John pointed me to a Peter Ireland blog post and asks whether VCs really do co-opt businesses on a regular basis – investing with a plan to replace founders and bring in their own management. "[S]ounds kinda scary," he writes, "the thought that a ‘clever’ VC could take away one’s company just like that…" Scary indeed. And while founding CEO’s are certainly replaced in venture backed businesses, it’s significantly overstated to say that "in about 50% of instances where an early stage company actually succeeds in raising venture capital, the founder CEO is fired within the first year". Before I get into this, however, I feel compelled to remind you that you really should not be taking venture capital in…
Posts By / seth levine
Go Newmerix! Go!
I’ll keep this brief since I hear from readers that they are not crazy about me using this space for plugging portfolio companies. I rarely do that, but yesterday’s announcement from Newmerix was too good to pass up. You can read the full release here. For the 95% of you who aren’t familiar with the company, Newmerix provides a suite of tools for managing, testing and maintaining packaged application environments – specifically SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft. I know – you’re probably wondering where you can get a copy for yourself (here), but actually it’s a sticky problem for a huge number of companies around the world. As you’ll see from the release the company had an outstanding 4th quarter and…
Only an 8th grade education
Here’s the 8th grade competence exam from 1895. Thank god I went through 8th grade about 90 years later… Hat tip to dad for sending this over. Grammar (Time, one hour) 1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters. 2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications. 3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph 4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of "lie", "play", and "run." 5. Define case; illustrate each case. 6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation. 7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar. Arithmetic (Time,…
"Even grown-ups don’t always get what they want"
Wise words from my 4 year old daughter after seeing my reaction to the Patriots losing the Super Bowl tonight. How true . . .
John Hancock
I had a bizarre request earlier this week to send in original signatures to some board documents that I had signed (a lender to the company in question wanted them). I regularly send around scanned documents – for everything ranging from board resolutions to investment documents (and shred the originals). I can’t think of the last time I actually had to provide an original signature. Strange . . .
Why I don’t sign NDAs
An entrepreneur started a meeting with me a few days ago by asking me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I politely declined and thought I’d back that up with a post on the subject (I recall reading a few other VC blogger’s views on NDAs in past years – there’s certainly no lack of thought on the subject, although it does seem to consistently come up every year). VC’s, as a general rule, won’t sign NDAs. No – we’re not trying to steal ideas from entrepreneurs or pass confidential information along. We’re just not in a position to review, negotiate and keep track of literally thousands of NDAs that would result if we started signing them on a regular basis. …
Check the job boards
Finding information out about your competitors is something that all companies do on a regular basis. Trolling web sites, reading blogs, setting up news alerts for articles, talking to customers and prospects, trolling trade show booths and listening in on webinars are all pretty common occurrences in the business of knowing what you don’t know about your competitors. One great way to get a pulse on what’s going on down the street is to keep your eye on your competitors job board. The pace of hiring and the positions with open recs all give incredible (and generally overlooked) insight into the state of their business.
Apply early, apply often
TechStars applications for this summer are officially open and I’d encourage any budding entrepreneur with a half-baked (or quarter baked – or fully baked) idea they are passionate about to apply. For those of you who are not familiar with TechStars, it’s a program started by successful Boulder entrepreneur David Cohen that brings about a dozen promising start-up teams to Boulder for an intensive summer of work on their start-up business idea. You can read more about what the teams last year worked on (and some of the machinations they went through to get there) on both David’s blog and the TechStars web site. I was a huge fan of TechStars last year and worked closely with a handful of…
Clearing your bug log
From my partner, Chris Wand, describing a program one of his companies put in place over the holiday to encourage employees to clear a bunch of outstanding bugs in their backlog: Anyone that wanted to fix a bug during their holiday break could earn $50/$75/$100 (depending on the severity of the bug) for each known bug they fixed (the catch was that QA had to approve the fix). The person that fixed the most bugs also earned an additional bonus (I think it was $500). They managed to clear about 100 bugs off their list… It was so successful, they’re thinking of implementing it at other times (i.e. over a long weekend, etc.—of course making sure that they don’t set…
New look, same Seth
With thanks to Ross for actually pulling everything together, I’m launching a new look and a new site today. Seth Levine’s VC Adventure is now hosted on my own domain – www.sethlevine.com – and is sporting an updated look. My old TypePad site is still active (although I’m no longer posting there) and in theory (at least until it breaks) is redirecting traffic to my new site (and should be directly specific posts to their respective post here at sethlevine.com). Let me know if you find anything broken or in need of editing/updating/improvement/better design.