What Do LPs Think of the Venture Capital Markets for 2016?
At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. While I’m not an LP, the following post represents my discussions with more than 100 LP firms – specifically ones that do fund […]
How Many Angels is the Right Amount for a Startup to Have?
If you follow the Twittersphere you may have noticed several people weighing in on this recent piece by Mike Isaac of the NY Times, asking “How Many Angels is Too Many?” I found myself nodding through all of it with quotes like, “Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley,” said Sam Altman I […]
The Most Important Advice I Could Give You About Unicorns
The thing about narratives is that they drive behavior in ways that are more powerful and profound than people readily acknowledge – for good and bad.
We All Get To Our First 50 Customers Our Own Way. Then It’s All The Same.
Recently I was fortunate enough to moderate the founders panel at BoxDev ’15. We had 5 great founder-CEOs on the panel, all post-Initial Traction (all 50+ employees), but with very diverse backgrounds and stories. Everyone got to $1m in ARR a different way. Some were first timers, several were second timers. I don’t think […]
Chasing Unknown Unknown, The Spirit Of Silicon Valley
A framework that I use to think about problems disruptive technology could help solve is based on what Donald Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir, Known and Unknown: Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We […]
The Silent Killer – The Company Your Community Never Created
I was at a dinner recently in Chicago and the table discussion was about building great companies outside of Silicon Valley. Of course this can be done and of course I am a big proponent of the rise of startup centers across the country as the Internet has moved from the “infrastructure phase” to the “application […]
Here’s What’s Driving Collaborative Consumption and Where the Market May Head Next
I spoke this past week at the LeWeb conference in London, which was a superbly well run event with a very quality production team. Kudos. The 20-minute video of my presentation is here if you’re interested. And it was convenient for me because we also held our annual London board meeting of DataSift, who helps […]
Apprenda Launches Hybrid Cloud Support
CloudBeat is all about customer case studies and not about vendor announcements, that said I am aware of a couple of announcements coming up today in the PaaS space.
Is Silicon Valley Really Coming to an End?
By now you probably know that David Sacks, co-founder of PayPal and founder of both Geni & Yammer made some observations on Facebook that Silicon Valley “as we know it” was coming to an end. He says “In order to create a successful new company, you have to find an idea that (1) has escaped […]
CloudBeat is back – and the call for papers is open
Right at the end of November, we’ll once again be doing what we can to assemble a stellar cast of cloud companies and their customers at the Sofitel in Redwood City, just south of San Francisco.
Huddle Picks Up Massive Series C Round
Exciting news this morning from Cloud content management and collaboration company Huddle. The UK founded but now US/UK headquartered company is this morning announcing a Series C funding round to the tune of $24M. The round takes Huddle’s funding to $40 million in the five or so years since it was launched. Huddle is an […]
There’s a World Outside the US–Podio Delivers
Living on the other side of the world from the bay area, it’s sometimes little frustrating just how inward looking Silicon Valley can be. Sometimes it feels like some technology vendors discount the 5 billion or so people who don’t live in that tiny West Coast sliver. Apart from being an arrogant attitude it’s also […]
Seattle Startup Weekend – Some Thoughts
It has been over a two years since I went to my last startup weekend here in Seattle, and the sad part is that it really did not leave an impression. You would think that something like this would, but two years ago, it did not. This year however, I was able to go […]
Bangalore Embodies The Silicon Valley
I spent a few days in Bangalore this month. This place amazes me every single time I visit it. Many people ask me whether I think Bangalore has potential to be the next Silicon Valley. I believe, it’s a wrong question. There’s some seriously awesome talent in India, especially in Bangalore. Don’t copy the Silicon Valley. […]
Lead, Follow or Get the Fuck Out of the Way
Today’s post courtesy of the Dave McClure school of vocabulary. About a month ago I was meeting with a seasoned entrepreneur. After 10 minutes I felt like we were old buddies because we had both been through the trenches of startup tech land and had had similar experiences. He was recounting one of his higher […]
