Category: Venture Capital
On my run today I was thinking about GP – LP interactions. This line of thought was prompted by a contrast between two interactions, or rather one interaction and one non-interaction, that I’ve had in the past few days.
The interaction was I had with one of my LPs over the last 24 hours. They emailed asking for a reference on someone who indicated they knew me and had invested with me. I didn’t know the person, but knew a few people who did, and quickly sent emails getting addition info for my LP. With a small amount of effort I was able to generate some useful feedback, including triangulating on the deal he was suggesting we were investors in together (it was a true statement prospectively as it’s something I’m working on.) I was also able to get some specific one degree of separation feedback for my LP.
I contrasted that with the non-interaction that I’d recently had. I’m an investor in about 30 VC funds (so, in addition to being a GP in my funds, I’m an LP in a bunch of other funds.) I’m a very easy LP – I basically try to be available for the GP whenever they want, be supportive, make my capital calls on time, and be low maintenance. I invest in VC funds for several reasons, including my belief that long term it’s a good investment (and my overall performance across this category of investment bears this out.)
In the case of the non-interaction, I made an intro between an entrepreneur and the GP. I do this sparingly (per my Don’t Ask For A Referral If I Say No policy) – I’ll only do this if I think the fit is a good one. I think most of the people I’ve invested in and work with know this, but who knows. Anyway, in this case I haven’t heard anything back from the GP. When I thought about this, I realized there were several GPs I’ve invested in that are terrible at responding to me. Now, this might just be me, and not their LPs in general, but my guess is that the dynamic is a typical one given my knowledge of their individual tempo and work patterns.
I realized as I was thinking about this that I have very little respect for this type of behavior. I think you should treat your investors with the upmost respect, be extremely responsive to them, and to go out of your way to try to be helpful when they interact with you. When I reflect on the interactions I’ve had with my investors over the last 25 years, I always tried hard to be responsive, even if we had a disagreement, difficult conversation, or difference of opinion.
I tried to come up with a rationale for blowing off an LP. None of the obvious ones – I’m too busy, it’s not a priority, it’s not what I’m paid to do, I’m not interested – made any sense. And I couldn’t come up with any non-obvious ones that did either.
In every GP / LP relationship I’ve ever been involved in, there comes a moment in time when the GP needs something from the LP. This is true at the beginning of the relationship when the GP is asking the LP for an investment. It seems incredibly short sided to me for GPs to forget that they will once again need something from the LP and, instead of being responsive through the life of the relationship, only pay attention when the GP needs something.
Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals I’ve got a great offer for anyone with a touchscreen device.
The deal is for Joystickers – sticky arcade buttons you put on your touchscreen to make games easier to play. Joystickers is one of the Excelerate Summer 2011 companies (Excelerate is a TechStars Network member) – I met with them a few weeks ago and loved what they are doing.
You can buy three buttons for $9 (normally $20), or five buttons for $13 (normally $34). My friends at Joystickers have even agreed to throw in free shipping.
Check out a video of these buttons in action and get ready to level up.
Clint Nelson, co-founder of Startup Weekend, is bringing the European tomato-chucking phenomena stateside. Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals, you can get a half price ticket to the innagural Tomato Battle – A Huge Tomato Fight. The event is at Copper Mountain on June 25th. Get there at 1pm for beer and music. Start chucking tomatoes at 3pm. Bring an extra set of clothes.
Your ticket gets you in the event and one free beer. There will be thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of pounds of tomatoes. If you are one of my Boulder readers, or plan on being in the area June 25th, go to Copper Mountain and have a blast throwing tomatoes at people you don’t know.
Absurdity, silliness, and wonderment powers my world!
Microsoft Excel and our brains have a lot in common. We all use them, but only to about 10% capacity.
Today I’m offering a solution on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals from a startup called Excel Everest. These guys can teach you how to use Excel by offering a 20 hour interactive tutorial on the fine points of spreadsheets. Their class is normally $35, but through the magic of daily deals, I’m bringing it to you for only $14 (PC / Windows only). Think of it as getting a class on Excel from my partner Seth, who is the best Excel god I know, for only $0.70 / hour.
Almost all of us are guilty of firing up a spreadsheet and limiting ourselves to just a few basic functions. Spreadsheet proficiency for $14 seems like a steal to me. Once you make your purchase, just head over to the Excel Everest website, plug in your voucher code, and you’re ready to recalculate your spreadsheet knowledge.
I spent a full day at MIT last month rolling around in a bunch of really cool tech. One of the meetings led to today’s Brad Feld Amazing Deal for OoOTies.
I had just sat through three meetings with MIT-related entrepreneurs – two who showed me new human instrumentation products and one who walked me through a new way to develop Android apps. The guy for my next meeting showed up, sat down, and started talking about bow ties. He was an MIT grad student who had become fascinated with bow ties and subsequently created a company called OoOTies along with an iPhone app. We had a fun conversation and then it was time for my next meeting.
At lunch time, I was with a group of MIT grad students who were working on a summer program for MIT students who want to be entrepreneurs. We were enjoying our fish chowder at Legal Seafoods when my new bow tie friend showed up with a bunch of bow ties in tow. Five minutes later everyone at the table had learned how to tie a bow tie and was sporting a new one.
One of the great things about my world is that I never know what to expect, so I just roll with whatever happens during the day. I’m off to TechStars New York Demo Day – looking forward to seeing what mysteries the world reveals to me. In the mean time, be bold and go buy a bow tie.
I’ve got an entrepreneur focused deal on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals today. The deal is for Udemy.com, a website that has online courses on a variety of interesting topics. When Udemy came to me, they were interested in offering a deal on one of their $99 courses that was pertinent to startups. After some negotiation, we decided to do an offer where you get their five top startup courses, priced at a total of over $400, for only $59.
The courses that you get in this Amazing Deal are Raising Capital for Startups, Attracting, Hiring, and Retaining the Best People, Writing a Business Plan, “Startup and Go”: The first steps to building a technology company, and Social Marketing for Startups. Each course has multiple classes (usually around 45 minutes) taught by people like Phil Libin, Aaron Patzer, Dave McClure, Naval Ravikant, Russ Fradin, and Auren Hoffman.
Once you make your purchase, you can use your voucher code multiple times on Udemy, once for each course. If your are looking for a heavy dose of this information in on place, take a look.
It’s Tuesday, and that means it’s time for another Brad Feld’s Amazing Deal. I can’t help myself – it feels so satisfying to be a deal huckster.
This week’s deal is for one year of web hosting from Cloud Jolt. Cloud Jolt is a hosting company focused on the tech entrepreneur. If you are in the market for a new host, thinking of starting a web company, or need to expand your blog, you should give these guys a try. $39 gives you a year of hosting, which saves you $60 bucks (it’s normally $96). That’s a little over $3 a month for the first year. Pretty hard to beat.
If you live in the Boston area, also check out Start Up Rise Up. You can meet other Boston startups and maybe win some cash for your idea. Who knows, maybe the winner will apply for TechStars Boston?
My latest foray into the Daily Deal universe is up – and it’s a 50% offer on Manpacks.
If you are a guy and aren’t familiar with Manpacks, it’s an easy way to get essentials (undies, socks, razors) mailed to you every few months. Why spend time shopping for undies and socks when you can climb mountains, slay dragons, and conquer the world?
If you area a girl and are tired of your guy wearing tired, worn out undies, a Manpack makes a perfect gift.
I continue to enjoy my alter ego Brad Salesy (kind of like Slim Shady) as I better try to understand how Daily Deals actually work.
Avalon Ventures Raises A New $200 Million Fund And Gets A New Website
Congrats to my friends at Avalon Ventures on raising their new $200 million fund. I’ve been friends with and co-invested with Rich Levandov, one of Avalon’s partners, since the mid-1990’s, most recently in Standing Cloud, Zynga, and NewsGator. I’ve gotten to know several of Rich’s partners over the past few years and recently had a wonderful Do More Faster book tour dinner hosted at Avalon’s San Diego office by Kevin Kinsella (a fellow MIT-grad turned VC.)
In conjunction with their financing, Avalon just rolled out a new website designed by Slice of Lime. Slice of Lime is a Boulder-based firm that we work closely with that was founded around 2000 by Kevin Menzie and Jeff Rodanski and then joined by my brother Daniel Feld a few years ago. We love their work (they designed our Foundry Group website) and they’ve done other VC firms sites, including Bridgescale.
If you are a VC firm and want a refresh on your website, drop the guys at Slice of Lime an email – I’m sure they’d be happy to hear from you. And keep your eyes out for some fun additional news from Avalon soon.