Venture Capital

I had a chance to sit through the practice session for a handful of the companies that are presenting at this year’s VC in the Rockies conference (not too late to register, by the way – it’s a great showcase of Colorado venture deals, not to mention world class skiing). Many of them had one common trait: they sucked at actually describing what it is their business does. Som  just seemed to forget to mention it, while others appeared to try, but either get bogged down in the complexity of it or just fell short of the mark.  This was surprising but amazingly consistent. Maybe they had all practiced their pitch too much or perhaps they were just too close…

Among the companies I poked fun at yesterday was Fleck. Turns out they have a blog. Also turns out that their latest post was a really good one – an entrepreneur’s perspective on how to give a good venture pitch. I wrote a post about a year ago on the same subject.  This is a great companion to that post – from the perspective of someone on the other side of the table. By the way, be sure to take a look at the description of the business on their splash page – very amusing!

As much time as VCs spend with our portfolio companies, it’s important to remember that our jobs are actually to see them move on to greener pastures. Of course working closely with these companies – often over several years – one can’t help but get attached to some of them. So it’s often with mixed emotion that I see companies move on to the next chapter in their lives. It’s the natural lifecycle of investing and is absolutely key to the performance of our jobs (performance which is measured solely by the amount of money we return to our LPs). Still, it’s a bummer to stop working on a daily basis with some of the great people that run these…

One of the things that I like about spending most of my time with start-ups is that there are very few of the trappings of larger companies – people answer their own phones; leave their own outgoing voice-mail messages; everyone can fit in a single room for a company update; all employees can give feedback on products; etc. I remember fondly the early days at my last company before we had an office – when we could hold our management/company meetings sitting around a single Starbuck’s table. Of course things tend not to stay that way (if you’re successful) and very quickly these days are forgotten history. At NewsGator’s board meeting today we had what can only be termed a…

I’m involved in a lot of capital raising conversations – companies looking for money. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how narrow minded many companies are in how they approach this process. Forget the obvious stuff about doing research on local VC firms and their investment focus to make sure you are a match before sending them your “next generation toaster oven/microwave” business plan (yes –  I actually received this plan) or targeting VCs that are particularly knowledgeable about your industry or have made money investing in businesses with similar characteristics – I’ll assume (wrongly) that most people already do that. I’m talking about treating interactions with potential funders as relationships – listening to what they have…

My wife and I live with a toddler and as a result are becoming more familiar with the concept of “NO” – which, incidentally, I can now assure you can contain anywhere between 1 and 5 syllables, depending on the desired effect and emphasis. It got me thinking about a VC pet peeve of mine which is how shitty a lot of VCs are at turning companies down. I’m not talking about the form e-mail that VCs send out to pass on something that they don’t want to take a look at (we all send out these e-mails, don’t we ?!?) – I’m talking about companies that we spend some amount of time with (say at least one meeting, but…

When I was interviewing for my job at Mobius I asked Dave Jilk interview not only with MDs and other associates, but also with portfolio – who had briefly been an associate at Mobius and was then (as he is now) running a portfolio company – what he thought the most important attributes of successful VCs were (as an aside, I don’t know that I appreciated at the time what a good sign it was that the VC I was interviewing to joined had me company CEO’s to get their take). Without hesitation he said that in a nutshell good VCs need to have attention deficit disorder. I laughed about it then, but I think its time that I acknowledged…

As a member of the American Alpine Club I look forward each year to the arrival of my copy of Accidents in North American Mountaineering.  This is a book that the club publishes annually that documents climbing and mountaineering accidents that are reported each year in the United States and Canada.  The idea, of course, is to educate the climbing community on things that can go wrong in the backcountry in an attempt to make everyone safer (as if the threat of dying were not enough, we also have to worry about being written up in Accidents. . . ).   A typical entry might be titled: Fall on Snow – Unable to Self-Arrest, Faulty Use of Crampons and would…

John H turned me on to a post from Investments and More titled VC’s – Top Brass Solid, Others Not (“wow – someone taking the glam out of the VC world,” he writes).  I actually found his post pretty amusing. While I think a lot of people at venture firms are fantastic (law of natural selection, I guess) there are, of course, some that are better than others. What Steve’s post did bring to mind was how important it is to recognize that when you take on an investor you’re taking on an individual more than you are taking on a firm. Some firms have more cache than others, but at the end of the day as an entrepreneur you…

I sit through a lot of board meetings and while they are a great time for a company to harness the expertise of the people sitting around the table, they need to be structured and managed in such a way to actually accomplish that (i.e., effective board meetings don’t just happen – they are the result of planning and careful management).  I sometimes joke with my dad that it must be tuff to get a word in at his board meetings given the powerhouses around the table; he just laughs and tells me that they prepare for their board meetings carefully.  In actuality, I think he get a huge benefit out of his board – as do many of the…