This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally. Entrepreneurs get so used to friends and family congratulating them on their press coverage that they forget sometimes that this isn’t real.  Press doesn’t mean anything other than free advertising.  Handling PR with VCs I

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital . Many businesses that pitch to me have White Elephant issues and I’d like to tell you how to deal with these when you’re raising venture capital.  White White Elephant issues are those things that the VC would automatically be thinking about when you’re speaking but he/she may not immediately ask you about either for legal reasons or out of courtesy. There’s an old saying that if I’m talking with you and I start the conversation by saying, “whatever you do, DO NOT think about Elephants ” then you can’t help but thinking about elephants while we’re speaking.  It’s

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “what’s it like being a VC?” 8221;  I’ve been a VC for nearly 3 years now.  Since I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.” But let’s Since I answer this all the time anyway I thought it might make an interesting blog post.  I 8221; That’s true.  Here’s

And today, we at the the Rubicon Project announced that we have raised $21 million in total financing (see press announcement). What a way to start off 2008! First, we are honored with a number of awards (more on this later)... We are very excited, as this is a huge vote of a confidence for the company from investors.

Check out the newly released August edition of the SCribe Newsletter.  Catch up on the latest news, see our upcoming event schedule, or visit the Website of the sponsors that make this all possible. Top Top articles include: Valuing Valuing Your Company For Success by Doug Hayes, executive committee, Tech Coast Angels Winning

But then this morning, a flurry of listener emails all referring to the state of the art of venture capital investing: Rebecca Buckman pulls no punches in the January 12th issue of Forbes: " Venture Capital's Coming Collapse ". If business is bad for venture capitalists, what can angel investors expect? ...Tags: These short days and long nights offer too much time for reflecting on the year winding down. For several days I've consoled myself with heartening economic cheer from the rankings in BusinessWeek's Top 25 Startups .

Mark Suster has a good piece on why you shouldn’t pitch a VC with how much PR you’ve received lately .  I think this is particularly true of very early stage startups, who sometimes suddenly decide that attention from the press (rather than progress on a company) is a measure of their progress. I’d add, the same goes for editors and writers, who really don’t care how much coverage you’ve received from other publications, but how interesting your company/products are to their own readers.  I’d stress, in particular, that if you haven’t yet

in a venture funding round. The firm and its venture backers had not returned further information on the funding as of press time. However, venture firm Steamboat Ventures now lists RazorGator as a portfolio firm. Tags: ticketing razorgator venture capita Los Angeles-based RazorGator , which provides an online ticketing service, has reportedly raised at least $7.5M No details on the funding have been released by the company, however, regulatory filings for the firm show that a funding event occurred around February 13th.

day in and day out in adoring (or scathing) press coverage. For example — Peter Pham, formerly of Photobucket/Fox Interactive Media–despite running a company now in Silicon Valley–is a huge connector in Southern California and beyond, is known to every startup CEO, entrepreneur, and VC in SoCal, doesn’t show up on the “tech celebrity” radar. It seems some level of interest in local, successful and/or ambitious entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others (beyond what we provide, I’m sure everyone’s seen Intel’s big advertising push “ Our rock stars aren’t your rock stars “–comparing the firm’s technologists to celebrity rock stars.

Metagenics told Michigan's Grand Rapid Press at the time of the investment by Alticor that it had more than $200M in sales in 2008. Tags: metagenics venture capital amway altico San Clemente-based Metagenics , a developer of nutraceuticals, has raised $28.1M in a funding, according to numbers in the Q3 PricewaterhouseCoopers/NVCA MoneyTree report.