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Early stage VCs typically say that the ebbs and flows of the stock market don't effect the valuations they pay in start up financings. At the formation stage, when a start up is little more than a business plan and a few dedicated engineers, there are a host of other factors that influence valuations more so than PE multiples of public companies. So to some extent, entrepreneurs and VCs can comfortably ignore the chaos That may be true. VCs tend to put greater weight on the potential market size of the product being built, the reputations of the founders and

8.    Are they respectful of entrepreneurs 9.    9.    Do they help entrepreneurs, regardless of whether or not they invest 10.    Beyond cash, the other ways an angel group adds value to a startup is through great advice and personal connections. Although many of our portfolio companies have told us the Angel round is the last tranche of money they’ll need (and they even Part IV of a Continuing Series on How to Select an Angel Group Several months before Jason Calcanis’ crusade (or jihad—depending on your political affiliation) against for-profit angel groups, I wrote

These are the folks that put on the Startonomics conference this past February at UCLA, which was a great primer for web entrepreneurs and provides a level of networking and education that is needed in SoCal.  Since SoCal Tech Group is all about empowering entrepreneurs in the LA area, we’d like to give away  ONE ticket to this fantastic event to a deserving entrepreneur (a $200 value!).  The Dealmaker has been putting together conferences and roundtables in LA of consistently high quality for the past two years.  These Well, Dealmaker has recently announced a new

A few weeks ago, Rahul Sonnad --a serial entrepreneur who is best known for founding and selling thePlatform to Comcast--alternately confused and dazzled attendees at Twiistup, the Los Angeles tech conference, with a fake-stilted-Indian-immigrant and ukulele-singing-and-dancing studded pitch for his firm, Geodelic (www.geodelic.com). We caught Rahul in a more serious conversation, and spoke to him about his venture funded, location-based information startup and what it's up to, as well as got the story behind the firm's incubation at Clearstone Ventures. First,

The Founder Institute , the business incubation and mentoring program started by TheFunded's Adeo Ressi , is expanding into the Los Angeles area, and is accepting applications for entrepreneurs for a Spring session, the group said late last week. The group said Monday it is running an information session at Clearstone Ventures Thursday evening. ...Tags: The Los Angeles effort is being headed by Ken Rutkowski . In an invite to an information session on the incubation program, Rutkowski said that mentors in the Los Angeles program include Alan Friel, Bill Woodward,

Monday, June 22, 2009 -- Pitching Venture Capitalists - Startups Uncensored #8. This month��s ��Startups Uncensored�� will be on ��Pitching Venture Capitalists��. Mark Suster, a serial venture backed entrepreneur and current Partner at GRP Venture Capital, and David Stern, Partner at Clearstone Venture Capital and kickass VC Blogger. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation revealing the best ways to meet, court, and pitch venture capitalists on your business ideas. We are joined this month by Nate Redmond, a Partner at Rustic Canyon Venture Capital, and

Most of the companies Clearstone invests in have angel money. Perhaps they previously started a company in the same industry or were part of a successful company targeting the same market. When a company comes to Clearstone with some money in the bank from smart in-the-know angels, we get interested quickly. In the past few years, angels have become much more active than they were following the tech crash of 2000. As a VC, I divide angel investors into two buckets.

I am talking about revenue projections for start-ups. I know that I am part of the problem here, as I too expect to see a revenue projection from the management team when presenting its business to Clearstone. I may be in the minority in saying this (but I do not think that I am): NONE of the 2 dozen start-ups I have funded over the years has ever hit its first or second year revenue target. What a senseless exercise we have all gotten ourselves into. These 'mandatory' projections that are supposed to be included in all powerpoint pitches to VCs.

Dealmaker Media continues to offer entrepreneurs in Southern California some of the best events around. Now they’re bringing together a great line up of investors and CEO’s to offer a unique hands on workshop . Learn what it takes to get your startup off the ground from some and get funded. You’ll get to play around with actual term sheets and go through the entire Herman Miller catalog. OK, maybe not that last thing but it’s worth a browse anyway.