Silicon Valley Bank came out with a report today, called Dialing Down, that puts some data around the commonly held belief that better returns come from smaller funds. In this case – conventional wisdom is clearly true. Their fundamental conclusion is that venture capital funds are getting smaller – and that’s a good thing because it’s the small funds that generate outsized returns. The most compelling statistic compared the returns of large funds versus small funds (large funds being defined as above the median size for their vintage year). The result:
Barney Frank was crystal clear in his briefing with a group of CEOs that I participated in this afternoon: He is going to make sure that the final Financial Reform bill that gets worked out with the Senate won’t mess with the angel or VC communities. I came to Washington DC today with the Progressive […]
We recently noted that Senator Chris Dodd’s financial reform bill contains new provisions that would reduce the number of individual eligible to invest in private ventures. The original draft of the bill would increase the $1 million net worth threshold that defines an “accredited investor,” which in turn determines an individual’s eligibility to invest in […]
With venture capital increasingly difficult to come by as the industry faces consolidation and its own fundraising challenges, entrepreneurs are looking to any and all potential sources of investment capital with which to build their businesses. Turning to angel investors for seed capital is just one example of this “any port in a storm” mentality. Corporate investors, once again focusing their attention to the start-up domain, represent another potential source of growth capital and, perhaps more importantly, strategic partnerships.
The book wars are really now in full swing and the publishing industry will be changed forever. Google announced yesterday that they were going to become a book retailer. Crazy, right? What’s a search engine company that derives its revenue from advertising doing aspiring to become a book retailer? But the world’s largest source of […]
My book, Mastering the VC Game, is officially available today (and 40 pages of excerpts are available for free if you want to preview it), yet I'm kind of grumpy. I've gotten nice reviews (see AVC, Boston.com and YoungEntrepreneur for a few examples) and TechCrunch, BusinessWeek and Upromise have done really nice excerpts. But I confess I'm a bit of a perfectionist (when I'd come home with a 95% on a test, my parents would ask me what happened on those 5% points - I wonder if that has anything to do with it?) and so I find myself mulling about the mistakes I made with it. Tangible, print products are tough because, unlike a blog post or a piece of software code, you can't just change it on the fly. Here are the top three things I've been stewing on:
In recent weeks, the media has been full of chatter about “who knew what when” and whether they were “honest with their investors.” The public’s trust in the financial industry’s integrity is at a near-all-time-low. Most importantly, our industry’s ability to trust each other is under scrutiny as well. I believe it is up to […]
This past Friday was my last day at Spark Capital. It has been a privilege to be a part of this team. I have grown in ways that I didn’t expect, and was glad to be part of a firm that allowed me to interact with such wonderful entrepreneurs and early stage investors each day. I owe a lot to the partners at Spark for their support and mentorship and am proud to say that I was a part of building this firm over the past several years. When you end something and embark on a new adventure, it’s always important to look back. I didn’t really intend to become an investor when I moved back to Boston from Silicon Valley. But I did, and I learned so much that it’s hard to distill into a few points. But here are a few highlights:
Some time ago I wrote a post on tips and best practices that I felt startups ought to consider in getting the most out of media relationships. The impetus had to do with recent reports I had been getting from portfolio companies about media interviews that had not gone as well as company management had hoped. Story angles had been mishandled, sensitive information had been unwittingly divulged, and statements were seemingly taken out of context. In this piece I’d like to cover a sunnier subject: How to effectively run a media event. Last night, portfolio company Runka.com, a destination site for eco-friendly products at discount prices, conducted its first formal media mixer in San Francisco. I prefer to use the term “mixer” as opposed to ”launch party” given that the site went live some weeks ago and, quite frankly, “launch party” still carries with it some dot-com era connotations for many in the start-up/VC community. To this day I have a hard time seeing the phrase “launch party” on an invite without it conjuring up images of hosted martini bars and overflowing trays of sushi in a wildly overpriced nightclub.
The debate over the bureaucratic location and independence of the Consumer Protection Agency as part of the financial reform bill raises legitimate concerns about the relationship of consumer advocacy to the “safety” and “soundness” of the credit system. Consumers, however, were certainly abused and the existing regulation failed to protect them. Opponents of an independent […]