This may not be the bubble you’re looking for
At great risk of wading into a debate where there’s no winning, I thought I’d present a few pieces of data that suggest that we’re not exactly in a market bubble right now. Massive caveat here: I’m not trying to predict the stock market. I’m just following my own advice. Plus I agree with my partner Brad, who said recently, “I think everyone will have an opinion and no one will have any real idea,” about what’s going to happen in the stock market (this in an article that appeared after just two days of a down market). But the data are important, so let’s at least pay attention to what’s actually going on. From there you can form your own opinion. …
September 15, 2015· 3 min read
Charts of the Day – The complexity of raising Series A
The charts of the day comes from a new Mattermark report on the current pace of financing. Both relate to the pace of seed funding in the US and the challenge of raising Series A financing. The first chart shows the pace of deals (measured by number of rounds) by category: Pretty hard to miss the huge blip in Seed/Angel deals in 2013 (but really from 2011 and continuing through 2015, with a peak at 2013). Most of you already knew this intuitively, but seeing it in black and white (at least for me) was eye opening. And while there are more Series A deals being done every year, they’re not even coming close to keeping up with the pace of Seed deals. From an ecosystem perspective this is both what you’d expect and ultimately a good thing. We’ve certainly seen markets where too many companies passed through each funding stage and ultimately that had terrible consequences for the market, for investors and for founders. The best markets are those that are acting rationally and efficiently. We may even be running a bit hot from that perspective (subject of a different, upcoming post, by the way). From the perspective of a Seed funded founder, this should be a clear warning sign that it’s not going to be easy to raise your Series A. In fact, if you look at the trend line of Seed companies “graduating” to Series A, you can see in stark relief the challenge ahead of you’re a Seed funded founder. …
September 8, 2015· 3 min read
The growth imperative (but beware)
First off, a note of apology. It’s been months since I’ve posed here. Not for lack of desire – more about some combination of crazy busyness and lack of proper prioritization. I miss it and am going to try to step it up. This is a post about the importance of growth, about the current market environment and a note of caution if the growth imperative changes rapidly to the profitability imperative. …
September 4, 2015· 4 min read
Why Companies Fail
I’ve touched on aspects of this topic before, but thought it was worthy of a full post. Companies in the venture business fail all the time. As I wrote last year, the majority of venture rounds fail to return capital. With all the hype one reads in the startup press these days, that fact can be easily lost. So we know that startups fail all the time, but why do they fail? Here are some common pitfalls based on our experiences (and here I’m referring not just to Foundry portfolio companies, although all of these lessons apply there as well, but also our observations of the broader markets). …
April 2, 2015· 6 min read
Once bitten but nothing learned …. betting on the Superbowl again
Apparently I didn’t learn from my experience last year. As you may recall, I bet Dan Levitan from Maveron $5,000 that the Broncos would beat the Seahawks in last year’s Superbowl (one of several ultimately losing bets). They failed to do so. In spectacular fashion. (truthfully I didn’t watch past the first play of the 2nd half) And that was just the most public bet I lost (that money went to Seattle Children’s Hospital, so at least I was supporting a good cause). There were others – less expensive but more humiliating. …
January 24, 2015· 1 min read
Introducing Pledge 1% – Let’s make a difference together
There’s a great scene in Office Space where the movie’s heroes check their ATM balance after one of them has written a program to scrape tenths of pennies off of Paymetech (the movie’s fictional company) transactions. The guys figure this action will both go unnoticed and also generate a relatively modest sum for them. Instead when they check their balance it turns out that the sum of their tiny rounding transactions actually equated to over $400k to them over a weekend! …
December 2, 2014· 2 min read
IPO or M&A? Here’s exactly how large companies exit
I wrote a post a few months ago based on some data from Correlation Ventures about the distribution of returns on venture deals (which revealed that outsized winners are, in fact, much more rare than most people think). Today I’m focusing on companies in those top return categories with some new data from Correlation that show the percentage of large exits (>$500M) that are generated through M&A vs. IPO (quick side note: I seriously love how much information Correlation collects and how free they are in letting me post about it – as a reminder, Correlation is a firm that co-invests based on an algorithm that predicts the success of the a company; we’re in a few deals together and I can tell you the process is quick and painless; end of advertisement, but seriously – these data are from their work and the fact that they’re so interesting shows why the model works for them). …
November 20, 2014· 3 min read
Ello World
At the front end of every new investment we hope we’ve found the next break-out company. But it’s rare when you have the feeling that you’re investing in a business that may both be that and has the potential to touch millions of lives. We feel we’ve found that in Ello – a social networking business that’s part Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, but at the same time all its own. Ello is a beautiful and easy to use product that allows people to express themselves as they see fit but without relying on selling its users to make money. We’ve just led the Series A financing for the business along with Bullet Time Ventures and FreshTracks Capital. As part of the financing, I’ll be joining the Ello board. You can find the Foundry post about this investment here, and a post from Mark Solon of Bullet Time Ventures here. …
October 23, 2014· 4 min read
Ryan Martens on Councilperson Macon Cowles’ Ignorance of the Boulder Startup Community
Like many here in Boulder, I felt that Boulder City Councilperson Macon Cowles’ recent remarks about our startup community were both ignorant and offensive. A group of entrepreneurs posted an OpEd this weekend responding to those remarks in the Daily Camera (it’s worth nothing the diversity of those entrepreneurs vs. Councilperson Cowles’ flatly incorrect characterization of Boulder entrepreneurs). Ryan Martens – a long time Boulder entrepreneur and community activist – felt the same way and asked to borrow this spot to post some of his own thoughts on the diversity of the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem as well as the many ways that entrepreneurs in Boulder are giving back to our community. His post follows. …
September 2, 2014· 4 min read
Accelerating Accelerators
I spent the day on Thursday last week in a small classroom on the Georgetown campus reviewing finalists in the SBA’s Accelerator Competition. Announced a few months ago, the Accelerator Competition is a program of the Small Business Administration through which they are awarding $50k to each of 50 accelerators across the country to promote entrepreneurship (that’s $2.5M in total for those of you w/o a calculator handy). For a government program it has surprisingly few strings attached – it’s really an experiment by the SBA to see if they can facilitate entrepreneurship across the country through providing assistance to the various programs that support entrepreneurs around the country. Of several hundred applicants the group last week reviewed the top 99 to come up with the final 50 who will be awarded the prize. …
August 26, 2014· 2 min read