Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I spent my first year developing proprietary deal flow and learning the business and then the Sept 2008 / Lehman Bros collapse / financial meltdown happened. I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 years ago. That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel.

Los Angeles 387

Los Angeles Intellectual Property LP Venture Capital 387

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

FUND is a national connector of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, and industry experts with a focus on deal flow and making connections. Describe the Digs product/service in 10 words or less. Describe the Digs product/service in 10 words or less. Digs Savings Product. Here is their story…. Website : digs.co.

Chad 111

Chad Illinois Nepal Haiti 111

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 11, 2023

It is necessary to cover the early stages of product development, thorough market research, and other processes during the initial step. The criteria change after a company reaches the growth stage when it is deemed to have attained product market fit. Seed capital is a component of the initial investments made in young businesses.

Seed Stage 126

Seed Stage Technical Review Early Stage Due Diligence 126

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2013

Sure, there will always some seed funding (10% of overall deal flow), but you can bet that this money goes to entrepreneurs who have been there before and won. Don’t try to talk your way to a deal before you have the documentation. Angels are also moving up-stage, leaving a bigger and bigger black hole for new startups.

Venture Capital 252

Venture Capital IPO Elevator Pitch Initial Public Offering 252

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. Most startups are facing unknown customer needs, an unknown product feature set and is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Of the last 15 investments we’ve made, 8 have been pre-product or pre-seed style rounds. Great returns in early stage investing is driven by great deal flow and good picking. It’s where we believe our expertise can be most helpful to a young company, and it’s what we love to do.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

BUT, it’s easy to translate this into being too optimistic about how customers will engage with your product or service. The belief is that the best founders and investment opportunities are quite obvious to any smart investor, so it’s imperative to have proprietary deal flow and relationships.

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Florida Deal Flow Venture Capital 120

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

That great productivity drain that we somehow all buy into. So I ask you – if you’re being reactive to somebody else’s emails are you really being as productive in your company as you could be? I spent a late morning meeting with a product exec at one portfolio company. ” Brilliant! “But WAIT !!!

Email 314

Email Product Term Sheet Portfolio 314

Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

In order to be competitive, a company needs to have just about everything in place, from its product to its team to market traction, before it is ready to seek funding. That means they spend a lot less time actively seeking out new deals than they do responding to inbound deal flow.

Angel Groups 159

Angel Groups Elevator Pitch Software Review Deal Flow 159

Gust

FEBRUARY 22, 2014

As such, creating a functional clone of Gust (including all the features under the hood, and ones that have not yet been released), using world-class engineers and state-of-the-art, 2012 project management in Ruby on Rails, would take roughly 20 person-years from soup to nuts (figure about 1/3 of that in product/UX/UI and 2/3 in actual coding.)

Belarus 107

Belarus Kazakhstan Portugal Accredited Investor 107

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

The film gives several examples of where not having women included in product decisions has led to poor design by not truly understanding 50%+ of the ultimate consumers. I think these deals are less exciting than the ones you proactive seek out. Deal flow and winning will drive change faster than any other outcome.

Founder 256

Founder San Francisco Deal Flow Los Angeles 256

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. A true industry luminary will help in deal flow & differentiation . Platform as a Product. Disadvantages.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 13, 2020

Will Decker has expertise advising companies large and small on strategy, product, marketing, and business development. The Deal Flow Session. The model that’s worked consistently is the deal flow session. Working with Startups to Create Innovation. That’s all great in theory,” I told Will. Common Mistakes.

Silicon Valley 78

Silicon Valley Deal Flow IP Curation 78

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 10, 2010

As a member of the selection committee on one of these local organizations, I use Angelsoft on the investor side to review business plans, deal flow, and help orchestrate presenters at monthly meetings of the local organization. You can then begin your application to one or more of these organizations right on the same screen.

Angel Investor 120

Angel Investor North America South America Accredited Investor 120

VC Cafe

MAY 18, 2023

Look beyond the spreadsheet and into the team, the product, and the market. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Deal Flow : It’s easy to get envious of other VCs’ deals. Thou Shalt Not Worship False Prophets (or Projections) : Remember, every startup’s financial projections are a work of fiction.

Venture Capital 78

Venture Capital Due Diligence Exit Strategy Deal Flow 78

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

I believe that huge financial, productivity and technical gains come from new innovation rather than derivative thinking. I am avoiding “frenzied&# deals for all of the reasons Roger Ehrenberg talks about in his excellent blog post. But I’ll judge the angel class of 2009/2010 on a 7-10 year time horizon.

Florida 299

Florida Technical Review San Antonio Los Angeles 299

Mucker Lab

AUGUST 27, 2014

After stints as a technology investment banker, a dot-com entrepreneur, and a product manager in Silicon Valley, I moved to Los Angeles in 2006. Certainly it is a negative to not have acquired the basic skills of product management. The top tier funds see almost all of the best deals. Ability” vs. “Knowledge”.

Los Angeles 138

Los Angeles Southern California Silicon Valley Technical Review 138

VC Cafe

JULY 31, 2020

To be an effective VC, proactivity is part of the job description: Proactively learn about new companies trends and markets Proactively network (deal flow, peers, industry partners) Proactively seek opportunities to help. But being proactive goes beyond just speed. Habit #2 – Begin with the end in mind.

Venture Capital 184

Venture Capital Deal Flow Silicon Valley Portfolio 184

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here. But the problem is that most deals – even really promising ones – fail. It’s sort of like having an Encyclopedic history book before just launching your product and seeing whether anybody uses it. Access to Deal Flow.

Angel Investor 288

Angel Investor Deal Flow Viral Algorithm 288

Haystack

JULY 4, 2019

I spend a good deal of time sharing deal flow up and downstream with Series A and B investors, and when they ask me about opportunities coming down the pipeline in 6-12 months, I usually share what I’ve been told from the founders themselves over email or phone — I become their subtle pitch man.

Early Stage 167

Early Stage Deal Flow Finance Metrics 167

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

As dollars flowed into the industry, cooperation was replaced by competition, to the detriment of deal flow, due diligence, ability to add value and, of course, returns. There are five key risks in any deal: Market, Product (a/k/a technology), Management, Business Model, and Capital.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Steve Blank

AUGUST 12, 2013

I’m not an investor, and I’m really not looking for meetings with entrepreneurs for deal flow. And the meetings will be more productive. So I’ve come up with is a method to sort out who I take meetings with. What are you offering? If I’d had infinite time I’d take every one of these “can I have coffee” meetings.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley Deal Flow Customer Development Stock 335

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 10, 2020

If deal flow is slow, a VC will take a meeting if you and your team seem mildly interesting even if your product isn’t. VCs are notorious for kicking tires. VCs take a meeting just to learn about an area.

Bandwidth 153

Bandwidth Deal Flow Later Stage Aggregator 153

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

However, this is likely to change, as it has done in the UK, where awareness of alternative finance grew to 60 per cent category recognition and products like P2P lending and invoice advance became mainstream. Combined, these two nations contributed about 95 per cent of deal flow in the region during 2010.

Singapore 100

Singapore South Korea Finance Asia 100

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Early stage investors are also mining product crowdfunding sites ( Indiegogo *); lists of product launches ( Producthunt ); angel group platforms ( Gust , Proseeder ); and equity crowdfunding sites ( AngelList , CircleUp , FundersClub , OurCrowd , SeedInvest ) for leads. 4) Manage deal flow. She is a model for us all!

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Haystack

DECEMBER 18, 2019

” After Facebook and Snap, the next crop of startups that have taken off look a bit different — work productivity tools like Slack and Zoom, in particular, that have consumer product sensibilities but the ability to scale to enterprise-scale deployments. So, what makes these types of startups both possible and hot today?

B2B 90

B2B North America Malaysia Warrant 90

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Anything from intense customer love despite barely even having a product, pre-sales, a deal for access to data that creates a moat that no one else has—the list goes on. Any VC will tell you that the ones they said yes to, they mostly got there right away—and that there are very few “maybe” deals that get tipped over the fence.

Venture Capital 162

Venture Capital Cofounder Deal Flow Later Stage 162

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Of the last 15 investments we’ve made, 8 have been pre-product or pre-seed style rounds. Great returns in early stage investing is driven by great deal flow and good picking. It’s where we believe our expertise can be most helpful to a young company, and it’s what we love to do.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

Gust

AUGUST 27, 2014

These are typically Internet-enabled, or consumer products, or medical devices. Benefits of joining a group include pooling deal flow, capital, domain expertise, and investing experience. Most are somewhere in between, focusing primarily on early-stage, high-growth companies with scalable business models.

Angel Investor 133

Angel Investor Accredited Investor Angel Groups Syndicate 133

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

FUND is a national connector of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, and industry experts with a focus on deal flow and making connections. Describe the Happenstance product/service in 10 words or less. Today The Startup Magazine features a Top 3 Exhibitor winner, Happenstance. Here is their story….

Chicago 147

Chicago Illinois New York City Cofounder 147

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Angelrounds are their whole business, as online video was for YouTube.Whereas VCs who make angel investments mostly do it as a way togenerate deal flow for series A rounds. [ Investors all compete with oneanother for deals, but they arent one anothers main competitor.Our main competitor is employers.

Startup 93

Startup Valuation Non-Compete Deal Flow 93

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

And SEO juice of sites with no value makes searching for real product feedback suck. My blog and what it’s done for my deal flow. - - Gdgt (l ed by Spark, True Ventures ) – Love the idea. People spent a ton of time researching which gadgets to buy. sites still dominate. Burstly ( Led by … me! - and much more.

Venture Capital 232

Venture Capital IPO Valuation Deal Flow 232

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 19, 2018

FUND is a national connector of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, and industry experts with a focus on deal flow and making connections. Describe the Apptronik Systems product/service in 10 words or less. We are product focused from day one. Creating useful and productive robotic products is in our DNA.

Texas 74

Texas Advisory Board Startup Angel Investor 74

The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 1, 2013

I’m also a fan of focused investment strategies – they allow you to build expertise resulting in better investment decisions and better deal flows as entrepreneurs seek out your expertise. Proprietary product or uniquely curated experiences. Operational excellence. I couldn’t agree more.

Silicon Valley 92

Silicon Valley eCommerce Deal Flow Valuation 92

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 24, 2011

billion jump in funding over the same quarter of 2010 with a similar number of deals, so it clearly shows a trend to larger deal sizes for fewer startups. Sure, there is always some seed funding (10% of overall deal flow), but you can bet that this money goes to entrepreneurs who have been there before and won.

Venture Capital 233

Venture Capital Revenue Elevator Pitch Silicon Valley 233

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

The best introductions come from people who have brought good deal flows to investors in the past. Initially, you can approach an investor soliciting advice on something specific, such as feedback on your marketing & sales approach, business model, or long-term product vision. Be personal.

Due Diligence 161

Due Diligence Venture Capital Deal Flow Social Media 161

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

Your contractor wrote a great V1 of the product and it helped you get angel funding. I find that one of my best sources of deal flow is from lawyers. Your memory – they never worked very hard and didn’t want to commit. Now you have money and a crack new tech architect and you’ll have to rebuild everything.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318