Venture Capital

Ben linked to a great post on how trained artists vs. trained psychologists look at the same picture.  The lines on the pictures below denote eye movements of the study participants as they viewed each picture. Artists are specifically trained to discern perspective in composition.  They do this by looking not only at the focal point, but also more broadly at the context around that focal point.  In the study this came out clearly in the differences between the focus behavior of the psychologists (who tended to focus on the primary subject of the picture – represented in the left set of eye movements in the pictures above) vs. artists (whose concentration was across the picture – the right set…

Entrepreneur: “Yah, we’ve talked with Ryan about this” Me: “Oh. So Ryan already sat through this presentation” Entrepreneur: “Um, yah – something like that” Oops – that wasn’t what I really meant.

I had two people at VC in the Rockies this week say that VC’s were rockstars. I hope that’s not really what most VCs actually think. I always thought of entrepreneurs as rockstars. We’re just the groupies.

In a recent post I pointed out how autonomous the venture business can be. If that’s the case, then, who do I work for? Brad hired me and I spent several years working directly for him (i.e., supporting him in his investments). He’s still my boss, although we don’t have a traditional reporting relationship (I’m a junior partner – a Principal in our nomenclature – and he’s a senior partner – a Managing Director). I use him as a sounding board and advisor a lot but we don’t really have much of a boss/employee relationship. To some extent I work ‘for’ the other Managing Directors of Mobius but more in the same way someone at a company works ‘for’ their…

Ever notice how indecisive many VCs are? Maybe I’m just quick tempered, but it bugs the hell out of me that so many of my venture colleagues can’t seem to make a decision. Sometimes this shows up in overanalyzing a prospective investment (just to turn it down later for a completely unrelated reason which came up in the first week of their diligence); sometimes in the line “we’re waiting to see if any other investor is interested in this deal before deciding to pursue it”; sometimes in a delay taking an action with a CEO when its clear something needs to be done; sometimes in simply not having a definitive opinion on any issue – ever – until someone else…

One of the reasons I started this blog was to try to give readers some insights on life as a venture capitalist. I was reading some old posts and realized that I haven’t written on this topic in a while. Funny thing about venture capital – something I’ve really noticed as I transitioned from supporting other partners on their deals to exclusively managing my own portfolio – it’s a pretty lonely business. I have an extremely close relationship with my partners and of course bounce thoughts, ideas and questions off of them on a regular basis (something I think we at Mobius we are extremely good at doing). But for the most part, I spend my days doing my own…

Sean has obviously read some of my ramblings on how to present your business succinctly…

Perhaps it’s just a sign of a bubble, but I’ve had several people (entrepreneurs, partners at venture firms and junior partners/senior associates) ask me in the past month whether I was thinking about leaving venture capital to join a company. Their thinking generally follows the logic that given the new Web 2.0 paradigm (presumably they mean the idea that you can build a net business relatively inexpensively, generate sometraffic and either cash flow it or sell it off) there’s a better chance to create wealth in the next 2-4 years by working on the operating side of the world than in venture capital.   Given how difficult it is to land a job in venture capital (not to mention how…

Here’s one take on that ubiquitous question (ubiquitous at least for those of us who live outside of the bay area). The simple answer is Nerds and Money, but the more complex answer is much more amusing. Link – http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

Here’s a different view of venture capital – from someone who has clearly seen quite a bit.  Very amusing!  Be sure to check out the worst ever VC names. (from Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed)