Feld Thoughts

JULY 31, 2014

In 2007, when we set out to raise our first Foundry Group fund, early stage tech VC was in the shitter. No one believed that you could make any money as an early stage VC and when we went out to raise our first fund, we heard over and over again that we were on a fools errand.

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LP Advisory Board Venture Capital Early Stage 155

Feld Thoughts

JULY 12, 2016

If we fund an early stage startup company today and it’s hugely successful, it’ll be coming into its own in 2025. This is dangerous, especially for founders. In 1999, the year an online pet store fronted by a sock puppet raised $50 million, Harmonix was laying off staff. Ponder that for a moment.

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Boston Cofounder Early Stage Founder 70

David Teten

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Susan Balloch is a Managing Director of Golden Seeds, an angel fund that invests in early stage companies founded or led by women. Karen Bantuveris, Founder and CEO of VolunteerSpot. She is the Founder and CEO of Volunteer Spot an online coordination app that facilitates volunteering. 6:30 Registration. 8:30 Networking.

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Private Equity North America Cofounder Angel Groups 114

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 22, 2018

by Thomas Smale, founder of FE International. This is particularly true in the early stages of a new venture when you may be a solopreneur or working with a very small team. What if there was somewhere you could go where you can be surrounded by founders just like you? Here are the top 10: 1. LTV Conference. London, UK.

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Las Vegas Software Review Affiliate Cofounder 124

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

When you’re an early-stage startup that hasn’t raised any institutional money you end up doing almost every job function of the company yourself. I did almost every VC meeting myself save for when one of my co-founders, Tim Barker, was in town. This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. A friend of mine is a serial entrepreneur and is running a high-profile, early stage company in NorCal.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

When I was raising money for my first company we had closed a seed round in 1999 and were working on our A round. We had many term sheets (it was 1999 and we had a pulse) and we were deciding which one to take. It was December 1999. So, where does this all come from and how can you apply it in practice? I was resolute.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

In the summer of 1999, I started working on a startup from my college dorm. Id been on the internet since I was playing MUDs as a kid, but by 1999 I felt Id already missed the boat. You can even see the humiliating evidence of my smug incompetence in this absurd article from 1999.) I pretty much missed all the trends.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

I discuss category creation with one of the co-authors of Play Bigger , Christopher Lochhead, in episode #232 of Legends and Losers if you would like to really delve into that (it is a very important topic). Opportunity cost is very real for any stage company, but it is critical for an early-stage one.

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Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

David Teten

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

Their late stage deals outside of the venture centers outperform by ~5% vs. those in the venture centers; early stage deals outperformed by ~4%. Out of over 70 companies that we have invested in since 1999, about 20 are in our home city, New York. Create opportunities, instead of waiting for opportunities to appear.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Equity 114

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 18, 2011

He worked his way up the corporate ladder; in 1998 he became VP of the Digital TV platform strategy, which did not pan out, and in 1999 he found an opportunity in Microsoft Internet (MSN) international. The whole risk capital industry aims towards what is known as ‘early stage investments,’ sprouting new companies.

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Venture Capital New Zealand Startup 100

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

You may feel as I did in 1999 that the more smart people around the table the more intros you’ll have, the more sage advice you’ll receive and the more impressive you’ll seem to outsiders. Hopefully each lead or co-lead their round so there is more harmony in the configuration. The Perils of Many. The Pitfall of One.

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Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

MAY 4, 2013

“The KILN System has been used by large companies with established early-stage innovation processes since KILN launched at the Front-End-of-Innovation EMEA conference in Berlin in early 2011,” said Gregg Fraley, co-founder and Chief Solver of Kiln Ideas Ltd. 1 888 553 1002. +44 ignite@kilnco.com.

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Boston United Kingdom North America Early Stage 101

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

It follows up on my posts discussing why early stage startups should — or should not — move to Silicon Valley. Should Early Stage Startups Move to Austin? Any attempt to get your head around why Austin is awesome for early stage companies needs to not only look at culture, but start at culture.

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Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

This post was co-authored with Omri Stern and originally appeared in Harvard Business Review. The founders have started companies before. More recently, Israeli founders are themselves moving to the U.S. So how early should the founders pack their bags and ship out to the U.S.? American VCs are critical.

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The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 19, 2016

Fortunately Steve Schlenker, co-founder of DN Capital has captured most of them in his Quora answer to the question: How hard is it to be a venture capitalist. I’ve seen Mark post a few versions of this tweet over time and wanted to write a post about it. I agree with him, but the reasons are complex.

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Scalable Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2013

On the other hand, sometimes you get the entrepreneurs who say, “I know I am doing the 36th workforce collaboration system in the consumer side; Google was the 36th search engine, and I know it’s 1999, and I know the whole sector is overfunded, but I have a better idea. Previously, Andreessen developed Mosaic and co-founded Netscape.

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Software Review Startup Venture Capital Stock 22

David Teten

JANUARY 13, 2015

I’m speaking on a panel this afternoon on fundraising for minority founders at the Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project. Fundraising is always difficult for all founders; the median PE/VC fund sources and reviews 87 companies before investing in 1. This young, talented girl is given no chance of being the founder of the next Facebook.”. “I

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Venture Capital Advisory Board Greece Cofounder 60