Blog

Raising VC money: how to get the VC meeting?
Friday, March 23, 2012 Jo Tango - Partner, Kepha Partners
This is the second post in a series on “raising VC money.”  For the list of topics we are covering, click here.  This post will cover “how to get the VC meeting.”  So, after doing...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Funding, Voices
Raising VC money: which VCs to target?
Friday, March 16, 2012 Jo Tango - Partner, Kepha Partners
In this post, we’ll focus on the first topic: which VCs to target?  I think it’s a critical step in the fundraising process.  You have a new business idea, you’ve spent a ton of time on...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Funding, Voices
Tech IPOs Are Back – So Now What?
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 Lee Hower - Partner and Co-Founder, NextView Ventures
In the fall of 2010 I laid out reasons why all the tech “bubble” chatter was really more the hallmark of a reasonably sustained boom, and then revisited the topic almost one year ago to the...
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Entrepreneurship, Funding, Lessons Learned, Voices
Be Quick But Don't Hurry
Friday, March 9, 2012 Dave Barrett - General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners
One of many famous credos of the late, great Coach John Wooden.  Everybody talks about moving at web speed.  As it applies to making decisions about All Things People...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Lessons Learned, Voices
Heads or tails: Does it make sense to bet on down rounds?
Thursday, March 8, 2012 Dave Broadwin - Partner, Emerging Enterprise Center at Foley Hoag
I was doing some data mining in our database of New England venture transactions (see Foley Hoag Venture Perspectives) for reasons completely unrelated to the topic I am about...
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Best Practices, Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Funding, Voices
Constructing Your Seed Round Syndicate
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 Rob Go - Co-Founder and Partner, NextView Ventures
One area of fundraising that is not that straightforward is how to put together a syndicate of investors for your seed round.  Although there have been an increase in the number...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Funding, Voices
Startup Mentoring: a delicate balance of creative destruction
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 Fred Destin - Partner, Atlas Venture
I have been involved in many environments in which mentoring is a core part of the value proposition.  Seedcamp or TechStars succeed almost exclusively on the quality of their...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Lessons Learned, Voices
What Happens After The VC Associate Cold Call?
Friday, February 24, 2012 Larry Cheng - Managing Partner, Volition Capital
An entrepreneur I really admire asked me for advice on how to handle associate cold calls from VC firms.  I thought the best way to answer that question is to share what happens...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Funding, Lessons Learned, Voices
If You Can’t Recruit a Tech Co-Founder, Learn to Market, Not to Code
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 Dayna Grayson - Principal, North Bridge Venture Partners
I’ve noticed a growing amount of advice for business entrepreneurs on how to find a technical co-founder.  The advice seems to be “don’t delay if you can’t find one; learn to code.” It’s really...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Lessons Learned, Opinions, Voices
Existence Proof to Scale–From Point to Line to Curve
Friday, February 17, 2012 Richard Dale - Principal, Sigma Partners
How do you grow a software business? What does growth look like? This is what growth looks like. It starts slow, almost linear, from zero, and then (we hope) accelerates. The horizontal...
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Entrepreneurship, Expert Advice, Lessons Learned, Voices