Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Venture Capital’ Category

NVCA: VCs Talk Accelerator Bubbles, Accelerator Success By Lora Kolodny -Venture Capital Dispatch

Posted in Venture Accelertor, Venture Capital, Venture Capital Dispatch, tagged , , on May 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 

NVCA: VCs Talk Accelerator Bubbles, Accelerator Success

By Lora Kolodny

Brad Feld

Gathering at the National Venture Capital Association’s VentureScape conference this week, venture and corporate investors met with executives leading top startup accelerators in a crowded session to discuss the health of the “startup ecosystem.”

Two main questions on venture investors’ minds: “How do we know if accelerators are succeeding?”  And: “Are we in an accelerator bubble?”

The managing director of Foundry Group and TechStars co-founder Brad Feld said he thinks there is no “accelerator bubble.” In fact, he wants to see an accelerator established in every town with a population of at least 100,000 in the U.S., to foster a healthy, local and national economy.

Read Full Post »

5 Habits of Great Startup CEOs by Scott Johnson – Partner New Atlantic Ventures

Posted in Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Management, New Atlantic Ventures, Scott Johnson, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , on May 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

April 5 2013
by Scott Johnson

5 Habits of Great Startup CEOs

Being CEO of a startup is quite similar to being the parent of a newborn.  The neighbors see a clean cooing newborn with smiling proud parents.  But we all know what goes on inside the house.  Sleepless nights, stress, no time to attend to other relationships.  You are a slave to the new creature.  It is ultimately incredibly rewarding, but parenting is very hard work and not at all glamourous.  And just the way not everyone handles parenting well, not everyone is a good candidate to run a startup.  As a matter of fact, a great startup CEO is as rare as a 70 degree day in March in Boston.

I have compiled the qualities that great startup CEOs share – you know – the CEOs that actually get multiple B-round term sheets in down markets and get that marquis exit at an unusually high multiple.  These are the ones that consistently surprise their board on the upside, investors love to back, and that acquirers pay up to bring in-house.  If you are a founder looking for a CEO to really grow your company, here are the five personal attributes you should look for:

1) Attracts Great Talent.  This is the best indicator of success, as it really encompasses all of the other attributes.  If A+ talent flocks to work for someone, that person has got something special.  Be careful though.  An orangutan could be CEO of super fast growing startup and attract great talent.  So, make sure it is the CEO who can attract talent, not someone riding the wave at a hot company.

2) Networking God.  A good CEO shortens sales cycles with contacts, shortens hiring time with contacts, and shortens fundraising time with contacts.  A CEO who networks well can hence shorten time to exit and massively reduce dilution to founders.  Give 8% to a great CEO, prevent 20-30% or more in downstream dilution.

3) High Intelligence.  The CEO is usually not the highest IQ in the room.  But he needs to be in the conversation.  At high tech startups, a certain acumen is needed to keep the respect of the troops, and gain the respect of customers and investors.

4) Strategic Thinker.  The trick with startups is to channel all of the companies limited resources in the optimal direction.  And to quickly alter course as markets dictate so not a single moment is wasted by indecision.  This requires strategic thinking, not tactical execution.  Many line executives from larger companies struggle as CEOs of startups because they  have not had the opportunity to deviate from a strategy that was handed down to them from above.

5) Stamina, Energy and Productivity.  This gets back to my point at the top about parenting a newborn.  The CEO needs to be all-in, and one of those productive people that doesn’t waste a second of his or her day.  The CEO sets the culture at a company, and that should be one of reward for achievement, productivity, hard work, and accountability.

So, there you go.  Every founder CEO should be very honest in his or her self assessment, and then when they see someone with the above profile, move quickly to hire them.  But do your diligence.  Hiring the wrong CEO can be every bit as costly as hiring the right one can be helpful.

Read Full Post »

The Daily Startup: VCs Buy In to Mobile Game Maker Supercell- Venture Capital Dispatch

Posted in Investments, Mobile, Mobile Applications, Technology, Venture Capital, Venture Capital Dispatch, Wireless on April 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Venture Capital Dispatch

An inside look from VentureWire at high-tech start-ups and their investors.

 

  • April 18, 2013, 10:02 AM

The Daily Startup: VCs Buy In to Mobile Game Maker Supercell

 

Top stories in today’s VentureWire:

 

dailystartup_D_20090806101628.jpgArt by Mike Lucas

 

Eager to own a slice of the wildly profitable Finnish mobile game maker Supercell, venture investors have purchased existing shares totaling $130 million at a $770 million valuation. Index Ventures led the deal with participation from Institutional Venture Partners and Atomico. Founded in 2011, SuperCell is currently the highest-grossing iOS game developer with “Clash of Clans” and “Hay Day” now bringing in $2.5 million of revenue daily.

 

Enlighted raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Rockport Capital for its lighting-controls technology, as it operates in a quickly changing market where the price for lighting emitting diodes is declining. The company makes sensors and software that is installed in commercial spaces and that helps decide when to dim lights. A newer application of the technology would also allow the sensors to measure temperature and occupancy, and control not just lighting but also air conditioning.

 

Also in today’s VentureWire, Reduxio Systems has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures. Reduxio is developing storage systems that make use of both flash memory and hard drives…Smart-home startup Zonoff has secured a $3.8 million Series A round for software that makes all kinds of smart-home devices work smoothly together and makes them easier to set up and control…and Crowdtilt has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz to bring a new twist to crowdfunding. Crowdtilt’s apps give groups an easy way to fund their own initiatives, rather than asking for money from strangers online.

 

(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving startups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, visit our homepage, scroll to the bottom and click “try for free.”)

 

Elsewhere around the Web:

 

Launching mobile game apps is getting expensive. Case in point: ZeptoLab says it will spend about $1 million to launch “Cut the Rope: Time Travel” but it spent almost nothing to promote the first “Cut the Rope” game’s release in 2010, The Wall Street Journal reports. What has changed is the mobile games business, which is now so competitive that word-of-mouth marketing is no longer enough.

 

 Jon Flint, a founder of venture firm Polaris Partners, got into the hair-care business after his stylist suggested that he take a meeting with a colleague in New York who wanted to start a company. Flint and his partners turned to MIT”s Robert Langer to come up with innovative products. Flint talks with WSJ about the company that resulted, Living Proof, which is co-owned by actress Jennifer Aniston.

 

Silicon Valley startups are increasingly hiring testing companies to vet apps before releasing them to the public, WSJ reports.

Read Full Post »

Angel investing shifted slightly in 2012 by Cromwell Schubarth Silicon Valley Business Journal

Posted in Angel Investing, Series A Investing, Sillicon Valley Business Jouranal, Uncategorized, Venture Capital on April 16, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Angel investing shifted slightly in 2012

Halo Report: Silicon Valley Bank, CB Insights, Angel resource Institute

Silicon Valley hosts the country’s most active venture capital firms but has only one of the top 10 angel groups from 2012, in terms of the number of deals done.
Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal

Amid reports of an angel funding boom that threatens to become a Series A crunch, a new report shows early stage investing in 2012 was relatively calm.

The median deal size shrank slightly to $600,000 from $625,000 the year before. Valuations of the companies funded held steady at $2.5 million.

Those aren’t numbers you might expect to see from an overheating market

Meanwhile, only one of the top 10 angel groups that did the most deals in the country last year is based in Silicon Valley — Sand Hill Angels which ranked No. 6.

Here are some other trends found in the annual Halo Report from Silicon Valley Bank, CB Insights and the Angel Resource Institute released on Tuesday, just before the three-day Angel Capital Association Summit kicks off in San Francisco on Wednesday.

— Shift from the hubs: California and New England, which account for two-thirds of venture investing, aren’t as dominant in angel fundings. The regions accounted for about 31 percent of angel deals in 2012, down from 35 percent the year before. The big gainers were the Southwest (13.3 percent in 2012 from 11.4 percent the year before) and the Northwest (9.3 percent vs. 7.8 percent).

— Life science drops: Life science investing sent from 25 percent of deals in 2011 to 21 percent of deals in 2012. The biggest jump was in mobile and telecom deals, which grew to 13.3 percent from 9.3 percent. In terms of money, Internet startups were No. 1 with 27.3 percent and mobile/telecom was No. 2 with 26.5 percent.

Amid reports of an angel funding boom that threatens to become a Series A crunch, a new report shows early stage investing in 2012 was relatively calm.

The median deal size shrank slightly to $600,000 from $625,000 the year before. Valuations of the companies funded held steady at $2.5 million.

Those aren’t numbers you might expect to see from an overheating market.

Meanwhile, only one of the top 10 angel groups that did the most deals in the country last year is based in Silicon Valley — Sand Hill Angels which ranked No. 6.

Here are some other trends found in the annual Halo Report from Silicon Valley Bank, CB Insights and the Angel Resource Institute released on Tuesday, just before the three-day Angel Capital Association Summit kicks off in San Francisco on Wednesday.

— Shift from the hubs: California and New England, which account for two-thirds of venture investing, aren’t as dominant in angel fundings. The regions accounted for about 31 percent of angel deals in 2012, down from 35 percent the year before. The big gainers were the Southwest (13.3 percent in 2012 from 11.4 percent the year before) and the Northwest (9.3 percent vs. 7.8 percent).

— Life science drops: Life science investing sent from 25 percent of deals in 2011 to 21 percent of deals in 2012. The biggest jump was in mobile and telecom deals, which grew to 13.3 percent from 9.3 percent. In terms of money, Internet startups were No. 1 with 27.3 percent and mobile/telecom was No. 2 with 26.5 percent.

— More co-invested deals: The number of fundings where angels co-invest with other types of investors, such as venture firms, in growing dramatically. It made up just 41.4 percent of deals in 2010 but was up to 69.3 percent last year. But the median round size of a co-invested funding actually dropped in that same time frame, going from $3.58 million in 2010 to $2.97 million.

— Revenue first: Most startups that got money in 2012 (63 percent) also had revenue to show before the angels opened their wallets.

— Convertibles are in: The number of deals involving convertible debt, essentially a loan that turns into equity at later rounds, rose. It made up 11 percent of deals in 2012, nearly double the share of the year before.

Cromwell Schubarth is the Senior Technology Reporter at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1823.

Read Full Post »

Foundation’s Paul Holland: Smaller fund, smaller fundings right for times by Cromwell Schubarth Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal

Posted in Paul Holland, Sillicon Valley Business Jouranal, Startups, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , on April 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Apr 10, 2013, 12:03pm PDT

Foundation’s Paul Holland: Smaller fund, smaller fundings right for times

Foundation Capital Partner Paul Holland says the firm’s latest fund is smaller than the previous ones by design, a reaction to how little startups need these days to get off the ground.

Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal

A lot has happened in the year that Foundation Capital started raising money for its seventh fund, according to Partner Paul Holland.

Instead of what had been reportedly planned as a half billion fund, the Menlo Park firm on Tuesday closed a $282 million pool to invest from.

“Startups don’t need as much money now, thanks to the cloud and other factors,” Holland told me. “Startups are using about 40 percent less capital, on average, so we don’t need as much capital to invest.”

He said the smaller fund size was a conscious reaction to the changing startup environment.

“We raised our last fund, which was $750 million in 2008, when we thought we would be doing more cleantech and later-stage deals,” he said. “It took us five years to invest, which is frankly too long. We wanted to have a fund that we thought we could finish investing in three years.”

The new fund will be targeting about 60 percent of its cash at IT startups, about 30 percent to 35 percent at consumer startups and up to 10 percent in cleantech.

“We do about two-thirds of our investments in seed or Series A rounds but we will invest in later rounds when we find something that suits us,” Holland said.

There will be right of the firm’s 13 partners investing from the fund, including new partner Anamitra Banerji, who developed Twitter’s ad platform as one of the micro-blogging company’s earliest employees.

“We have a heritage of partners who stay around for quite a while after they have finished actively investing,” Holland said. “They stay involved with the firm and with the companies they have invested in.”

General Partner Rich Redelfs is the only partner who has newly stepped back from investing, he said.

Despite working with a smaller fund, Holland said he is more excited about the startups he sees now than he was 10 years ago.

“There is a real tailwind behind early stage investing right now,” he said. “The difference between now and 10 years ago is night and day. It’s a lot easier to create returns on small amounts of money now than ever in my experience.”

Click here to subscribe to TechFlash Silicon Valley, the daily email newsletter about startups, venture and angel investors.

Cromwell Schubarth is the Senior Technology Reporter at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1823.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »