I just posted the great VC blog of the day over on Ask the VC but I think that it is so useful I’m reposting about it here. One of my favorite VC posts of all times was my partner Seth Levine’s post titled How to become a venture capitalist . I regularly get emails from folks looking for a job in the VC industry and I almost always point them at this post. ...
I was talking to a friend yesterday about exits. In it, he suggested that the tech M&A market had shut down just like the tech IPO market had. This didn’t square with my experience. I’ve seen plenty of modest M&A in the last two months (which I categorize as sub-$100m deals.) Two popped up today – AOL acquired Sphere for a reported $25m and someone is rumored (possibly Expedia) to have acquired Farecast for $75m. ...
Holy Absurdity Batman, someone actually writes a dedicated 409A site called 409A Dismay . For the latest and greatest 409A silliness, you are one click away from a subscription .
Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how people communicate with each other. As an active user of all computer based communication technologies such as email, IM, web collaboration, and twitter , I realize that direct, bite size communication is often effective. However, given the lack of persistence of data in these mediums, I’ve felt like something was missing. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of t-shirts and have an extensive collection. I’ve noticed that the vast majority of my entrepreneurial colleagues prefer t-shirts over other types of dresswear. Finally, the t-shirt industry has grown nicely alongside of the software and Internet industry, as most companies have accelerated the growth of the t-shirt industry through their use of swag. ...
I was going to edit my Getting A VC’s Attention post but I thought the point I was going to add was important enough to highlight it in a separate post. In the post I wrote: The feature is not the magic. Listening to your customers (in the case a prominent VC blogger – who’s attention is in high demand) and reacting to requests quickly and publicly is. What I meant to emphasize is that the magic is in “the doing.” It’s not about talking. It’s not about commenting. It’s not about emailing. It’s about doing. Rapidly iterating your product – demonstrating that you know how to process feedback, prioritize (based on whatever your current goals are), and executing. ...
I regularly get asked “how do you get a VC’s attention?” Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures just demonstrated – on his blog – how this works. Last week while Working On Vacation , Fred was screwing around with FriendFeed . He wrote a post titled Ten Things I’d Like FriendFeed To Do . Bret Taylor from FriendFeed immediately commented on the post “Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Wanted to let you know we all read them here at FriendFeed, and I agree with you on almost every single request.” A few days later FriendFeed implemented the ability to post an @reply to twitter from FriendFeed. ...
Union Square Ventures just announced their new $156m fund – Union Square Ventures 2008. My relationship with USV goes back to the mid-1990’s – well before USV was created. I vividly remember the first time I met Fred at Seth Godin’s Yoyodyne office somewhere near Waltham, MA. We hit it off immediately and I ended up making a number of investments with Fred and Jerry Colonna – Fred’s partner at the time in Flatiron Partners. Through this I got to know Fred and Gotham Gal – as did my wife Amy. ...
Every day I tell at least one entrepreneur that I am passing on investment in their company. Some times I tell 10. I don’t know what the most in one day is, but it’s probably more than 25. I try to respond to all emails so a lot of these are in the “never were appropriate to pursue” category, but at least one each day is someone that I’ve actually engaged with beyond a cold email that was randomly sent to me. ...
On the way to the airport this morning I twittered “Dell bought messageone (not sure i get that one) and someone bought bebo. Another m&a day.” Fred Wilson immediately responded with "@bfeld but the yahoo-msft deal is going to put a dent in M&A, right? i don’t think so." I completely agree with Fred. There was a lot of noise last week – especially from the VC community – that a Microsoft / Yahoo deal would be bad for tech M&A, especially in Silicon Valley. Baloney. ...
I got an email this morning from an entrepreneur that I know that has been trying to raise an early round from a “seed VC investor” for the past few months. He’s put together (and closed) a decent angel round and left it open for this seed investor. This morning the entrepreneur was told by the VC that they are “postponing their decision on investment until a future round” because one of the partner’s friends at BigCo “isn’t comfortable with the direction the startup is headed.” ...