Private Equity
3 min read · 14 January 2010
This past summer we surveyed over 1,000 venture capitalists, and asked them a simple yes or no question: “Is the Venture Capital Business Broken?" Over 53% of the respondents said “yes." This triggered a lot of conversation in the blogosphere and in the VC community. It got me thinking about what exactly is going on and made me want to do a deeper dive. As a result, late in the fourth quarter I reached out to 50 general partners of venture funds across the country in Silicon Valley, Austin, Dallas, Tysons Corner, New York and Boston to gauge their sentiments about the state of the venture business. Not surprisingly, a wide-range of insights and comments resulted from those conversations. I started those dicussions by asking: “How does the venture business look on January 1, 2010, when the industry can no longer drag around the 1999 returns in a trailing 10 year average?” The best response I received was that on that date that the industry would go to a 12-year trailing average!
6 min read · 12 January 2010
2 min read · 12 January 2010
For decades, the venture capital industry was like a Yale Secret Society - very clubby, discrete and opaque. VCs had all the power in the VC-entrepreneur equation, and entrepreneurs had to work hard to decode the mysterious VC process to obtain funding. My how the world has changed in a few short years. Pundits will tell you that in terms of trends, 2009 was the year of the real-time Web/Twitter, smart phones/iPhone and the mainstream emergence of digital advertising. But 2009 was also the year VCs blogging and tweeting really became mainstream.
3 min read · 06 January 2010
Finally saw Avatar over the holidays, and James Cameron has done it again. I can definitely see it winning the Oscar for Best Picture. But now that 2009 has ended, it’s time to make some real Oscar predictions for the all of the best movies of the past year. So, here is my list of the Best Movies of 2009, Venture Capital (VC) style:
1 min read · 05 January 2010
He who loses less, wins? Venture capital in the 2000s was much akin to the joke about the two campers who cross paths with a bear. As the angry bear begins charging out of the woods towards the campers, the first camper starts putting his sneakers on. The other camper screams, "It's no use, we'll never be able to outrun the bear!" And the first camper yells back, "I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!" Over the past decade, venture capitalists could claim top-quartile performance just by showing smaller losses than the rest of the pack. The start of 2010 provides a clean slate—that is, after we break out the scorecard and grade last year’s predictions.
4 min read · 04 January 2010
In an effort to “Walk My Talk”, I approached my colleagues at Pinnacle Group and have arranged a year-long sabbatical to allow me to complete a book about career transitions.
5 min read · 22 December 2009
3 min read · 14 December 2009
4 min read · 11 December 2009
5 min read · 10 December 2009
