Venture Capital

There is an opportunity for a new VC Firm to brand itself. Recent brands in Venture Capital arose from transparency and founder-friendliness. YCombinator gives new, young, technical talent an entry into Silicon Valley. 500 Startups does it globally. Fred Wilson blogs the business. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz back Founders to be Public Company CEOs. More

A common meme floating around right now is that there is an Angel investing bubble. In the sense that an enormous amount of capital is being placed at risk, and its popping will have grave macro-economic consequences, No. The total amount of additional capital flowing through the Silicon Valley early-stage ecosystem, thanks to Super-Angels and newly minted millionaires, is on the order of half-a-billion dollars or so. More

People often mock Super-Angels as being impure because they invest other people’s money. We also often get asked “What are VCs and Seed Funds doing on AngelList?” (They’re clearly marked, by the way, and you can choose who your pitch is visible to.) I will propose, however, that whose money you’re investing is less relevant than on what terms it comes on. More

I co-founded AngelList because I was tired of saying no to entrepreneurs. I wanted to say instead, “yes, we can help you get funded.” So, it’s especially disappointing when we get promising startups pitching on AngelList from remote locations. Some we’ve managed to get funded – including ones in Canada and Europe. More

It’s a common complaint – venture investors are driven by what other investors think, and therefore lack imagination and spine. There’s some truth to it – it is human nature, after all, to look for social proof and authority when making decisions. However, that’s not the whole story. In public markets, Investors make their decisions to invest in parallel, and in theory, most of the relevant information about a company is publicly disclosed, by law. More

A lot of entrepreneurs assume that the initial way to engage with an investor is to *insist* on a meeting. It’s a relatively safe assumption that anyone on the buy side (an investor, an advertiser, an executive at a large company) receives far more requests for meetings than they can follow up on, and are constantly looking for excuses to say “no.” Synchronous activities, such as phone calls, screencasts, videos, and webex conferences are almost as bad. More

At STIRR events, VCs fly business class, but entrepreneurs fly coach 🙂 I have a similar rule – whenever I go to coffee / lunch / dinner for business, the person who has raised more money pays… More

I know I haven’t posted recently, but I have been busy! Nivi and I are launching a new site called Venture Hacks, an entrepreneur’s guide to hacking Venture Capital. It’s a “tell all” site that helps entrepreneurs get on an even footing with their better-informed counterparts when negotiating an investment. More