A Project Portfolio Management culture must be built deliberately. Here are the main reasons why your attempts to forge a project-centered culture will fail. Innovate MORE
There has been a great deal of discussion about the viability of the venture capital industry. What types of returns are required to justify the asset class' risk? Are such returns available in today's market? MORE
Review some of the money management tips discussed in this article and identify items that can be helpful on your entrepreneurial journey 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
Yesterday, I saw an informal survey of our portfolio companies. Regular readers know that I do blog a fair bit about our portfolio companies but I also try to keep it balanced. Too much pimping of the portfolio doesn't make for a good VC blog. 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
It’s not always easy for a product manager to explain her precise role in building product. Every company defines product managers differently, and a product manager’s output is sometimes difficult to see or quantify. Product managers tend to use success metrics as a baseline for their experience (e.g. “We increased conversion by 300%!”) ”) but of […]. Product Management 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
Turn your previous experience into a story worth sharing. How to Hire the Best 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
Question: How would you describe VC firm’s efforts to connect firms in their portfolio with fresh MBA grads? Im just curious because here in Philadelphia, First Round Capital is posting a lot of job offers for firms in its portfolio on their website, and I’m not seeing any other Philly VC firms doing this (at the moment). Some venture firms do a good job of having dynamically updated job boards on their websites that list all open jobs by portfolio company. 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
The post from 10gen about the Foursquare outage this week prompts me to write about the pros and cons of portfolio companies working together. We had a portfolio company called eShare that had a web chat system they sold to websites that wanted to offer live chat. Two of our portfolio companies, Geocities and StarMedia, became big customers of eShare. Whenever eShare let our portfolio companies down, we would get caught in the middle like a parent with two fighting children. MORE
The Top Free WordPress Portfolio Themes Compared I mostly do custom design work and using standard WordPress themes is kind of a no-no in my world. However, recently a friend wanted some help selecting some portfolio themes for her work. Portfolio Style and Personal Tastes. 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
Question: How do VCs mitigate risk in their investment portfolios? The primary ways VCs mitigate risk are (1) time diversification, (2) stage diversification, (3), sector diversification, (4) pro-rata or over pro-rata investing over time, and (5) number of investments in the portfolio. Number of investments in the portfolio: There is conventional wisdom that each fund should have 25 – 30 companies (or “names”) in each fund. 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
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
Hiring a designer: how to review portfolios. It’s easy to spot a beautiful portfolio. You likely have experience reading résumés and interviewing candidates, but how should you judge a design portfolio? A portfolio isn’t a collection of pictures. 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
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
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
“ Google adds to robot portfolio with purchase of Waltham firm " via The Boston Globe. Think self-driving, glass-wearing, Android powered terrifying robot monsters that read your email, push creepily relevant ads, and toss 50 lbs cinder blocks at your head…. robots robotics Google Terminator 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
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
Hummer Winblad just added a portfolio company jobs section to our web site. The site currently lists 161 jobs. If you are looking to join a great start-up, please peruse at your leisure MORE
Mattermark Tech Startup Investor Portfolio Benchmarking Analysis. VC venture capital investors startups portfolio analysis 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
The eco-friendly cleaning products brand joins Ben & Jerry's, Dove and Dollar Shave Club in Unilever's portfolio of brands that appeal to socially conscious consumers 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
One of the foundations of modern portfolio theory is the concept that the return on an asset cannot be viewed by itself; rather it must be judged by its contribution to the portfolio as a whole. In considering the issue of valuation generally, one should understand the environment in which a manager of a venture pool operates; he is investing not in one but in a number of opportunities. 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 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.
Instigator Blog
JUNE 9, 2016
It’s not always easy for a product manager to explain her precise role in building product. Every company defines product managers differently, and a product manager’s output is sometimes difficult to see or quantify. Product managers tend to use success metrics as a baseline for their experience (e.g. “We increased conversion by 300%!”) ”) but of […]. Product Management
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.
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.
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.
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
Inc Startups
APRIL 24, 2017
A Project Portfolio Management culture must be built deliberately. Here are the main reasons why your attempts to forge a project-centered culture will fail. Innovate
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 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.
Mark Birch
NOVEMBER 5, 2013
Mattermark Tech Startup Investor Portfolio Benchmarking Analysis. VC venture capital investors startups portfolio analysis
A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
SEPTEMBER 15, 2010
Yesterday, I saw an informal survey of our portfolio companies. Regular readers know that I do blog a fair bit about our portfolio companies but I also try to keep it balanced. Too much pimping of the portfolio doesn't make for a good VC blog.
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
Inc Startups
APRIL 18, 2018
Turn your previous experience into a story worth sharing. How to Hire the Best
A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
OCTOBER 8, 2010
The post from 10gen about the Foursquare outage this week prompts me to write about the pros and cons of portfolio companies working together. We had a portfolio company called eShare that had a web chat system they sold to websites that wanted to offer live chat. Two of our portfolio companies, Geocities and StarMedia, became big customers of eShare. Whenever eShare let our portfolio companies down, we would get caught in the middle like a parent with two fighting children.
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.
Ask The VC
OCTOBER 2, 2011
Question: How do VCs mitigate risk in their investment portfolios? The primary ways VCs mitigate risk are (1) time diversification, (2) stage diversification, (3), sector diversification, (4) pro-rata or over pro-rata investing over time, and (5) number of investments in the portfolio. Number of investments in the portfolio: There is conventional wisdom that each fund should have 25 – 30 companies (or “names”) in each fund.
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.
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.
Will Price
SEPTEMBER 20, 2007
There has been a great deal of discussion about the viability of the venture capital industry. What types of returns are required to justify the asset class' risk? Are such returns available in today's market?
Recent Buzzes - VC Experts, Inc.
OCTOBER 17, 2011
One of the foundations of modern portfolio theory is the concept that the return on an asset cannot be viewed by itself; rather it must be judged by its contribution to the portfolio as a whole. In considering the issue of valuation generally, one should understand the environment in which a manager of a venture pool operates; he is investing not in one but in a number of opportunities.
Inc Startups
OCTOBER 27, 2016
Here's how you can become a wiser and more versatile investor
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.
Design Staff
FEBRUARY 29, 2012
Hiring a designer: how to review portfolios. It’s easy to spot a beautiful portfolio. You likely have experience reading résumés and interviewing candidates, but how should you judge a design portfolio? A portfolio isn’t a collection of pictures.
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.
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.
Blogtrepreneur | Entrepreneur Blog
SEPTEMBER 3, 2016
The Top Free WordPress Portfolio Themes Compared I mostly do custom design work and using standard WordPress themes is kind of a no-no in my world. However, recently a friend wanted some help selecting some portfolio themes for her work. Portfolio Style and Personal Tastes.
Inc Startups
SEPTEMBER 19, 2016
The eco-friendly cleaning products brand joins Ben & Jerry's, Dove and Dollar Shave Club in Unilever's portfolio of brands that appeal to socially conscious consumers
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.
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.
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
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
Mark Birch
DECEMBER 14, 2013
“ Google adds to robot portfolio with purchase of Waltham firm " via The Boston Globe. Think self-driving, glass-wearing, Android powered terrifying robot monsters that read your email, push creepily relevant ads, and toss 50 lbs cinder blocks at your head…. robots robotics Google Terminator
Ask The VC
NOVEMBER 26, 2011
Question: How would you describe VC firm’s efforts to connect firms in their portfolio with fresh MBA grads? Im just curious because here in Philadelphia, First Round Capital is posting a lot of job offers for firms in its portfolio on their website, and I’m not seeing any other Philly VC firms doing this (at the moment). Some venture firms do a good job of having dynamically updated job boards on their websites that list all open jobs by portfolio company.
Inc Startups
FEBRUARY 1, 2017
Review some of the money management tips discussed in this article and identify items that can be helpful on your entrepreneurial journey
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.
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
Will Price
JANUARY 24, 2008
Hummer Winblad just added a portfolio company jobs section to our web site. The site currently lists 161 jobs. If you are looking to join a great start-up, please peruse at your leisure
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.
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