Venture Capital Funds are a two-sided service business: You connect startups one one side with money from investors (Limited Partners = "LPs") on the other side. Strictly speaking, "investing" is more of a catch-all phrase of three things the local financial regulator [1] wants you to do: Direction of capital deployment, Stewardship of capital and … Continue reading Beyond ‘Founder-First’: Designing what Actually Serves
[Avoiding Hype, Serving the Mission] Sidenote: I had the pleasure of doing a (German) podcast interview with an incredibly smart host and experienced interviewer. It just aired today .. which I was not sure of it ever would, because (A) I don't think I was very succinct; and (B) there was very clear feedback that … Continue reading Six Innovation Fronts that Matter in Defense Tech
In my post Public Equities: 2022 Outlook, I wrote: Time is Money. Don’t Wait. I got a lot of flak for that. How could I recommend investing when I don't know what the future brings?! Wouldn't that really depend on the risk target of an investor? True. That's why I wrote about what I am … Continue reading Followup: Don’t Sit on the Sidelines!
When we due diligence emerging managers, not presenting an investible financial product is the fastest way to come to a "no". It's true that you have to make "good investments" (whatever that means), but unless you are only investing your own money, you need to offer a financial product that attracts LPs. HNIs and family … Continue reading Venture Capital is a Financial Product
IPOs and Beyond - A Guide to Exit Options for Companies by Blake Kim and Quinten Burgunder, Andreessen Horowitz
Angel, seed, and early-stage venture capital investments are getting more and more expensive over the last 10 years. Investors write larger checks but don't get more ownership at the same rate. Last Monday, Pitchbook released their 1H 2019 Valuation Report (data as of 06/30/2019). The report has interesting charts, such as: Two charts from PitchBook's … Continue reading Early-stage Ownership is Getting More Expensive for Angels, VCs
The number of new early-stage VC funds with a focus on US-based pre-seed, seed, and early-stage startups grew from 163 (vintage 2014) to 490 (vintage 2019) [1]. As I wrote two weeks ago in "Rapid Decline of New U.S.-based IT Startups", the number of newly founded US startups in information technology declined from 5,856 (2014) … Continue reading US: More Early-Stage VC Funds are Targeting Fewer Startups
"Every A-round is $10M nowadays. That's the new norm. There is too much money in the market." I think I carelessly quipped something along these lines in the past three weeks. And I was wrong. I had fallen into the average-bias of VC-world, into false signaling of few outliers. As I wrote earlier (and so … Continue reading Massive Early-Stage Funding — I Was Wrong.
Fred Wilson has written about Un-SAFE notes. In a nutshell: they're not less expensive, and they hide some dilution problems when stacked. Because that's not always obvious, here is an Excel Worksheet to play around with. >> Download the Excel Worksheet. << The worksheet uses some circular references, so go to File > Options > … Continue reading SAFE Notes – Excel Worksheet Attached
Don't pick up. "I think you have the wrong number. We are a commercial waste processor for pig and cow cadavers." "I'm just an end user. I don't know who made the buying decision, or why. It's what we were told to use." "I am just an end user. I don't know what our budget … Continue reading Sales — Five fast ways to get rid of unwanted sales calls.
