Venture Capital

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…

A number of people have written in and correctly identified the Adventure reference of my blog title. Here’s the full reference and why I chose it as the title for my ramblings.   When I was a kid I used to love playing “Adventure” (written by Will Crowther and Don Woods back in the late 70’s). My dad worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, so I was rarely without a computer of some sort (terminals in those days; first with a 300 baud modem and eventually a super speedy 2400 baud model that didn’t even require you to insert your phone receiver into two plastic cup things to make the connection – you could actually plug your phone line directly into the modem!). I…

From time to time I’m planning on writing posts aimed at giving some insight into the venture industry. Brad (sometimes co-authored by Jason Mendelson, our GC) has done a series of these that I think are very informative. In fact, my very first blog was a guest column for Brad that described splits and the various ways to calculate them in a venture deal (and why this matters to entrepreneurs). I sit through a lot of venture presentations. Literally hundreds of them. Some are very good but a good number of them are really poor. Seriously. This amazes me. I think it’s pretty hard to get an audience with a VC (I think about the number of plans we receive…