Feb
01
Recently a CEO in our portfolio asked me a question that I get often: As a startup with limited capital is it better to be cautious and stretch runway or should you be aggressive and reduce runway? The answer of course is “it depends”.
Jan
18
The smart folks at CB Insights recently published their review of US VC activity in 2011 (republished below). 2011 was definitely a good year, especially for really early stage funding. Accelerators continue to launch. Seed rounds continue to happen daily. And with Facebook set to IPO in Q2 maybe the good times are here for [...]
Jan
10
One of the least favourite things about raising money from VCs is having to deal with board meetings once you’re funded. Most board meetings suck. I’ve sat through my fair share on the company side. To date, as an investor, I’ve tried to avoid them favouring regular informal interactions. But since board meetings are inevitable [...]
It seems everyone is getting into the incubation/ acceleration game now. According to this list, there are hundreds (and the list is a year old). So, with so many incubators all offering something that appears to be similar, how do you choose which one is right for you? GigaOm posted this week about history repeating [...]
Dec
21
As a seed investor our fund likes to invest early: first money in between concept and validation. At that stage and for a considerable amount of time after that, the only things that matter to a startup are product and technology. As a result I have a strong bias towards technical founders. And it is [...]
Dec
13
Hearing pitches for a living I get to hear from entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes and all manner of pitching styles. Every investor has their own preferred style that resonates with them. And there is no one “correct” way to pitch. You have to be yourself. But, as I reflect back on the pitches [...]
Nov
10
(photo courtesy of Heri at Montreal Tech Watch) We held a demo day for the first grads of our Founderfuel program this week. It was an amazing event with over 600 people and nine awesome presentations from the teams. While the teams nursed some well-deserved hangovers the next morning I put together some suggestions for [...]
After accounting restatements and other mishaps and still burning crazy $, Groupon is finally public. This juggernaut of a company is only three years old and raised over $1.1B before entering the public markets. That is a crazy ride! On paper, Groupon’s investors (14 venture funds) generated a 3.3X return. PE Hub dug deeper and [...]
Oct
28
Real Ventures is one year old this week, which means it’s been a year since I joined the “dark side”. As a finance guy I was completely enamoured by the World of VC when I first encountered it. So much so that when I was still in a CA firm I called up David Lawee [...]
Several months ago I posted a form I use for grading VC presentations. I still use it. But last week I was watching some demo day pitches with the Founderfuel teams as we prepare for our own demo day on November 8. We watched some kick ass presentations from companies that have gone on to [...]
Back when I first entered the startup World, it was hard to create a startup. For starters you needed over $1M just to get going. You had to buy gear, software licenses, etc. And there was no real social web to help you cheaply bring products to market. These days there are effectively no barriers [...]
Sep
27
So the big news in VC circles yesterday was Tumblr’s mammoth $ 85M financing round. That’s on top of the $30M they raised less than a year ago. In total the 4 year old company has raised $ 125M. Matthew Ingram has an interesting post on Tumblr on Gigaom and cites some pretty impressive traction [...]
Sep
20
Fundraising is an art not a science. And as I have really come to appreciate now that I am on the investor side, there are many subjective elements that go into the investment decision. The timing, fit, stage, interpersonal chemistry all have to work. One thing that has killed interest in deals for me is [...]
Raising money is always hard. Especially so if it’s your first time and if your company is brand new. As seed investors, we routinely work with 1st time founders and by default are working with young companies. For the most part, the cap tables and prior financings we see are clean, but more often than [...]
I rarely watch the news. Too depressing. But last night we tuned in for a bit. Among the top headlines: growing concern over the financial health of many European Union countries. Markets are concerned about debt levels, raising the cost of debt and starting a downward spiral. People are protesting, governments are in a bind. [...]
