I’ve attended recently a number of accelerator events. I’m struck by how much smaller the crowds are. The bloom is definitely off the seed rose. You’ve heard about the Series A Crunch, that there is very little money available to fund post-seed companies, that this is a cash problem. My partner Eric Hjerpe views it
Category: Technology and VC
The CRV Manifesto and Being ‘All In’
I read about Zendesk’s recent IPO and texted congrats to my friend Jon Auerbach, who is at CRV, the firm that was the lead investor. I also checked out the CRV web site. I was totally blown away by their Manifesto. First, very, very few firms articulate and then publish their values (we have an
Economics of VC
Charlie O’Donnell has published a post on the economics of his VC fund. I really admire him for: starting his own firm, being so transparent about his take-home pay, and the incredible passion that he has for the investing business. I’ve written about it before, but I really do believe that early-stage VC is a
Software Has Eaten Retail
In a different life, I worked extensively at Bain & Co. in the supply chain and retail industries. It put me on the radar of Amazon.com and various VC firms, as the e-commerce wave was arriving in the late 1990s. I’m thinking about those moments as I read a WSJ article on how Target has fired
Kepha’s Upcoming ‘Annual Meeting’
VCs are very lucky in many, many ways. Investors entrust us with piles of capital in multiple ten-year funds, which are essentially open check books. Portfolio companies count on us to help them source/land great recruits, find potential strategic partners, land early flagship customers, etc. As I’ve blogged before in a series of posts (more here), venture
Investing in The Cloud
I love The Cloud as a consumer, but I’m uncertain about investing in the cloud infrastructure layer as a VC investor. By the former, I love the fact that I can share team documents (Dropbox), back up my iPhone and iPad (iCloud), check email in a low friction way (Google Apps), keep to-do lists (Evernote), stream