Venture Capital

I did a talk with a private community of 100 GPs and investors in venture capital called Aces last week. It’s an off-the-record, confidential group organized by a few people, including Max Beaumont , who said I could mention him in this post. Max sent me the following summary. I asked him if I could post it, and he said yes. Thank you again for taking the time to join us yesterday, and for staying well past the scheduled end.. I could tell how meaningful the conversation was for those who stayed.. ...

There have been many different approaches to ranking VC Firms over the years I’ve been an entrepreneur and a VC. Each approach I’ve seen has issues. Most are easily gamed or have statistical bias issues. I got the following note from Roy Bahat at Bloomberg Beta a while ago about a new approach called Founder’s Choice . We and a few other firms sponsored a “founders choice” version of the Midas List, with a legit (IMHO) rating methodology, built by two Penn students. No vitriol possible (unlike The Funded, etc.). We’ve wanted this to exist for a long time — NPS of us as a firm is too forgiving a metric, everyone scores well. ...

Connie Loizos is one of the long-time tech industry writers who I respect. I don’t respond to many interview requests these days, but I’ll always talk to her. She has a good article today in TechCrunch titled Embrace the down round (it’s going to be okay, maybe) . I like the quote she pulled out of me in our conversation. [Brad Feld] says his “strong belief” that “just doing a clean resetting — at whatever the valuation so that everybody is aligned and dealing with reality — is much, much better for a company.” ...

Today’s book recommendation, for anyone interested in venture capital, is The Business of Venture Capital: The Art of Raising a Fund, Structuring Investments, Portfolio Management, and Exits by Mahendra Ramsinghani. A decade ago, I got a cold email from Mahendra. He was investing in Detroit and eager to write a book about the art and science of venture capital. At the time, Jason and I were just finishing up the 1st edition of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer And Venture Capitalist and I was enthusiastic about helping anyone else working on a book that demystified venture capital investing. ...

I had a really nice week off the grid. More on that in another post. I woke up this morning with a very long run in mind. The air quality in Longmont is awful because of the forest fires and, after checking the weather on my iPhone and seeing an air quality index of 138, I decided that a run wasn’t going to happen. So, I ate breakfast with Amy and read the Sunday New York Times. ...

My partner Chris Moody decided to be a vlogger and has started a new video series. I suggested he hang out on TikTok but he prefers trying to get famous on Youtube. So far he has 57 Views but 102 Subscribers. I find that fascinating. Enjoy!

I recently recorded two free courses with LinkedIn Learning. They are each under an hour long and broken up into a bunch of small segments. The first one is on Raising Venture Capital and is based on content from the book Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist that I wrote with Jason Mendelson. Amy tells me that this is her favorite shirt from my current rotation of Robert Graham shirts. ...

There are some blog posts that every entrepreneur should read. Hunter Walk at Homebrew recently wrote one of them. It’s titled Oh Shit, Your VC Just Quit Her Fund! What a Good CEO Should Do Next. He covers three cases: Bullish aka You Are Absolutely Killing It Written You Off Too Early To Tell – Some Good Stuff, Some Challenges But A Lot To Do The real gold in this post is in the Too Early To Tell category. Hunter has a great lead in: ...

My partner Seth Levine has written several posts over the years on the topic of how to get a job in venture capital. His 2019 post, titled creatively How To Get A Job In Venture Capital is excellent. Things have changed in the last decade since his 2008 post titled How to get a job in venture capital (revisited) , which was an update from his 2005 post titled How to become a venture capitalist . All three posts are worth reading. ...

I’m a recent conversation with Eric Paley , he gave me an amazingly wonderful analogy for how the career of a VC unfolds. He said: “Being a VC is like taking a walk from Boston to San Francisco” I’d never heard that before so I said: “tell me more.” He went on an awesome ramble, which I’ll try to capture below. You start out on a sunny day in Boston. You put on your new, clean walking shoes. It’s just walking. It’s fun, fresh, and exciting. It’s a new experience, with lots of hopes and expectations in front of you. You get tons of support and encouragement from all of your friends. You meet plenty of new and interesting people. It’s just walking. ...