Dave Kellogg is an outstanding leader and thinker -- go and follow his blog posts if you're not already doing so. He has a lot of good advice on planning and spending after getting funding ("post-funding"). Two of my portfolio companies went through the pleasure of raising a new round of financing last month. There … Continue reading Post-Funding: Trigger Spend on Milestones, not Timeline.
Sales people have to close deals. The VP of Sales has to make sure to hit her quarterly target. Everyone hates the deals that are stalling, that seem to be stuck. As a board member, I have to be strategic. Slow-moving deals are a unique opportunity to uncover systemic problems in the sales motion, reveal … Continue reading Sales — Five reasons why I love slow moving deals.
We often get the question about "Leading Unicorn Venture Capital Firms". And emerging fund managers are sometimes taken aback when we are unfazed about their two unicorns in their portfolio and continue our due diligence. Business Insider just published an article about early-stage investors with billion-dollar outcomes. [DISCLAIMER BELOW] [EDIT 5/28/2019, 08:38 PDT -- I … Continue reading Leading Unicorn VC Firms and The Long Tail
I was using Preqin to understand office locations of firms (institutional, family offices, and corporates) that are doing direct venture capital investments and are still seeking actively for new investments (collectively called "VC firms" below). Tobias Lam from the Preqin NYC office was kind enough to pull some back-end data on office locations for firms … Continue reading VC Funds: $100 billion of dry powder in the Bay Area.
2018 felt like CVCs were in almost every deal. So what do the numbers say? [Below graphs are based on Pitchbook data. Early tracking of data, before 2008, is not that reliable. After that, not every transaction is reported accurately. But the data is reasonably good at showing trends. I'll try and point out some problems along the way] CVCs Participate in More Deals Than Before. While the number of reported number of venture capital rounds in … Continue reading Corporate Venture Capital: 2018 In Numbers.
We scroll for hours through the (literally!) bottomless feeds on our phones. We are looking for the two-second smile, zoom in on that face, that cleavage, that wreckage, that fail, that cat for six seconds. We heart the post when we think others might find it smart that we hearted the post. We might even … Continue reading Rant of the Month: Recommendation Algorithms — You’re Doing it Wrong!
The short battery life, the fear of running out, the dreaded wait until the phone is charged, ever wondering “is it enough?” – it is the fear of missing out. What will I miss in these moments out of battery? What will happen while I am away? What if something cool happens and I can’t … Continue reading Rant of the Month: Battery Life — You’re Getting it Wrong!
As VCs, we can voice observations, opinions, demands (which might or might not be met :)). We can assist, coach, or mentor the current CEO. But unless you are also a board director and -- together with all other board directors -- hire a new CEO, we cannot fix culture. Nicholas Pearce, on Dear HBR, … Continue reading VCs Can’t Fix Culture.
For B2B and enterprises IT startups, the median number of years between the first round of venture funding and a meaningful exit greater than $350M is now about 11 years. That's 4.5 years longer than in 2014. I ran a quick Pitchbook search for Venture-backed Information Technology companies, Excluding the B2C segment, With IPOs and … Continue reading Meaningful exits in IT now take 11 years from first funding.
Venture-backed startups are staying private longer (no news here). But how much longer? As venture capital investors, we are trying to learn from past mistakes and successes. And we need to calibrate for different market environments. A recent observation is that the sideways exits below $100M in deal value are vanishing. Startups keep going until … Continue reading Go Long. And Go Big or Go Home.
