Private Equity
For some time now, I’ve enjoyed the back and forth between venture practitioners and entrepreneurs about what constitutes the elements of best practices and cogent thinking in venture decision-making. Codifying a venture process or methodology has stymied many a well-meaning firm over the years. While there are certain processes and approaches that most firms would recognize as well-reasoned, there still exists wide disagreement among venture investors and the firms they helm about what should drive investment decisions, how much rigor and analysis should play into investment decision-making versus old-fashioned gut instinct and momentum-style approaches and what ideal blend of background, experience and temperament makes for a successful venture capitalist. The answers aren’t so obvious.
5 min read · 17 May 2010
Silicon Valley Bank came out with a report today, called Dialing Down, that puts some data around the commonly held belief that better returns come from smaller funds. In this case – conventional wisdom is clearly true. Their fundamental conclusion is that venture capital funds are getting smaller – and that’s a good thing because it’s the small funds that generate outsized returns. The most compelling statistic compared the returns of large funds versus small funds (large funds being defined as above the median size for their vintage year). The result:
3 min read · 14 May 2010
2 min read · 12 May 2010
6 min read · 10 May 2010
With venture capital increasingly difficult to come by as the industry faces consolidation and its own fundraising challenges, entrepreneurs are looking to any and all potential sources of investment capital with which to build their businesses. Turning to angel investors for seed capital is just one example of this “any port in a storm” mentality. Corporate investors, once again focusing their attention to the start-up domain, represent another potential source of growth capital and, perhaps more importantly, strategic partnerships.
5 min read · 07 May 2010
2 min read · 05 May 2010
My book, Mastering the VC Game, is officially available today (and 40 pages of excerpts are available for free if you want to preview it), yet I'm kind of grumpy. I've gotten nice reviews (see AVC, Boston.com and YoungEntrepreneur for a few examples) and TechCrunch, BusinessWeek and Upromise have done really nice excerpts. But I confess I'm a bit of a perfectionist (when I'd come home with a 95% on a test, my parents would ask me what happened on those 5% points - I wonder if that has anything to do with it?) and so I find myself mulling about the mistakes I made with it. Tangible, print products are tough because, unlike a blog post or a piece of software code, you can't just change it on the fly. Here are the top three things I've been stewing on:
2 min read · 29 April 2010
4 min read · 26 April 2010
This past Friday was my last day at Spark Capital. It has been a privilege to be a part of this team. I have grown in ways that I didn’t expect, and was glad to be part of a firm that allowed me to interact with such wonderful entrepreneurs and early stage investors each day. I owe a lot to the partners at Spark for their support and mentorship and am proud to say that I was a part of building this firm over the past several years. When you end something and embark on a new adventure, it’s always important to look back. I didn’t really intend to become an investor when I moved back to Boston from Silicon Valley. But I did, and I learned so much that it’s hard to distill into a few points. But here are a few highlights:
4 min read · 26 April 2010
Some time ago I wrote a post on tips and best practices that I felt startups ought to consider in getting the most out of media relationships. The impetus had to do with recent reports I had been getting from portfolio companies about media interviews that had not gone as well as company management had hoped. Story angles had been mishandled, sensitive information had been unwittingly divulged, and statements were seemingly taken out of context. In this piece I’d like to cover a sunnier subject: How to effectively run a media event. Last night, portfolio company Runka.com, a destination site for eco-friendly products at discount prices, conducted its first formal media mixer in San Francisco. I prefer to use the term “mixer” as opposed to ”launch party” given that the site went live some weeks ago and, quite frankly, “launch party” still carries with it some dot-com era connotations for many in the start-up/VC community. To this day I have a hard time seeing the phrase “launch party” on an invite without it conjuring up images of hosted martini bars and overflowing trays of sushi in a wildly overpriced nightclub.
7 min read · 23 April 2010
