This is a unique approach
I was sent the following a few days ago: In order to give investors a sneak peak of what we’re up to, we’ve created a short video (4 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9fiEu_TBdU I appreciate the effort behind stuff like this (as well as the novel thinking). While we’re on the topic, if there’s ever something you want me to take a look at, tag it to my del.icio.us account (for:slevine).
March 27, 2007· 1 min read
VC Pitch “Rules”
I often get emailed requests to include content in my posts. While I can’t always oblige I do look for interesting content to repurpose or link to or build a large post around. Today I received the following links from Laura Fitton on a topic near and dear to my heart – giving effective venture presentations. One of my very first posts for VC Adventure was on this topic, and much of Laura’s advice corresponds well to my thoughts on the subject. …
March 26, 2007· 2 min read
Perspective
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 of eye movements). …
March 22, 2007· 2 min read
The stupid things VCs say
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.
March 2, 2007· 1 min read
Is your VC a rockstar?
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.
February 23, 2007· 1 min read
Who do I work for?
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 board of directors or their investors. Certainly I work for our investors – my job is to return them more money than they gave us and I have a direct responsibility to be a good steward of their money and trust in us. …
November 29, 2006· 2 min read
Why are VCs so indecisive?
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 has spoken out. You get the picture (and I’m sure many of you have lived through it). I’m not at all saying we should say ‘yes’ to everything; nor am I suggesting that sometimes its not ok to simply have no opinion. But sometimes. . . perhaps most of the time . . . being definitive (even if you are definitively wrong) is better than being non-committal (and therefore noncommittally neither right nor wrong). Grrr.
November 27, 2006· 1 min read
An army of one
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 thing and generally have limited overlap with what they are working on (they manage their own portfolios; we intersect on fund management and looking at new investment opportunities, but that’s about it). My “colleagues” are for the most part other board members of the companies I work with and the management teams of those companies. I spend a huge amount of time with these two groups of people. I travel pretty often, but almost never with anyone else. My partners do the same. As a result we overlap in the office only one or two days per week. This kind of snuck up on me over the past years but I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few months. For my personality this works great – I love the autonomy and have never been the kind of person who wanted or needed close supervision. But it’s definitely different than any other work I’ve done and I can’t help but think how unusual a working structure it is – something I never considered before I got into the business.
November 21, 2006· 2 min read
Ideas for your elevator pitch
Sean has obviously read some of my ramblings on how to present your business succinctly…
October 18, 2006· 1 min read
Should I quit my venture job?
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 fun the work is), it may sound strange that people are even considering this, but in the course of these conversations a number of examples always come up of sr. associate/vp/principal level colleagues who have jumped ship for what is perceived to be the greener pastures of the company side of the fence. …
June 9, 2006· 2 min read