sheet 304

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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. The dinner parties now are filled with self-righteous angel investors bragging about how many deals they are in on. 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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MAY 21, 2017

I read it just after I entered the Venture Capital industry more than a decade ago. He used a self-referential term I had never heard before, which is that he is a “skeptical empiricist” and that has always stuck with me. And importantly he showed how most humans value “loss avoidance” more than the ability to gain.

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Venture Capital Mobile Video Conversion 182

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APRIL 16, 2011

That’s why I was so interested in having “ The Gotham Gal &# come on This Week in VC ( video link on YouTube , download iTunes, episode 15) ) and dispel those myths. I think this video should serve as an inspiration to any young aspiring female entrepreneur (and male!) She did this because she had great rapport with buyers.

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Startup Sales Database Community 311

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OCTOBER 17, 2019

Just as I was getting the swing of things the world shifted beneath my feet and the stock market went into a free fall and venture capital all but shut down for nearly a year. It proved to be fortuitous because it allowed me the time & space I needed to get to know tons of founders and VCs and to hone my craft.

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IP Intellectual Property IRR Cofounder 223

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APRIL 23, 2011

Here is the video link or click on the image above. Yes an online video startup in ‘99 that helped large media companies encode and distribute their videos through portals. He was introduced through mutual friends to Highland Capital. What’s your point of view on next generation video entertainment? (34:30

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NOVEMBER 4, 2012

You can watch the video of us discussing this and other topics here. But as usual there is a short summary to know the key topics where you can just skip to the critical point in the video you want to watch. This video is pure gold. 49:30 Steve: When’s the last time venture capital actually led an innovation?

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