This is part of my ongoing series “ Start Up Advice ” but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.” On a panel that I sat on with Ron in LA in 2008 he stated that there were no circumstances in which the founder should take money off of the table.  I We exchanged ideas when I was an entrepreneur along side him in NorCal in 05-07 and my point-of-view on founder / VC relationships hasn’t shifted even 8221; If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break

There has been a lot of conjecture about how the Venture community will respond to the economic downturn. If the limited partners who fund venture firms either a) change the percent of funds they allocate to VCs or b) don’t come through on their capital calls, we’ll all quickly find the venture community becoming drastically constrained. Erick Schonfeld writes about the current state of affairs in his TechCrunch post: “ The End of Venture My personal opinion is that its going to be bad, really bad. Instead of making as many new investments, VCs

In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009 .  In In the second post I argued that as of September 2009 the pace of VC investments has increased rapidly (at least for software / Internet investments – the only sector on which I’m competent to comment), but only for those remaining VCs who have new enough funds and aren’t plagued by “the triage problem.” 8221;  This is a direct result of innovation around the iPhone / mobile computing, Facebook / Social Networks and Twitter (as distinct from Social Networks).  It

Yesterday, our 1,000th customer went live here at the Rubicon Project. I have been blown away by how fast this team moves and how quickly we have ramped. So, I took a step back and asked myself, how did we go from zero to 1,000 customers in 6 months? The answer is that we have specifically focused on optimizing this company for speed.

Saturday’s TechCrunch had an article with the title above…  the “end” of traditional VC has been something that we (and many others) have been predicting for a while.   Investors in venture capital funds have caused the problem.   First, they themselves have massive amounts of capital to put to work and it is extremely time consuming and difficult to The short version of the components are this: Despite the fact that fund size and fund returns are generally inverse related, all of the incentives are to raise bigger funds:

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital . Recently I’ve been debating with a number of young startup companies that are raising money in the next few months, “what is the right about of capital to raise at a startup?” Let me assume for this discussion it’s a garden variety 2010 IT or Internet business (as opposed to something requiring capital equipment or a life sciences project).  Any 8221; It’s a tricky question with no clear answer.  There

In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009.  There There are now signs the VC market has gathered pace meaning it’s a great time to be fund raising.  This There’s no doubt (at least This post highlights some of the reasons why the market is moving again and what entrepreneurs should do about this. The real irony of the market thaw is that the biggest symbol of the freeze as I mentioned in my last post is

If you liked this blog post, please recommend it to a colleague and/or click here to get updates via email or RSS . Written by Andrew Chen September 18th, 2008 at 8:00 am Posted in Uncategorized « Open mobile platforms and Facebook developer refugees Virtual Goods Summit 2008 + last week’s Twitter links » Add New Comment Subscribe : This Thread Go

When venture capitalists scale back investing activities it can be very swift and leave many companies that are in the process of fund raising hung out to dry.  I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary.  Just ask anybody who was trying to close funding the fateful week of September 11, 2001 or even March 2000.  They should heed the age old advice that raising slightly

At parties in the Bay people talk about Twitter, Friend Feed, what’s being written on Valleywag and Techcrunch, and kickball games between VC’s and entrepreneurs. The goal is to be monetization masters who are focused on consumers and build viral, capital efficient products, and to leave behind the full of shit, spam artists who are snobby about not making money. ...Tags: Is there a difference between tech startups in Silicon Valley vs. Los Angeles?