Venture Capital

Here’s a thought for those of you considering taking venture capital – don’t do it. Seriously. It’s not worth it. Ok – so I’m not 100% serious. I’m trying to make a living investing in companies and would therefore be out of business if everyone followed this advice, however I think that for the majority (50%? . . . 80%?) of entrepreneurs taking venture capital money is a mistake. As I explain why this is the case, please read from the perspective of someone who is actually trying to encourage people to go into the process with their eyes open more so than I’m truly trying to scare people off from raising venture money. The worst thing you can do…

I got the VC equivalent of Slashdotted today when Daniel Primack of PE Week Wire referenced my “How to become a venture capitalist” post in his daily e-mail this morning.  Traffic on my blog went crazy (it was already running a little high this week from that post – particularly after Brad and Fred each referenced it at my request). I’ve even had some publications ask me if they could reprint the article.  Pretty cool stuff. As a result there are a lot of people hitting my site that are first time readers.  Allow me to suggest a few posts to check out that I think are representative of my writing. Here’s why I blog (link) Here’s why I call…

I’m always encouraged when I see other non-partner VC’s blogging. As regular readers of this blog know, I’m using it in part to explore some of the differences between being a partner and being a non-partner in the venture industry. While there are a number of great VC partner blogs, there are many fewer non-partners writing (when I started VC Adventure there were almost none). We’ve added one more to the ranks recently – my friend Will Price from Pequot Ventures. I first met Will about 10 years ago when we were both analysts for Morgan Stanley. Like me, Will didn’t take well to banking and has traveled a somewhat circuitous path to his role at Pequot. He’s a smart…

I get asked this question a lot and while the real answer is “I have absolutely no idea,” I thought I’d make something up here so I at least have a place to send people who ask me this question (as well as  anyone else who happens to stumble upon this blog searching for ‘getting a job at a venture capital firm’). This post is for aspiring analysts, associates and principals and has little to do withgetting a job as a partner (which I hope to figure out one day too . . .) Step one: Assume you will not be able to land a job as a venture capitalist. This is the realistic outcome of trying to get a…

One of the most common questions I get asked from people outside the VC industry is “what’s a typical day like?” It’s a good question, but a hard one to answer – my days are extremely varied (this is one of the things I really like about my job, in fact). The type of work I do on any given day is very dependant on what’s going on with the companies that I work with (financing, m&a, planning, putting in place a bank line, rolling out new products, etc.), and every day (or hour) seems to bring something different. I’ve tried a few approaches to answering this question – typically some variant of “on average I spend x% of my…

Only hours away from posting a link to this great article by Paul Graham on why VCs suck (A Unified Theory of VC Suckage), when both Brad and Fred beat me to it. That didn’t keep me from sending the link directly to a couple of people who I thought would get a kick out of it (and wouldn’t necessarily see those blog entries). This list included my father – Randy Levine – who is the founder, initial CEO and now a director of a venture-backed start-up. Dad and I regularly trade stories about the relationships between VCs and their investors – comparing notes on our experiences from different sides of the table. Dad and I had the following exchange…

I took an important step in my life as a venture capitalist today when I attended my first board meeting as an actual board member (rather than a board observer – see my post on this distinction from last month). While the earth didn’t exactly shake off its axis, I can’t help but feel that today was a real milestone in my life as a venture capitalist. I’ve worked with a lot of companies since joining Mobius, but this is the first deal that is really my ultimate responsibility. Today’s board meeting wasn’t unlike the hundreds of other board meetings I’ve participated in over the past 3 years, but there was no question that there was something a little different…

I spent the much of last week attending the annual venture conference sponsored by the Colorado Venture Capital Association. The purpose of the event is to attract out of state VCs to take a look at Colorado venture deals that are in the market (click here for a link to the companies that presented this year). I’ll talk about Colorado’s venture capital market in a separate post, but suffice it to say, it’s important to the local VC community to have financial support (at least on some deals) broader than the local community can provide. While each of us has relationships with firms out of state that we syndicate deals with, as a group this is our one annual chance…

Venture capitalists generally participate in boards in one of two fashions – either as actual board members or as board observers (see Brad and Jason’s post on Term Sheets – Board of Directors — for more information on how we take positions on boards). As an associate at Mobius I was not able to take actual board seats, so I took the board observer position in the companies I worked with (note that generally this isn’t an official designation – although I have seen board agreements that require the venture firms to specifically designate the board observer; more commonly its just a seat at the board table reserved for someone from the venture firm other than the board member). As…

At Mobius Venture Capital, as in many venture firms, we don’t have analysts (people whose primary responsibility is to run models, cap tables and the like). As a result, each of us does most of our own financial modeling. I actually like this set-up, because it makes sure that I’m both directly responsible for my work and am up to speed on the financials of each of the companies I work with. Reviewing financial models is not the largest part of my job, but is an important part of what I do – for screening new investments; tracking portfolio company performance as well as analyzing follow-on investments into companies in which we already have a financial interest. In the course…