Mark Suster
2x startup Founder & CEO who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. His first company, BuildOnline was sold in 2005, his second, Koral was acquired by Salesforce.com and became known as Salesforce Content, while Mark served as VP Product Management. In 2007 Mark joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner. He focuses on early-stage technology companies, usually looking at Series A investment, and blogs at the aptly titled Both Sides of the Table.
How Do VCs Choose Their Investors (and should entrepreneurs care?)
I recently read a blog post by Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures about why entrepreneurs should care about from whom their VC funds raise their capital. I spent a bunch of time thinking about this position — especially since Beezer is an investor in Upfront Ventures. There are a lot of things I […]
What to Make of Andreessen Horowitz’s Returns?
Rolfe Winkler wrote a piece in the WSJ about A16Z’s returns in which he says they “lag behind Sequoia, Benchmark and Founders Fund.” Scott Kupor of A16Z responded with a comprehensive overview of valuation methodology in a post that while accurate feels more targeted at sophisticated Limited Partners (LPs) who invest in funds. Let me […]
The Pivot You Need to Read About
GOAT just announced it raised $5 million in venture capital led by our friends at Matrix Partners. On the surface that sounds unremarkable — fundings happen daily. But this isn’t just any funding. GOAT (“Greatest of All Time) is a sneakerhead marketplace that is en fuego, but we led the company’s last financing round in […]
Why Computer Vision Tracking the Flow of People Will be a Huge Market
As I’ve written before I believe Computer Vision will become a major factor as a Human-Computer Interface (1) as sensors and cameras help us make sense of our physical world. There is so much in the media about “The Internet of Things” that it has lost meaning and for many for some strange reason […]
Why We Can’t Let Luddites Ruin Global Trade
Luddites. It’s a term most of you know as being somebody who is backward or uninterested in learning new technology. Actually, the Luddites were worse than this. They were a movement in England during the Industrial Revolution who had the objective of ruining machinery that was used to build products at scale. They thought […]
Why Raising Too Much Money Can Harm Your Startup
Amongst the most often asked questions I get from founders is, “How much money should I raise?” Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job […]
Why Acceptance of Failure is Critical to Startup Success
I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I […]
The Corrosive Nature of Over-Introducers
In modern society we’re all over-worked and over-loaded with information and tasks and to-dos and obligations. Nowhere is this more apparent than working in a startup where you are definitionally under-resourced and trying to make big accomplishments in compressed periods of time. That’s why focus is critical. Saying “no” often to people who want […]
Why Computer Vision Has Become a Major Investment Theme for Me
If you follow me on Snapchat (msuster) you might already know that I’ve been looking at and investing in a number of companies in the computer vision space. My thesis is that it will become a major I/O computing metaphor or as this field is sometimes referred to HCI (human-computer interaction). Today I am so […]
Changes in the Venture Capital Funding Environment
Changes in the Venture Capital Funding Environment The funding environment for tech startups is an ever shifting ground as we go through predictable shifts that go hand-in-hand with the slowing of the overall market. The most important shift I would characterize as the market moving from “high conviction” and thus strong follow-ons to “limited conviction” […]
Half Lives. Social Media. And Snapchat Stories.
I’ve been online for nearly 30 years (yes, there was CompuServe and Prodigy before the www), blogging for 10 and using social media tools since the earliest days. I love to watch networks evolve, see how crowds gather and communicate and curate and share. Twitter was the most unique social sharing platform that had emerged […]
How I Invest
I was speaking recently to the team at NuOrder, an LA-based company we’re an investor in about “realism in startups” — an impromptu talk I have given to any of our portfolio companies who ask. During the Q&A I was asked about how I make investment decisions in early-stage businesses. I was asked again in an LP […]
Introducing Snapstorms.com. Why, oh, why Snapchat?
Introducing Snapstorms.com. Why, oh, why Snapchat? For the past few months I’ve been doing nearly daily “Snapstorms” or short videos with startup advice released on Snapchat. Today I’ve made all of them available on Snapstorms.com. Among the most comical things to me in the past few years is just how much it annoys some people […]
Why Solving Big Food & Healthcare Problems Will Yield Spectacular Companies
I’ve spoken before about our desire at Upfront Ventures to fund really big ideas that solve hard problems, are science led and if successful will both have a positive effect on people’s lives as well as make great financial returns. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. We believe that it is incrementally harder to differentiate on […]
What is it Like to Wake Up and Have the Press Ready to Torpedo Your Business?
In case you missed it, the press yesterday ran several stories questioning the viability of a wireless charging company I invested in called uBeam. Obviously my day turned out very differently than I had anticipated when I woke up, but it wasn’t half as bad as the entire team at uBeam must have felt yesterday. […]
