“In the Studio” welcomes a co-founder of a company which went public, a native Texan who studied engineering in Silicon Valley and business on the east coast, and who, upon returning to the Valley to begin investing, encountered a different path than he originally anticipated. → Read More
Earlier today, CNNMoney broke the news that well-known Googler/YouTuber Hunter Walk and former Googler Satya Patel would be starting a new VC firm called Homebrew. What wasn’t known was whether Walk would be leaving Google to pursue Homebrew full time, but he has confirmed that to be the case. The last time we spoke with Walk, he was passionately explaining all of the things he gets to work… → Read More
For this week’s Ask A VC episode, we sat down with Foundation Capital’s newest partner Anamitra Banerji, who was just promoted from entrepreneur in residence to investment partner at the firm. We chatted about Banerji’s decision to become a VC vs. founding a startup, and how being an entrepreneur in residence helped him come to that decision. → Read More
The proliferation of organized “hackathons” has been a big story over the past few years. Quite a few developers that I’m friends with see them as a way to keep themselves sharp on their own products and ideas, especially when a different company is the one putting the event on. I recently attended, and judged, a Foursquare hackathon in San Francisco, and saw about 20… → Read More
Whatever it is, it is palpable. A sort of buzz in the Valley that all is not well, and a slight nervousness among entrepreneurs, investors and startup employees as they flit about their day-to-day. We may not be in the middle of an outright private market collapse, but there will definitely be fewer tigers and monkeys at this year’s holiday parties.
The fingernail biting is not just caused by… → Read More
Editor’s note: Robert Wiltbank, PhD, is a professor at Willamette University in Portland, Ore. He is co-author of Effectual Entrepreneurship and of The Catalyst, as well as many academic articles in the fields of entrepreneurship and strategy.
I began studying angel investing returns about 10 years ago as a result of a problem I couldn’t resolve. Over these years I’ve compiled the… → Read More
As digital health data grows, wearable health-tracking devices mature, tools used in remote diagnosis and treatment improve and with healthcare providers soon to be prescribing mobile health apps, there’s a lot to be excited about at the intersection of health and technology. As Michelle Snyder of InterWest recently pointed out, thanks to the quickening pace of innovation in the space, it may not… → Read More
Open Ocean, the VC fund led by former MySQL and Nokia execs, is investing $1.3 million in Stockholm, Sweden-based startup Truecaller — maker of the crowdsourced phone directory app and web white pages service that lets you look unknown phone numbers and match them with names. The Series A funding comes from Open Ocean’s Fund Three fund. → Read More
Editor’s note: Scott Weiss is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007. He blogs at http://scott.a16z.com and you can follow him on Twitter @W_ScottWeiss.
People often ask me what the best path to becoming a successful entrepreneur is: “Should I go try and start a company now? Or go to grad school? How about… → Read More
Russia was once known for its undying adoration for all things French back in the day, and a century and a half later you could argue that some of that spark is still hanging around. New Generation Investment, the Russian VC firm part-owned by Leonid Reiman, former Minister of Communications and Information Technologies, has announced that it would like to start investing into the startup scene in… → Read More
Today was a pretty big day for 500 Startups, the Silicon Valley seed venture capital firm and startup accelerator founded by outspoken tech investment extraordinaire Dave McClure. The firm disclosed in a regulatory filing that it’s halfway finished raising a brand new $50 million round of funding, the second in its two-year history and a significant step up from the $29 million investment that it… → Read More
The VC market is still strong in China, despite indications to the contrary. The old saying goes, here, that 99% of the returns come from 5% of the firms. This means big bucks for the winners – and some interesting investment opportunities for VCs in Asia and the US.
Sarah Lacy sat down with Steve Ji of Sequoia Capital, Rocky Lee of Cadwalader, Hugo Shong of Accel – IDG, and Hans Tung of… → Read More
Slowly, but surely, Vienna is building its own reputation as a startup hotspot and eventually there might be a fight between Berlin, London, Copenhagen and Vienna, although London and Berlin are ahead at the moment. There have been a number of large exits driven by Austrian-born founders (exits from UCP, Jahjah, 3united and last.fm exceed 1 billion USD). Companies such as Wikitude, Runtastic and … → Read More
At this morning’s TechCrunch Disrupt, Michael Arrington sat down with nearly half a dozen VC’s, including Joe Kraus (Google Ventures), Rich Wong (Accel Partners), Shervin Pishevar (Menlo Ventures), George Zachary (CRV) and James Slavet (Greylock Partners). The investors shared their thoughts on the state of investing, general industry trends, the increasing speed of VC investments as they try… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More
Last week, venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote a post pointing out that the VC industry is split in two: software-based businesses and everything else (specifically, “cleantech, biotech and other capital intensive businesses”).
Software businesses don’t require as much capital as they once did, and certainly not as much as cleantech or biotech. In fact, I’d go so far to say that the main asset… → Read More
In part three of our Super Angel v. VC SMACKDOWN Dave McClure says “I am all about the flip. GREED IS GOOD. I am Gordon Gekko in Silicon Valley.” But is he? Wouldn’t greed be going after the big win not the tiny flip?
In this clip we come to one of the core distinctions between Super Angels and VCs: Are sub-$50 million exits the desired goal in Silicon Valley or are small acquisitions what you… → Read More
European VC funding has bounced back. That’s according to Q2 figures produced by Dow Jones VentureSource which reports that investment is up by 50 percent compared to the record low of this time last year. €1.1 billion into 289 deals against 252 deals, which raised just €735 million.
But specifically, says Dow Jones, the Information Technology (IT) industry, which apparently accounted for… → Read More
Clean technology remains one of the hottest areas of venture funding. In the second quarter, cleantech venture investments worldwide totaled $2.02 billion across 140 companies, according to market research firm Cleantech Group and Deloitte. The numbers are in line with last quarter’s $2.04 billion, but 43% higher than one year ago.
Exits for the quarter totaled more than $8 billion globally… → 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
Editor’s Note: In this guest post, Raj Kapoor gives entreprenuers advice on how to pitch VCs. Kapoor knows both sides of the equation. For the past five years, he’s been a VC at the Mayfield Fund. Before that he founded the photo site Snapfish, which he sold to Hewlett-Packard.
Its been almost five years now that I’ve been in venture capital. I finally know what i don’t know.
The one thing… → Read More
More evidence that venture exits and fund raising are related. We already know that venture exits were anemic in the third quarter of 2009, and now the National Venture Capital Association has released data on how much money venture funds themselves were able to raise. It was not a lot in historical terms.
According to the NCVA’s data, venture funds raised $1.6 billion in the third quarter… → Read More
You thought your Wii was truly a special console, didn’t you? Sure it doesn’t play DVDs and it lacks a hard drive, but that’s ok, ’cause the Wii has a remote for a controller! Now Wii owners are finding out the hard way that not having a hard drive sucks. Jake over at 8BitJoystick.com downloaded one too many VC games and realized that his Wii channels were full and his… → Read More
Ok I give up. Nintendo, if you make games from one of my favorite systems of all time available via your Virtual Console on the Wii, then I’m sold. I’ll totally buy a Wii and stop bashing Nintendo every three seconds. Maybe. We’ll see. But the actual news is that Sega Saturn titles may be coming to Nintendo’s Virtual Console. Apparently a DigiPen employee was told that Sega… → Read More
Top-left, clockwise: NES, Generation NEX System, FC Twin System, Wii (VC) The guys over at Ars Technica must have some free time. Seems Ben Kuchera took time out of his day to hook up an NES, two NES clones, and a Wii (Virtual Console) and tested the original Super Mario Bros. game for quality. Sure enough, like all good fanboys would, the Wii was chosen as the best looking console. Gee… → Read More
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