Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is an EIR with Javelin Venture Partners and has been a contributor to TechCrunch since January 2011. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.
“In the Studio” welcomes it’s first two-guest show ever by hosting two long-time Valley veterans, former founders, investors, seed fund LPs, and executives who, most recently, had the presence of mind to anticipate an investment trend and build an entire investment business around it, ahead of the curve.
For Paul Martino and Rich Melmon, both managing directors at Bullpen Capital (along with co-founder Duncan Davidson), all the recent chatter about “The Series A Crunch” validates their initial thesis from three years ago. Back in 2009, the folks at Bullpen saw the delta between the number of seed deals and Series A checks growing, largely because more companies were getting funded. With the hint of an idea for a new fund, Martin, Melmon, and Davidson quickly formed Bullpen and, unlike many talking heads opining on the Series A crunch now, went and put their money and reputations where their mouths were. [And, just this week, Bullpen released a new report with new data called "The Series A Cliff," which can be downloaded here.]
Typically on “In The Studio,” the content isn’t so timely, but it just so happened that I invited Martino and Melmon a few months back, and this discussion is well-timed given the current early-stage investment climate. In this video, the Bullpen folks explain what they’re looking for — seed-funded companies that have product-market fit and an operational plan to get to Series A. Martino and Melmon also reflect a bit on how the locus of entrepreneurial activity in the Valley has shifted north to San Francisco in this cycle, and how the rise of YC and lean investing perfectly coincided with the time when larger venture firms may have raised too much money.
Paul is the CEO and cofounder of Aggregate Knowledge, which is the fourth company that he has founded over his 20 year technology career. Paul was previously the CTO and founder of Tribe Network, which was recently acquired by Cisco. In addition to being a serial entrepreneur, he has held senior business development positions at Intertrust and SkyPilot. The highly scalable architecture of the Aggregate Knowledge discovery platform is based on the research work Paul did on massively parallel...
Richard co-founded NSVG in 2002, and has managed its investment in twelve seed stage companies since 2002, including Broadware (sold to Cisco), BigFix (sold to IBM), Zvents, TubeMogul, Aggregate Knowledge, Superfish, and Shortform. He advised large Japanese high tech companies on using Silicon Valley methods to transform their firms. His clients included Sony, Matsushita, Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu, and Konica Minolta. He has actively participated in the creation and management of a number of companies: Electronic Arts with Trip Hawkins...
Bullpen Capital A new early-stage fund has formed to make follow-on investments in the slew of companies that have recently raised seed and angel funds. Bullpen Capital is an early-stage venture fund being formed to make follow-on investments in Internet technology companies that have been initially funded by super-angel capital efficient funds. Extending the capital efficient model beyond the seed stage keeps options open for the founders and investors. The rise of the super-angels is a capital market...
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