Ring Out the Old Year….

On the heels of the fundraising data for 2011, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the NVCA released the 4Q 2011 and full year VC investment data. It was yet another year when VC’s...

What is the Best Way to Introduce Yourself to an Angel Investor? Part I

Raising from angels has historically been much different than raising from VCs. Angels have tended to be as inexperienced in early stage tech investing as the entrepreneur who’s raising...

Popular blog posts from 2011

As we wind down 2011, I thought it would be helpful to highlight some of top blog posts from the year.  So, in no particular order...

Before You Start a Business, Plan Your Exit

Not usually the first thing you think of when starting a company, but where you want to end up impacts everything you do.  I sit on the board of ChatThreads, where we are in...

Year-End Top 10: Early Stage Funding

Always lots of ideas from entrepreneurs, angels, vcs about how best to raise Seed & Early Stage capital.  ‘Tis the season for end-of-year lists.  So, if good enough for “Top 10 NFL...

So You Want to be a VC?

I had a meeting this week with a friend of a friend who was interested in getting into the Venture Capital Business.  I have a few of these meetings every year...

Smokey Rooms...

Thought I would share some of the discussion topics at the most recent director’s meeting for the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) which was held in Washington...

5 Documents to Have In Hand When Approaching a VC

When going out to raise money, entrepreneurs expect to have to provide a good deal of information to potential investors. Any decent venture capital fund is going to need...

MassChallenge 2011 Winners! [slideshow]

Last night, MassChallenge had their big gala extravaganza and...

Video: Hanging out with Raj Aggarwal of Localytics

Quiz... name a successful entrepreneur in Boston who...

Optimizing Series A Fundraising Around…Partnership Buy-In

Whether a startup’s initial Seed round is comprised of individual angels, seed-focused funds, larger VCs , or some combination of the three, when it’s time for the entrepreneur...

It Can Be Costly To Stay Private...

One of the big, recent trends among the high-profile consumer web companies has been to raise big rounds of private equity capital instead of going public. It's a great deal for the...

Why 10 slides, 5 minute pitches and one pagers really matter Fred Wilson wrote a good post recently on the optimal size for a slide deck. His thesis was skip the slide deck and do a great demo. I believe in demos, mockups, product samples or any other...

Size of Round Does NOT Equal Level of Success This subject annoys me to no end. It seems to pervade the startup ecosystem, dominate media coverage over funding, and be the focus of far, far too many entrepreneurs’ discussions. The topic is...

Checklist: How to Prepare for a VC Fund Raise I recently wrote a post with some tips on avoiding a busted VC deal. One of my tips was to be ready for diligence before you sign the LOI. Here’s some more thoughts on getting ready. The key to a...

Taking the Long View as the Value-add Investor A few weeks back, Eric Ries issued a stark warning for the start-up community: Winter is coming, and it will be long and hard, and there will be a lot of casualties from the unsuspecting crop...

Rules for an Effective Business Plan The written business plan is often the first contact an entrepreneur has with the investment community. It presents the company on paper before the company can represent itself and...

Valuing a start-up I have had a lot of conversations lately with entrepreneurs about how to value their businesses. This is always an emotional topic but a very important one nonetheless. In this blog post, I will...

What will the fall of 2011 look like for entrepreneurs? It is that time of the year again — the dog days of August when I wax poetic about the prospects for start-up companies in the coming months. This post is a follow-on to my Summer time...

What milestones are needed to raise a Series A? For entrepreneurs seeking to build big companies on a rapid trajectory, raising larger scale venture capital rounds is likely a necessity at some point after the initial seed funding...

All the bad things VCs want to do to you (video) Richard Dale of Sigma Partners recently gave a talk to the MassChallenge participants called: All the bad things VCs want to do to you! Below is a video that captured a Q&A session from the event...

Should You Care About Your VC’s Investors? I recently chimed in on this question in Quora: Do venture capitalists need approval from their investors before making an investment in a company? Then I thought about...

When to reach for the stars As anyone who follow the start-up world knows, valuations for high potential young companies as of late have been trending upward (how's that for an understatement) and are fairly divorced from underlying...

The Return of the Internet IPO Zillow priced their IPO yesterday and began trading today. Zillow increased their pricing range during their roadshow and then priced above the range at $20 per share and ended...

Field Guide to VC Decision-Making I recently met with an entrepreneur who posed a seemingly innocent question to me: “Can you tell me how your firm is structured and how you make group decisions on new investments?”...

The Evolution of Angels into VC’s We’ve been witnessing an institutionalizing of angel investing in recent years. For the most part, it’s good. There continues to be a gap in the market for stage appropriate...

6 things VCs look for in an investment As a serial entrepreneur, I learned a lot of lessons from things that didn’t work. These lessons later on shaped my ideas on what would be needed to build a successful startup...

Key Takeaways - Early Stage Funding Breakfast As a proud member of the Boston Carnegie Mellon Entrepreneurial Group, I helped organize and present at a panel session last week at TechStars/Dogpatch Labs in Cambridge...

How to Not Lose Your Shirt as an Angel Investor I’ll be attending Angel Boot Camp II in Boston on June 14. It’s a terrific event run by Jon Pierce, with lots of opportunities for talking strategies, meeting lots of angels...

Inside rounds Historically it’s always been a weak signal when a VC backed startup needs to raise money from the inside investors, aka as the inside round. But I never understood why...