When Instagram was bought by Facebook earlier this spring for $1 billion, one question lingering on everyone’s minds was how much VC firm Andreessen Horowitz made on the deal. The firm had made an early investment in the photo sharing startup but then bet against it after Instagram’s pivot by later by supporting a rival.
A few days after the Facebook-Instagram acquisition was announced, the… → Read More
For any entrepreneur, the challenge of taking an idea to launch can be a daunting and expensive journey. Fortunately, Adeo Ressi, founder of TheFunded and startup accelerator, Founder Institute, has a ten step plan.
While there is no foolproof recipe for every launch, Ressi says his template will help any tech entrepreneur get a business off the ground for less than $2,000. The program, which… → Read More
eVenues, a service to book meeting rooms online, has won the top spot at won the Founder Showcase, which is a quarterly open start-up pitch competition and networking event held by TheFunded.
eVenues aggregates, searches, and rents meeting event space by the hour or day. It’s sort of like Expedia but for meeting spaces. The service is designed to also help small businesses and organizations like… → Read More
Some VCs are getting an early Valentine’s Day gift fromTheFunded, the site where CEOs rate venture capitalists and their firms. Below you will find the top-ranked individual VCs, as determined by their ratings in 2009. What makes this ranking particularly useful to entrepreneurs is that it is ratings by other CEOs, often CEOs who have had direct dealings with the VCs they are rating.
While this… → Read More
What do entrepreneurs want from venture capitalists? A new Cornell study by Ola Bengtsson (now an assistant professor of finance at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Frederick Wang looked at the stated preferences of entrepreneurs as expressed in comments and ratings on VC-ranking site The Funded. The study, which is based on opinions from roughly 1,500 entrepreneurs about 526 U.S. → Read More
Adeo Ressi, founder of The Funded, a site where people rate venture capitalists and the Founder Institute, an incubator of sorts, has long ranted about what he calls “the atrocities of investors.”
Now, a lot of people, including prominent angel investors and venture capitalists, are starting to listen to him. Tomorrow Ressi will announce a new, basic term sheet for use by investors and founders. → Read More
Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute, a seed stage incubator and mentoring program that we first covered last month, is set to release a set of legal documents this afternoon that promise to protect startup founders from, as he eloquently puts it, the “atrocities of investors.”
The new documents, created by Wilson Sonsini attorney Yoichiro Taku, are posted publicly on the website. They have a variety… → Read More
We’re always happy to give a wide berth to people pulling April Fools pranks, but even so it’s pushing it to do it on March 27. If you go that early, you need to be side-splittingly funny or earn our disdain until we’ve forgotten all about it.
The Funded‘s Adeo Ressi is now confirming that the shutdown notice he posted last week is part of an April Fools joke. He was unavailable for comment, he… → Read More
TheFunded, a website that rates venture funds based on first hand experiences from readers, is shutting down on April 2, according to a notice posted on the site today.
This very well may be an April Fools joke, although founder Adeo Ressi has not returned our email requesting comment. The fact that the service isn’t shutting down immediately also suggests this is fake.
The site has been … → Read More
What this economy needs to get out of its rut is more startups. Adeo Ressi, the founder of VC-rating site TheFunded, wants to do his part to help jump start the economy with fresh ideas and leaders. He is planning to roll out a start-up incubator, TheFunded Founder Institute (the site isn’t live yet), to groom young founders into CEOs. The Institute will play in the same entrepreneurial waters… → Read More
At a recent presentation at Harvard Business School, Adeo Ressi argued that the VC model is broken. That is nothing new for Ressi, who is the founder of the VC-rating site theFunded. He is kind of like the Nick Denton of the VC world, always saying that the sky is falling. It’s just that at this moment he happens to be right.
The slides from his presentation are embedded below, but really all… → Read More
If startup CEOs want to anonymously rate, review, and criticize venture capitalists, they can still do that on TheFunded. But the site added a feature today called TheFunded Connect that lets members help each other with what they really want: introductions to those same VCs. CEOs looking for funding can put up brief pitches, solicit comments from other members to refine those pitches, and… → Read More
TheFunded started publishing a list of top rated venture capitalists today. The ratings are based on reviews (either anonymous or not) written by entrepreneurs who’ve pitched those VCs. Should you pitch VCs that have higher ratings? No. Their rating is irrelevant, and some of the VCs that have the best track record at picking, building and selling companies also have the worst reputations on… → Read More
Up until now, if you wanted to see the ratings of individual venture capitalists on TheFunded, you had to be an invited member, which meant that you had to be the CEO or founder of a company (or pay $200 for six months access and prove that you are a senior adviser or consultant). But now anyone who visits the site can see the ratings for 17,000 individual VCs without logging in (before only the… → Read More
The Next Web conference that I am moderating in Amsterdam just kicked off, and the first speaker was Adeo Ressi, the founder of TheFunded, the invite-only community for venture-funded CEOs to compare notes about building startups and bitch about VCs. (VCs are not allowed on the site, which inspired a mock site, the Unfunded, for them to bitch about entrepreneurs). I met him last night at a dinner… → Read More
TheFunded, a site where entrepreneurs can leave anonymous feedback about their experiences with venture capitalists, has created quite a stir on Sand Hill Road. Rarely do I meet with a VC without the subject of it coming up, and how unfair it is. The fact that the site is now publishing confidential term sheet clauses as well only exacerbates the angst. Now VCs are fighting back. Someone has… → Read More
Venture capitalists already don’t much like TheFunded, a site that launched last March that lets entrepreneurs post stories about how they’ve been treated during the fund raising process. But now they’re really going to be angry – the site is encouraging users to upload term sheets so that people can compare and contrast individual terms from each VC. Venture capitalists… → Read More
Mark this one down as a major PR stunt, but they certainly have our attention: The founder (or more likely, founders) of venture capital gossip site TheFunded, who have been keeping their names anonymous since March when the site launched, will spill the beans tonight and announce themselves. Staying anonymous was probably smart, since more than a few VC’s have been miffed at all the… → Read More
I’m just going to touch on Wurkpal briefly. It’s a very simple forum site that is designed specifically for people to gossip/complain/etc. about their work environment anonymously. The site takes a guess as to where you are logging in from based on a reverse hostname lookup and tries to direct you to the correct company forum. You can also view the directory and go from there. The site… → Read More
TheFunded is now two months old and has turned into a somewhat controversial place for entrepreneurs to provide feedback on the venture capitalists they’ve pitched. Until now, membership was restricted. You have to be invited by another member, and you have to prove your identity as an entrepreneur by linking to a bio page or other evidence. There are some really ugly comments on the site. → Read More
Some venture capitalists are known for making speedy decisions, communicating clearly, treating portfolio companies fairly, and guiding their startups to a win for all stakeholders. Others, not so much. Some even lob the odd (friendly) jab or two at bloggers. A new site called TheFunded hopes to even the odds a little by getting the information out about how VCs treat entrepreneurs. They have a… → Read More
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