This morning's interview is with Mark Suster , a venture capitalist at GRP Partners (www.grpvc.com). GRP has just recently closed on a new $200M fund, and Mark has been one of the more active venture capitalists in the Los Angeles area in recent months. We caught up with Mark to hear about what kinds of investments GRP is looking at nowadays, his view on the software-as-a-service market, and how best to approach him with a pitch. It Mark has also been quite active mentoring entrepreneurs,. It

One of the investment themes I’ve been focused on in the past 3 years has been Performance-Based Marketing.  When When I started investing the US advertising market was $300 billion with only 10% of it ($30 billion) of it being online and measurable.  One My firm, GRP Partners, invested in the company that innovated this entire category – Overture (formerly known as GoTo.com).  At One recession later and the US advertising market is about $245 billion – but still only 10-12% is online and measurable. By now we all know that the largest part

invested in Southern California in Q4. was invested in Southern California, as well as Q4 of last year, when $508.2M was invested in the region. However, nationally, venture capital numbers were much worse, with venture investments dropping to the lowest level in more than a decade. The latest numbers from the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data from Thomson Reuters, were released this morning, finding that there was $587.8M Those numbers were up from both Q3, when $506.9M

invested in Southern California in Q4. was invested in Southern California, as well as Q4 of last year, when $508.2M was invested in the region. However, nationally, venture capital numbers were much worse, with venture investments dropping to the lowest level in more than a decade. The latest numbers from the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data from Thomson Reuters, were released this morning, finding that there was $587.8M Those numbers were up from both Q3, when $506.9M

Today’s post is about my investment thesis.  It’s My investment philosophy is to back the best possible entrepreneurs I can.  I’ve But when I’m looking to invest the dollars that my Limited Partners have entrusted my firm with I’m going with my view. He invested $8 million in a company in the computer networking space.  They I was going to save this post for a while but the Patzer Problem meme has forced my hand. I

in a venture round Wednesday, telling socalTECH that the Series A-1 round was led by GRP Partners , with participation by First Round Capital . Tanz said that GRP's Mark Suster will be joining the firm's board along with the funding. Publishers are really hurting online, and this is a new revenue opportunity for our publishing partners," Tanz told socalTECH, saying that the firm is now reaching over 50 million unique Santa Monica-based GumGum , the online startup headed by Ophir Tanz which licenses photos on a CPM basis to online publishers, confirmed it had raised $2.6M

I just completed an exercise where I went out to hire a new associate for my VC firm, GRP Partners.  But in the end we selected David Lin , a superstar who did 4 years at the technology investment banking firm Montgomery & Co and 4 years as Director of Strategy at the comparison shopping site PriceGrabber where he dealt with many operational issues.  tell people regularly that I only invest in companies where the DNA is software.  This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons .” 8221;

The group has Mark Suster of GRP Partners , Richard Yen of Saban Ventures , Michael Rotgin of Shelter Capital Partners , and Richard Wolpert of the Mail Room Fund this year, and is now taking applications to pitch .  Tags: Conferences Startups Angel Investin The Tech Coast Angels is gearing up for its annual Fast Pitch event, which lets entrepreneurs tune their “elevator pitch” and present to a panel of venture capitalists and angels, later this month. I’ve pointed to it before, but Frank Peters has a good archive of one of the last winners

That next round of investment is proving difficult.  The first came from the CEO of iScraper telling me that they would not be able to complete the deal – their investor, Apax Partners, had decided not to proceed despite verbal assurances that they would.  But then I got a call from my lead investor (coincidentally it was GRP Partners where I now am a partner) and they told me not to lose confidence.  This is part of my new series on  what makes an entrepreneur successful .  I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs.

I myself recently covered the topic when I spoke about why GRP Partners invested in Ad.ly . GRP Partners invested in GoTo.com which rebranded as Overture.  But our investment and the thesis of the team led to huge leaps of innovation that all consumers now benefit from.  The topic of whether in-stream advertising has heated up.  I just read well written pieces on the topic by Ross Kimbarovsky , Robert Scoble , Paul Carr and the NY Times .