INDUSTRY INSIGHTS YOUR PEERS ARE READING
Not all investors have it in them to handle the roller coaster ride provided by equities, which is why they try their luck at creating a balanced portfolio of low and high risk equities. Interestingly, investment advisors and portfolio management firms barely allocate it in investments. MORE
The first wave of reactions centered around the importance of diversification in a portfolio. Ok, sure, so portfolio diversification is wise, yet behind closed doors, we hear many LPs grumble about a fund they’ve backed that’s found 1 or even 2 huge winners but where the check size is so small the returns don’t even return the fund at a multi-billion dollar exit. MORE
A baker portfolio can fulfill an important role. The ideal place to begin is with a decision to build a portfolio website. How portfolios help showcase creativity. A portfolio tends to be associated with a few particular fields. Creating stories with an online portfolio. MORE
About a year ago, I tracked down a VC who gave a talk I heard about where he referenced the phrase “Your portfolio is your path,” it stuck out in my mind because amid all the noise, it was simple, brief, and yet still open to interpretation. “Your portfolio is your path.” The portfolio is, indeed, your path. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You are what you eat. MORE
Should an investor really be expected to use the 10, 15, or 20 products in his or her portfolio? As an investor, using a portfolio company is easier when dealing with consumer apps and companies. The post Investors need to actually use their portfolio products appeared first on Version One Ventures. PayPal President David Marcus recently stirred up the hornet’s nest with a memo scolding employees for not installing and using the PayPal app. MORE
In 2008, I tried to fundraise for my startup the week that Lehman Brothers went under. You can imagine how well that worked out. Basically, VCs told us that they were going to wait and see how the election turned out--and things didn't really thaw out until the following September. Extreme uncertainty slows the VC market to a crawl--that's what I learned. We didn't get a bubble, but we got a really tough year fundingwise and that's what I'm expecting. MORE
Congratulations to Greenplum and Scott Yara, Bill Cook, and Luke Lonergan in particular! It has been quite a roller coaster ride over the last 10 years and there were a number of times we stared at the abyss only to come back stronger. This is a story of great people and incredible perseverance. MORE
Visit us at [link] Austin Welcomes HelloFund, a Nonprofit Fundraising Startup to its Portfolio was originally published in Austin Startups on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. Austin, Texas June 1, 2018?—?HelloFund, MORE
If you’re not already familiar with the startups and founders making up the V1 portfolio, here’s a summary of some of this quarter’s news clippings. This past quarter, three of our portfolio companies closed funding rounds (we participated in all three): First, Booster Fuels raised a $9 million Series A from Maveron, Madrona Venture group, RRE Ventures, and V1. Portfolio companies in the news. MORE
We continue to invest in blockchain companies and funds such as Coinbase and Metastable Capital , which join our existing crypto portfolio ( Blockstack , Citizen Hex and Polychain Capital ). Here’s a quick recap of our other funding announcements, portfolio news, and product updates (the things we can announce publicly): Funding announcements. We welcomed Gencove , a B2B sequencing company, to our portfolio. Select activities from around the portfolio. MORE
SEPTEMBER 24, 2012
With all these considerations, I recommend the following steps and considerations for investors newly interested in startups: Build a balanced investment portfolio. entrepreneur risk startups portfolio investors business MORE
In the latest installment of Success Stories, YFS Magazine speaks with Yasmeen Tadia, a Dallas-based serial entrepreneur. People Success Profiles female entrepreneurs mompreneurs people women entrepreneurs MORE
Congratulations to Greenplum and Scott Yara, Bill Cook, and Luke Lonergan in particular! It has been quite a roller coaster ride over the last 10 years and there were a number of times we stared at the abyss only to come back stronger. This is a story of great people and incredible perseverance. MORE
Yet, as long as you do it the right way, you can end up being a wise investor, and one of the most important factors to take into account is your portfolio. Starting with a solid and manageable portfolio can help to set the pace so that the rest of your financial investments stay in check. MORE
One of our portfolio companies puts this chart in each of their board decks. I find it frames the high level conversation around finances in a nice, clear way MORE
2017 appeared to be the height of the last bull run in cryptocurrencies – all you had to do was to buy a decent coin, sit back, relax, and watch the value of your portfolio increase. MORE
It concerns whether companies in a shared venture portfolio should have any special rules of engagement about hiring from other companies in the portfolio. The question of whether Foundry has a “policy” around this has come up a few times and we wanted to clarify very clearly that we absolutely don’t (nor could we – not only would such a blanket rule be to the detriment of our portfolio, it would also likely be illegal). MORE
I’m delivering a webinar next Tuesday for Harvard Business School Career Services on “How to Work with Private Equity and Venture Capital Portfolio Companies” Among the topics I’m covering: - Raise capital from a venture capital fund to found a company. MORE
Who is actually building a portfolio whose founders reflect the diversity of the greater population? I went back and calculated the number of companies in the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures portfolio who have at least one founder who is female, from an underrepresented minority group, or LGBT. Of the 32 companies in my portfolio, 18 (56%) were pre-product. After checking out The Information's "open dataset" on diversity in venture capital , I felt pretty disappointed. MORE
Best Practices in Venture Capital Portfolio Company Value Creation. In addition, in light of increasing competition in the startup funding space, a methodology for helping portfolio companies consistently is a strong competitive advantage. In an effort to address this, we launched last year a formal study of best practices of VCs in improving portfolio company value. We think that VCs can add tremendous value by systematically actively supporting their portfolio companies. MORE
Editor’s Note: This guest post is the first of an ongoing series offering up an insider-point of view from a portfolio company. Guest Portfolio POV EveripediaGuest post by Dave Liebowitz. MORE
Tags: Serial entrepreneurs VC Portfolios Auto change control Draft hand experience harvard business review ioimage many different reasons Portfolios Statistically MORE
Q4 was an important quarter for our firm and portfolio companies. Follow @VersionOneVC for the latest news from us and our portfolio! The post Q4 2018: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. We are well into 2019. And yes, this is the time of year when people are thinking about resolutions and looking ahead. And while we are very excited about the new year and new fund, we also want to spend a few minutes to reflect on last quarter. MORE
A large portion of your competitive advantage and your potential value to investors is the size of your intellectual property portfolio. In reality, patents are only one of at least eight items that should be in your IP portfolio. MORE
Portfolio CompaniesThis is a guest post by Jeff Jordan, General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz. Talk about a business with humble roots. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia met at the Rhode Island School of Design and became roommates in San Francisco in 2007. A prominent design conference was coming to town and the nearby hotels were sold out. MORE
We’re particularly proud and excited for this development, as it’s two portfolio companies joining forces! The post Q3 2018 Summary: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. It’s the beginning of October. Fall is underway, and it’s time to summarize all the key news and announcements from last quarter. And we have a lot of exciting things to share in the coming months, so stay tuned! Announcements and Accolades. MORE
We’re really happy to welcome Stylect to our portfolio. The deal closed a couple of weeks back and was announced on Techcrunch last week: “Swiping is the new liking” now applies to shoe shopping. MORE
Other news and highlights across the portfolio. The post Recapping Q2 2018: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. Happy Canada Day and Fourth of July to our friends and colleagues on both sides of the border. We hope everyone is having a great start to summer. Here’s a quick recap of the key activities, news coverage and announcements that occurred in Q2. MORE
As I’ve worked to build out HOF Capital ’s portfolio acceleration platform , the #1 question I think about is: how do we scalably support our companies? Many VCs offer (or strive to offer) a bundle of levers and support structures to help their portfolio companies. the “TOPSCAN” framework from my research study on value creation by VCs ): T eam-Building – We aggregate openings across our portfolio on our jobs page. MORE
Q1 was a busy time for our firm and portfolio companies, and here’s a brief recap of some of the various news clippings, fundraising announcements, and other happenings across the V1 community. The V1 portfolio was well represented in Techvibes’ recent Canadian Startup Awards. Portfolio companies in the news. The post Q1 2017 Round-up: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. Another quarter has flown by and we’re quickly moving into spring. MORE
That said, there are two portfolio modeling/management tips that I do think are valuable exercises for every Fund I. Six years ago this week Satya and I took our Homebrew deck on the road (as far south as the Rosewood!) and began raising Fund I. MORE
Your portfolio page. Your portfolio page is your thesis. One challenge for seed investors especially is that your portfolio page is a lagging indicator of your interests. And hope to continue adding amazing companies to our portfolio page. MORE
But good portfolio companies should get more, because VCs have a lot more to give – especially to companies that deserve it. But investors have dozens of portfolio companies and likely aren’t going out on a limb for founders. MORE
Cribbing from the Homebrew blog to just share some nice portfolio news: “Proud to have supported this company since their earliest days” is how VCs coyly signal that they were in early before the rocketship company was off the launch pad. Well, three startups that we’re proud to have supported since their earliest days announced substantial financings recently. Yeah, we had conviction years ago. And yeah, they’re all looking like great, savvy picks. MORE
I was taken aback by the modesty of Stan Swete’s question “Would you invest multiple days in a future Workday technology summit?” My answer was an easy yes. Workday, with a consistent track record of 3 releases a year and. Industry Commentary MORE
Recently, we surveyed our Boston-based NextView portfolio Founder/CEOs asking them about which service provider firms they’ve been using. The goal was to assemble data in order to share it back to our portfolio companies (especially the newer ones) so that they didn’t have to recreate the wheel in determining a short-list of firms to talk to when evaluating new options. MORE
They’ll spend nine months in full-time or intern-level jobs at companies in the Bain Capital Ventures portfolio, taking time out to attend events and meet startup founders. Mitt Romney is growing his own. Well, sort of. MORE
VC’s, and particularly seed focused VC’s, pursue a variety of different strategies in their portfolio. The main parameters that VC’s tend to think about around portfolio strategy are: 1. Put it simply, the bigger the portfolio, the more the investor thinks that luck and uncertainty is a factor. Funds that have very broad portfolios are making a very particular bet – that although the entire index sucks, their slice of the index will outperform. MORE
Q2 has been busy for Version One and our portfolio companies – here’s a quick recap of select news coverage, funding announcements, and product updates (at least the things we can announce publicly): . Portfolio Companies in the News. The post Recapping Q2 2017: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. We hope everyone had a great Canada Day and/or Fourth of July! It’s hard to believe that another quarter has flown by. MORE
Less discussed is what I believe to be a primary challenge for these larger funds making meaningful commitments to seed companies: competitive conflict within their portfolio. Despite some speculation, I’m not @StartupLJackson. However, after reading this article about his NVCA talk , I’m realizing I might be Naval Ravikant because there’s a lot in there that I’ve been thinking about as well. MORE
A key question my post didn’t consider was what the ideal venture portfolio might look like in the face of these data. . I think we intuitively understood this back in 2006 and the cruz of our debate centered around just how diversified should a portfolio like ours be. MORE
Congratulations to Michael Robertson and team at Gizmo5 for all of their hard work and perseverance! There is not a lot I can tell you about the future plans for Google Voice , but I do believe it is important to look back to see how we got here. We made our investment in Gizmo5 (aka as sipphone and gizmo project) in early 2006. What Michael and I shared was a vision of openness for the VOIP and IM World. MORE
Job creation is political topic #1, so we have a particular interest in portfolio companies like Identified and TheResumator , which help match employers and job seekers. MORE
Portfolio Related Topics 
Startup Professionals Musings
JANUARY 11, 2019
A large portion of your competitive advantage and your potential value to investors is the size of your intellectual property portfolio. In reality, patents are only one of at least eight items that should be in your IP portfolio.
YoungUpstarts
MAY 4, 2016
Yet, as long as you do it the right way, you can end up being a wise investor, and one of the most important factors to take into account is your portfolio. Starting with a solid and manageable portfolio can help to set the pace so that the rest of your financial investments stay in check.
YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 30, 2018
Not all investors have it in them to handle the roller coaster ride provided by equities, which is why they try their luck at creating a balanced portfolio of low and high risk equities. Interestingly, investment advisors and portfolio management firms barely allocate it in investments.
Haystack
DECEMBER 27, 2018
About a year ago, I tracked down a VC who gave a talk I heard about where he referenced the phrase “Your portfolio is your path,” it stuck out in my mind because amid all the noise, it was simple, brief, and yet still open to interpretation. “Your portfolio is your path.” The portfolio is, indeed, your path. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You are what you eat.
Hunter Walker
DECEMBER 13, 2018
Cribbing from the Homebrew blog to just share some nice portfolio news: “Proud to have supported this company since their earliest days” is how VCs coyly signal that they were in early before the rocketship company was off the launch pad. Well, three startups that we’re proud to have supported since their earliest days announced substantial financings recently. Yeah, we had conviction years ago. And yeah, they’re all looking like great, savvy picks.
Version One Ventures
JANUARY 8, 2019
Q4 was an important quarter for our firm and portfolio companies. Follow @VersionOneVC for the latest news from us and our portfolio! The post Q4 2018: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. We are well into 2019. And yes, this is the time of year when people are thinking about resolutions and looking ahead. And while we are very excited about the new year and new fund, we also want to spend a few minutes to reflect on last quarter.
Hunter Walker
JANUARY 17, 2019
That said, there are two portfolio modeling/management tips that I do think are valuable exercises for every Fund I. Six years ago this week Satya and I took our Homebrew deck on the road (as far south as the Rosewood!) and began raising Fund I.
VC Adventure
APRIL 16, 2018
A key question my post didn’t consider was what the ideal venture portfolio might look like in the face of these data. . I think we intuitively understood this back in 2006 and the cruz of our debate centered around just how diversified should a portfolio like ours be.
YoungUpstarts
OCTOBER 15, 2018
2017 appeared to be the height of the last bull run in cryptocurrencies – all you had to do was to buy a decent coin, sit back, relax, and watch the value of your portfolio increase.
Haystack
SEPTEMBER 3, 2018
The first wave of reactions centered around the importance of diversification in a portfolio. Ok, sure, so portfolio diversification is wise, yet behind closed doors, we hear many LPs grumble about a fund they’ve backed that’s found 1 or even 2 huge winners but where the check size is so small the returns don’t even return the fund at a multi-billion dollar exit.
Mucker Lab
JULY 21, 2016
Editor’s Note: This guest post is the first of an ongoing series offering up an insider-point of view from a portfolio company. Guest Portfolio POV EveripediaGuest post by Dave Liebowitz.
Version One Ventures
OCTOBER 2, 2018
We’re particularly proud and excited for this development, as it’s two portfolio companies joining forces! The post Q3 2018 Summary: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. It’s the beginning of October. Fall is underway, and it’s time to summarize all the key news and announcements from last quarter. And we have a lot of exciting things to share in the coming months, so stay tuned! Announcements and Accolades.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 24, 2012
With all these considerations, I recommend the following steps and considerations for investors newly interested in startups: Build a balanced investment portfolio. entrepreneur risk startups portfolio investors business
Version One Ventures
OCTOBER 3, 2017
We continue to invest in blockchain companies and funds such as Coinbase and Metastable Capital , which join our existing crypto portfolio ( Blockstack , Citizen Hex and Polychain Capital ). Here’s a quick recap of our other funding announcements, portfolio news, and product updates (the things we can announce publicly): Funding announcements. We welcomed Gencove , a B2B sequencing company, to our portfolio. Select activities from around the portfolio.
Version One Ventures
JULY 3, 2018
Other news and highlights across the portfolio. The post Recapping Q2 2018: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. Happy Canada Day and Fourth of July to our friends and colleagues on both sides of the border. We hope everyone is having a great start to summer. Here’s a quick recap of the key activities, news coverage and announcements that occurred in Q2.
deal architect
NOVEMBER 10, 2012
I was taken aback by the modesty of Stan Swete’s question “Would you invest multiple days in a future Workday technology summit?” My answer was an easy yes. Workday, with a consistent track record of 3 releases a year and. Industry Commentary
David Teten
OCTOBER 27, 2011
Job creation is political topic #1, so we have a particular interest in portfolio companies like Identified and TheResumator , which help match employers and job seekers.
VC Cafe
OCTOBER 28, 2010
Tags: Serial entrepreneurs VC Portfolios Auto change control Draft hand experience harvard business review ioimage many different reasons Portfolios Statistically
Version One Ventures
JULY 5, 2017
Q2 has been busy for Version One and our portfolio companies – here’s a quick recap of select news coverage, funding announcements, and product updates (at least the things we can announce publicly): . Portfolio Companies in the News. The post Recapping Q2 2017: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. We hope everyone had a great Canada Day and/or Fourth of July! It’s hard to believe that another quarter has flown by.
The Equity Kicker
MAY 6, 2014
We’re really happy to welcome Stylect to our portfolio. The deal closed a couple of weeks back and was announced on Techcrunch last week: “Swiping is the new liking” now applies to shoe shopping.
Hunter Walker
MARCH 28, 2018
Your portfolio page. Your portfolio page is your thesis. One challenge for seed investors especially is that your portfolio page is a lagging indicator of your interests. And hope to continue adding amazing companies to our portfolio page.
The Next Web
FEBRUARY 25, 2016
But good portfolio companies should get more, because VCs have a lot more to give – especially to companies that deserve it. But investors have dozens of portfolio companies and likely aren’t going out on a limb for founders.
David Teten
JULY 25, 2017
As I’ve worked to build out HOF Capital ’s portfolio acceleration platform , the #1 question I think about is: how do we scalably support our companies? Many VCs offer (or strive to offer) a bundle of levers and support structures to help their portfolio companies. the “TOPSCAN” framework from my research study on value creation by VCs ): T eam-Building – We aggregate openings across our portfolio on our jobs page.
Version One Ventures
APRIL 5, 2017
Q1 was a busy time for our firm and portfolio companies, and here’s a brief recap of some of the various news clippings, fundraising announcements, and other happenings across the V1 community. The V1 portfolio was well represented in Techvibes’ recent Canadian Startup Awards. Portfolio companies in the news. The post Q1 2017 Round-up: Portfolio News and Activities appeared first on Version One. Another quarter has flown by and we’re quickly moving into spring.
YFS Magazine
JUNE 25, 2015
In the latest installment of Success Stories, YFS Magazine speaks with Yasmeen Tadia, a Dallas-based serial entrepreneur. People Success Profiles female entrepreneurs mompreneurs people women entrepreneurs
Version One Ventures
FEBRUARY 18, 2014
Should an investor really be expected to use the 10, 15, or 20 products in his or her portfolio? As an investor, using a portfolio company is easier when dealing with consumer apps and companies. The post Investors need to actually use their portfolio products appeared first on Version One Ventures. PayPal President David Marcus recently stirred up the hornet’s nest with a memo scolding employees for not installing and using the PayPal app.
Version One Ventures
APRIL 19, 2016
If you’re not already familiar with the startups and founders making up the V1 portfolio, here’s a summary of some of this quarter’s news clippings. This past quarter, three of our portfolio companies closed funding rounds (we participated in all three): First, Booster Fuels raised a $9 million Series A from Maveron, Madrona Venture group, RRE Ventures, and V1. Portfolio companies in the news.
Austin Startup
JUNE 2, 2018
Visit us at [link] Austin Welcomes HelloFund, a Nonprofit Fundraising Startup to its Portfolio was originally published in Austin Startups on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. Austin, Texas June 1, 2018?—?HelloFund,
David Teten
MARCH 28, 2012
Best Practices in Venture Capital Portfolio Company Value Creation. In addition, in light of increasing competition in the startup funding space, a methodology for helping portfolio companies consistently is a strong competitive advantage. In an effort to address this, we launched last year a formal study of best practices of VCs in improving portfolio company value. We think that VCs can add tremendous value by systematically actively supporting their portfolio companies.
Rob Go
SEPTEMBER 29, 2014
VC’s, and particularly seed focused VC’s, pursue a variety of different strategies in their portfolio. The main parameters that VC’s tend to think about around portfolio strategy are: 1. Put it simply, the bigger the portfolio, the more the investor thinks that luck and uncertainty is a factor. Funds that have very broad portfolios are making a very particular bet – that although the entire index sucks, their slice of the index will outperform.
BeyondVC
NOVEMBER 13, 2009
Congratulations to Michael Robertson and team at Gizmo5 for all of their hard work and perseverance! There is not a lot I can tell you about the future plans for Google Voice , but I do believe it is important to look back to see how we got here. We made our investment in Gizmo5 (aka as sipphone and gizmo project) in early 2006. What Michael and I shared was a vision of openness for the VOIP and IM World.
Genuine VC
JULY 9, 2013
Recently, we surveyed our Boston-based NextView portfolio Founder/CEOs asking them about which service provider firms they’ve been using. The goal was to assemble data in order to share it back to our portfolio companies (especially the newer ones) so that they didn’t have to recreate the wheel in determining a short-list of firms to talk to when evaluating new options.
Ben's Blog
JULY 24, 2011
Portfolio CompaniesThis is a guest post by Jeff Jordan, General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz. Talk about a business with humble roots. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia met at the Rhode Island School of Design and became roommates in San Francisco in 2007. A prominent design conference was coming to town and the nearby hotels were sold out.
This is going to be BIG.
OCTOBER 7, 2015
Who is actually building a portfolio whose founders reflect the diversity of the greater population? I went back and calculated the number of companies in the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures portfolio who have at least one founder who is female, from an underrepresented minority group, or LGBT. Of the 32 companies in my portfolio, 18 (56%) were pre-product. After checking out The Information's "open dataset" on diversity in venture capital , I felt pretty disappointed.
VC Adventure
MARCH 20, 2012
It concerns whether companies in a shared venture portfolio should have any special rules of engagement about hiring from other companies in the portfolio. The question of whether Foundry has a “policy” around this has come up a few times and we wanted to clarify very clearly that we absolutely don’t (nor could we – not only would such a blanket rule be to the detriment of our portfolio, it would also likely be illegal).
This is going to be BIG.
NOVEMBER 9, 2016
In 2008, I tried to fundraise for my startup the week that Lehman Brothers went under. You can imagine how well that worked out. Basically, VCs told us that they were going to wait and see how the election turned out--and things didn't really thaw out until the following September. Extreme uncertainty slows the VC market to a crawl--that's what I learned. We didn't get a bubble, but we got a really tough year fundingwise and that's what I'm expecting.
ReadWriteStart
JULY 26, 2012
They’ll spend nine months in full-time or intern-level jobs at companies in the Bain Capital Ventures portfolio, taking time out to attend events and meet startup founders. Mitt Romney is growing his own. Well, sort of.
David Teten
FEBRUARY 29, 2012
I’m delivering a webinar next Tuesday for Harvard Business School Career Services on “How to Work with Private Equity and Venture Capital Portfolio Companies” Among the topics I’m covering: - Raise capital from a venture capital fund to found a company.
BeyondVC
JULY 7, 2010
Congratulations to Greenplum and Scott Yara, Bill Cook, and Luke Lonergan in particular! It has been quite a roller coaster ride over the last 10 years and there were a number of times we stared at the abyss only to come back stronger. This is a story of great people and incredible perseverance.
BeyondVC
JULY 7, 2010
Congratulations to Greenplum and Scott Yara, Bill Cook, and Luke Lonergan in particular! It has been quite a roller coaster ride over the last 10 years and there were a number of times we stared at the abyss only to come back stronger. This is a story of great people and incredible perseverance.
Bryce Dot VC
JUNE 23, 2015
One of our portfolio companies puts this chart in each of their board decks. I find it frames the high level conversation around finances in a nice, clear way
Hunter Walker
MAY 10, 2015
Less discussed is what I believe to be a primary challenge for these larger funds making meaningful commitments to seed companies: competitive conflict within their portfolio. Despite some speculation, I’m not @StartupLJackson. However, after reading this article about his NVCA talk , I’m realizing I might be Naval Ravikant because there’s a lot in there that I’ve been thinking about as well.
David Teten
JANUARY 10, 2012
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