Mark joined GRP Partners in 2007 after having worked with GRP for nearly 8 years as a two-time entrepreneur. Most recently Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com (NASDAQ: CRM) following its acquisition of Koral,where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, the largest independent global content collaboration company focused on the engineering and construction sectors, which was acquired by SWORD Group (PARIS: SWP). Earlier in his career, Mark spent nearly ten years working for Accenture in Europe, Japan and the U.S.
Mark received a BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a dual citizen of the US and the UK.
Mark founded Launchpad LA, a program designed to help mentor LA’s most promising first-time startup CEO’s. He runs the Southern California Venture Capital Alliance (VCA) and is on the board of advisors for the venture capital fund of the UCSD Rady School of Business.
Mark sits on the Boards of RingRevenue, GumGum and Ad.ly. He was formerly on the boards of EMN8, Qualys, Koral and BuildOnline.
Launchpad LA today announces it will accept applications for its third class of Los Angeles-based tech startups. There are significant VC commitments and every entering company will get $50,000 in funding plus free office space.
The program was founded in 2009 by LA-based venture capitalist Mark Suster and has received funding from several prominent investors including Rincon Ventures (largest seed stage investor in SoCal), Idealab (first major incubator built by Bill Gross), Baroda Ventures, GRP Partners, David Cohen (founder of TechStars), David Tisch (founder of TechStars NY).
Launchpad LA has also signed up many prominent VC & individual advisors including:
VCs: 500 Startups, BlueRun Ventures, First Round Capital, Foundry Group, Menlo Ventures, MK Capital
Individuals: Jason Calacanis, Paul Kedrosky, Peter Levin (Principal, GeekChicDaily/Nerdist Industries), Howard Lindzon & Eric Ries
23 companies have graduated from Launchpad LA: 19 have received funding and 5 have been acquired.
For full details read on … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Back when I ran board meetings as a CEO, the biggest annoyance was Blackberrys. You would always be able to tell what was going on by seeing the unhealthy infatuation board members had with staring at their crotches. Somehow they imagined you didn’t notice that they were glancing beneath the table secretly firing off one-line emails.
Every entrepreneur I know bitched about it and the smartest boards banned Blackberrys.
Fast forward to today. We now have ultra-lightweight laptops (MacBook Air) and totally available Wi-Fi connections. So every board meeting I’m at has laptops opened. They are just there to “be productive” and review your material. Um, yeah. This is a mistake.
Read on to find out why and what to do about it …. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Later today I’ll be giving a keynote at the VCJ Venture Alpha conference here in San Francisco. I was asked to speak about the topic of “what is going on in the venture capital world and what is the next big thing after social networking?”
Tough topic but I have some views. I thought you might enjoy reading the presentation before even others see it! It is pretty self explanatory. Presentation is after the jump. → Read More
Everybody knows that when you raise money at a startup your ownership percentage of the company goes down. The goal is to have the value of the startup go up by enough that you own a smaller percentage of a much larger business and therefore your total personal value goes up.
The simplest way to think about this is: If you own 20% of a $2 million company your stake is worth $400,000. If you raise a new round of venture capital (say $2.5 million at a $7.5 million pre-money valuation, which is a $10 million post-money) you get diluted by 25% (2.5m / 10m). So you own 15% of the new company but that 15% is now worth $1.5 million or a gain of $1.1 million.
But understanding how you’re likely to get diluted over time is a more difficult concept. And figuring out how much your equity may be worth over the course of a 5-year stint at a startup is even more complicated. (Infographic after the jump) → Read More
A month ago I applauded Reed Hasting’s bold decision to split his business into two components. Today he’s announcing that they’re backing out of this decision.
Netflix as a service has always prided itself on movie recommendations that are tailored specifically to you, plus user ratings on the quality of films. So let me use their ratings system to judge their actions to date and explain how I think things will break in the future and why.
The big price increase: 5 out of 5 stars. The remainder of this article will deal with this decision but it comes down to the different economics of DVD rentals due to “the first sale doctrine,” which gives Netflix a complete library of films and the fact that the first-sale doctrine doesn’t apply to digital downloads. This makes their business types very different. Some customer segments value the DVD business and these may be more price sensitive. Some customer segments value the convenience of instantly available films. They might be willing to pay higher prices (and perhaps not an “all you can eat” price but a “pay as you go” price per film). They are potentially different business models. Netflix needs to segment their customers and charge each what is appropriate. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Venture Capitalists typically have partners’ meetings on Mondays. Yesterday was a Monday. And not a pleasant one.
The stock market is off 15.1% over the past 2 weeks. Nobody knows where it’s headed next. But as VC partners sat in their weekly meetings yesterday I can assure you that many of them were looking just a little bit closer at the cash needs of their portfolio companies – making sure they’re “fully funded.”
I’ll bet many of them did a review of their “investment pace” as in – how quickly should we be investing. I’ll bet many did a slow roll on deals that might have gotten approved today. Not a “no” but not yet a “yes.”
What should you do about it? And what should you expect from the economy ahead? Read on … → Read More
tl;dr version:
If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. read it. live it.
It’s written by Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson. They know what they’re talking about. It’s important information that you need to avoid “information asymmetry” with VCs
Some big lessons I’ve learned over the years about term sheets:
1) the language never says anything remotely like “blocking rights” or “participating preferred liquidation preferences” in the term sheets. It’s hidden in legal language. You need to understand them.
2) lawyers seldom walk you through the “how can this term be used against you” scenarios. If you don’t know the right questions to ask you may be left unawares.
3) VCs are anal about things like voting thresholds, seniority of their stock, protective provisions, etc. Entrepreneurs never seem to focus on anything other than ownership percentage.
Brad & Jason’s book, Venture Deals, will arm you. Read on for more details … → Read More
I recently wrote a post about the open nature of Twitter and why I’m long on its future. I know it’s easier to write “horse race” stories about who’s signing up more users, raising more funding or who’s “hot” lately. But something more nuanced is at hand that is worth debating – is the future of the Internet & global communications more open or more closed.
Twitter is open. No, not just the fact that you Tweet publicly versus privately, but they’re open in letting their Tweet stream flow into other products & services. They’re an open feed. It is open also in the same way that Google is open. Google started as a place where you came to be taken via links to other people’s websites. I know many of you don’t remember the context, but that was heresy when Google started. Google was duuumb. Sending traffic to other websites, ha!
The rule of thumb then was “stickiness” – remember that? Get people to your website and never let them leave. Clooosed. That’s what AOL was. A “walled garden.” This article will argue that openness is an under-valued virtue in technology & politics but that with patience wins in the end. Read more to find out why … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Most web publishers measure where their traffic is coming from using an analytics package such as Google Analytics, Omniture or Core Metrics. These were good packages in the pre social media world at helping figure out who was driving your traffic.
Today they’re wrong. Terribly wrong. And figuring out who is referring your traffic is a very important part of determining how you allocate your marketing budgets. It is almost certain that Twitter is driving much more of your referrals than you think.
Possibly up to 4x more. Marketers and web companies need to understand this.
awe.sm, the social media analytics company, has crunched some numbers for you. Here’s more details … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Bubble. There, I said it. We’re definitely in some stage of it – whether early in the cycle or the end of it nobody can say. And it will all be fine.
People get too worked up over the word. I’m no great scholar on bubbles – I have more interesting things to spend my time worrying about than the exact definition, but having been around a few I have at least given them intellectual consideration. I know that most people who are close to them tend to deny their existence, as we saw in the great housing bubble of 2002-2007 and the dot com bubble of 1997-2000.
I believe a bubble occurs when a market is willing to pay greater than intrinsic value for an asset class. That asset class need not represent the broader market. As any historian of bubbles will tell you – there were periods of bubbles in assets as arcane as tulips, South American trading companies, dot-com bubbles & housing bubbles. They are often bound by geographies and asset classes. But they also often have a rippling effect on broader markets as all of our economies seem to be intertwined these days.
The fact that today’s Internet bubble does not represent all companies does not disprove its existence.
The following post goes through a graphical analysis of the current market conditions and what to expect in the road ahead … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Any company who develops products reliant on iOS spends weeks crapping their pants before WWDC. No vacation schedules allowed for weeks before or weeks after. The announcements come out in one day and then even if you survive the annual release announcements you often still have to scramble to make sure your product is ready to work on time.
It’s madness. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
It’s 2011 but you could forgive yourself for thinking you’ve gone back in a decade old time capsule to a time with frothy valuations and easy money. I know, I know. It’s not the same market. There are more users now using the Internet for more of their lives. And there is real revenue now although as we’ve discovered recently – not always profits.
The fact remains – raising money has consequences. Raise at too low of a price and you take too much dilution. Obvious. But raising at too high of a price can potentially cause you even worse problems. Existential ones.
My motto is that startups should raise “at the top end of normal.” Read on to undertand why … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
There is an old management adage that says, “Hire slowly, fire fast.” The idea has become conventional wisdom. It says that you need to take due care in selecting team members. It also says that you need to act quickly when your instinct says somebody isn’t working out.
Only half of this adage is accurate for startups. Here’s why … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by (@msuster) Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Are we headed for a long era of innovation in which startups are the new norm? Are we seeing a time in which pre-revenue companies are more valuable than our offline institutional brands?
Yes, there is unprecedented innovation. The era of cheap cloud computing plus open-source software plus digital natives unleashed upon society is creating some truly amazing products that will challenge the way we do business and the way we live our lives.
No. It’s not all sunshine and candy canes. In a way, startups have become kind of like the video game industry. New stuff gets created, it’s fun to play with and talk about. You want to use it because your friends are doing it and you want to find out what it’s all about. You want to see what’s new.
You play with it for a few weeks or months. Then you stop. You stop because it was game like; temporal. Non valuable. Not really helping you do something better. Not improving your life or business.
If you want to build a meaningful startup, you need to win “share of mind.” Not enough entrepreneurs think about the sustainability of share of mind these days.
Here’s why you should … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
I’m in Seattle this week. Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. Great lifestyle, great cost of living, motivated people and only the crap weather on the negative side.
They have had their successes; yet somehow all of the neurons don’t yet seem to be firing are powerfully as they need to be. Their “patron companies” – Amazon & Microsoft – aren’t yet turning into the next generation of fast-growth businesses. That’s a problem.
As I gear up to give a keynote at the annual Seattle 2.0 awards dinner on Thursday night I started reflected on what it would take to “change the trajectory” for Seattle or for any regional market, really. It really wouldn’t take much to turn a great technology ecosystem into a truly electric one.
The truth is that only a few key motivated & talented players are ever needed to make extra-ordinary change in a country, a region or a company. Nelson Mandela. Steve Jobs. Sheryl Sandberg. Brad Feld. Ron Conway.
The following post looks at what recipe would be needed to take the raw ingredients of Seattle and take it to the next level. It’s a recipe for your community. It’s a recipe for your company. Read on … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Banner Ads. They first started in 1994 and are therefore almost as old as the Web itself. They were very effective back then, with the original ad garnering a 78% click-through rate (CTR)! I guess from there we had nowhere to go but down.
Nowadays banner ads get on average 0.2% CTR meaning for every 1,000 ads that are served up only 2 people click on them. And as Jon Steinberg of Buzzfeed points out, the CTRs for social media banner ads are just 0.08%. Holy Shiitake! → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
There’s a line of thinking in Silicon Valley that you should build product businesses rather than services businesses. This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses.
It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. You’re a small fish.
But technology service businesses can be hugely profitable, rewarding & life-changing experiences for entrepreneurs. So how should you think about whether to build a services business or how to finance your existing one?
Read on … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
I’m a very big proponent of the “lean startup movement” as espoused by Steve Blank & Eric Ries. The part of the movement that resonates the most with me is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while they’re experimenting with their product and determining whether there is a large market for what they do.
In the late 90′s I saw a dangerous trend creeping into the startup world, which was that companies were suddenly raising huge amounts of money too early in their existence. It seemed to be purely speculative. It’s not clear that there was big customer demand for some of these products yet entrepreneurs were egged on by VCs to “take the money” and try and push the market.
Here’s what those VCs (and us entrepreneurs, myself included) didn’t understand: 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. Here’s why … → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
Blogs. We all read them to get a sense of what is going on in the world, peeling back layers of the old world in which media was too scripted.
By definition, if you are reading this you read blogs. But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? Absolutely.
This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about. So read on … → Read More
Startups. We know the mantra: Team matters. Is this philosophy exaggerated? Overrated? Cliché? No. Team is the only thing that matters. Whatever you’re working on now it’s irrelevant unless you continue rapid innovation.
Why? Either you’re in an interesting market or your not. If you’re in an interesting market and if you start to prove value then you’ll have the world gunning for you over night. If you have neither a talented team nor an interesting market it’s irrelevant anyways.
This post offers 8 tips for hiring the right people. Avoid the drama, read on … → Read More
