How to Avoid Being Disrupted as a VC
My partner Greg Bettinelli (worth following on Twitter) was recently named by The LA Business Journal as the “Top deal maker in Los Angeles in Venture Capital.” Numero uno. I was nowhere to be found. And that’s a true reflection of just how successful and prolific Greg has been in LA. In a world that is […]
The Full Dataset on What VCs are Thinking About Funding in 2016
Every year at Upfront we try to analyze the venture markets. We try to look at the sources of capital, the valuations, exits and trends. We use this try to draw some context that informs our funding decisions. Of course we fund companies in good markets and bad. In venture our goal is to fund […]
Dealing With Generational Change at VC Firms
Dan Primack and Fred Wilson sat down for an interview last week at the Upfront Summit and the results were amazing. It’s 25 minutes and it’s both a pleasure to watch and is super insightful. You can watch the interview embedded above of click on this link: Dan Primack interviews Fred Wilson at the Upfront […]
Embracing Your Community as a Strategy
5 years ago I sat at our annual meeting bored beyond belief. It wasn’t just that I have ADD making boring meetings excruciatingly painful – it was that the format was tired, unimaginative, uninspiring and not very useful. We did what many VC funds did – we presented our annual results, we stood up and […]
Do VC Platforms Make Sense?
In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros. Examples of VC platform services include: […]
Does a VCs Culture Really Matter? The Upfront Story
I’m often asked about the differences between being at a VC and being an entrepreneur and whether I prefer one or the other. The biggest difference I cite is that Venture Capital often feels like an “individual sport” while startups are a “team sport.” The reason is that at a VC you have a group […]
Come to the SaaStr Annual and Make a Week of It
It’s not often you get an opportunity to join 5,000 of your peers in SaaS in one location for a week. Sure we gather at Dreamforce, wave as we run across Moscone to our next customer meeting or maybe catch up for 5 minutes at one of the 17 parties that night, but rarely do […]
Twitter, DataSift, platforms
Twitter, DataSift, platforms: Many of you will know that Twitter unexpectedly cancelled it’s [sic] contract to allow DataSift to resell Twitter data to 3rd parties. I read the declarations by industry analysts on Twitter that this was “proof that you can’t build a business on somebody else’s platform” and perhaps DataSift should have known better. […]
Help Us Pick 1 or 2 of the SaaStr Annual ’16 Speakers!
We’ll start to roll out the SaaStr Annual ’16 speakers in the coming weeks. It will be tough to top the ’15 speakers — from Aaron Levie to Bob Tinker, from Stewart Butterfield to David Sacks, from David Ulevitch to Parker Conrad, etc. etc. But we will find a way! We’ll also have three full […]
The Case for Optimism and Risk at Startups
Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam, led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry, announced a $10 million round of financing. The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. […]
The Changing Structure of the VC Industry
There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. On the surface the narratives have been The rise of “micro VCs” or seed-stage funds The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like) The poor performance of the asset class (this analysis has […]
Joe Perez, Founder of @tastemade, On What Makes a Great Product Manager & More
Update: Bothsides TV is now available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, or any RSS podcast player you use, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube. I also added a little Soundcloud widget on the sidebar (if you’re viewing on web – not on mobile or RSS reader) that you can listen to each episode with. In the […]
Officially Announcing Bothsides TV
For 2 years I interviewed VCs & founders for a show called This Week in VC. If you want to see any back interviews you can click on that link. I’ve been promising to relaunch a new show for the past 18 months but needed to find somebody to help me with cameras, filming, editing, […]
Some Reflections on VC Investment Decisions
I was having dinner with a friend last night and we were chatting about venture capital and a bit about what I’ve learned. I started in 2007 with a thesis that my primary investment decision would be about the team (70%) and only afterward about the market opportunity (30%). I was telling him that it […]
How I Got the Monkey Off My Back – Today Was a Good Day
I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 years ago. I spent my first year developing proprietary deal flow and learning the business and then the Sept 2008 / Lehman Bros collapse / financial meltdown happened. As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly […]
