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Startups and Intellectual Property (IP)

May 16, 2012
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Lately questions about Intellectual Property or IP have been cropping up left and right.  Eliot Durbin (my partner at BOLDstart Ventures) and I had a long discussion this morning in preparation for his panel today about IP and patents.  Last week, we met with a company and when we asked about their core IP, they [...]

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Startups getting caught in No Man’s Land

Sep 29, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

“No Man’s Land” is traditionally known as the area between two trenches.  This is a reference to World War I and the vicious trench warfare and hand-to-hand combat that characterized that war. In “No Man’s Land” lay a wasteland of dead bodies and other debris and shrapnel.  Increasingly I am seeing many startups who were ably [...]

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The New York Startup Market Rocks and is REAL

Apr 15, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

OK, I may be biased having been an early stage VC based out of New York since 1996, but I must say that the vibe, energy, and people at the Techstars NYC Demo Day event yesterday was simply awesome.  Dave Tisch and team simply did a fantastic job guiding the startups, recruiting the mentors, and [...]

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Reflecting on passed investments

Apr 5, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Every 3 months I dig through my “passed company” folder to look at what investment opportunities we passed on and why.  Inevitably, there are a few companies that are near-misses, but we end up passing on for whatever reason.  Did we pass because we didn’t think the team was great or because we didn’t believe [...]

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Know When to Hold 'em, Know When to Fold 'em

Feb 14, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

I had a tough call with an entrepreneur this morning.  His company raised a fair amount of seed financing but did not hit the milestones it needed to in order to raise a real round of venture capital.  The product is nice but they took too long iterating and releasing a subsequent version while the [...]

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Put your users first!

Jan 13, 2011
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

As a VC who invests in seed and first rounds, I love revenue just as much as the next guy.  However, the focus on revenue should play second fiddle to a user/customer first experience.  Over the years, how many times have we seen companies grow from next to nothing in user base and somehow forget [...]

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Standard investor update for startups

Oct 20, 2010
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

I remember when we hired a new CEO for one of our portfolio companies and my tip to him was to overcommunicate.  We had a few large VCs on the board and a number of high-profile angels that could also help in various ways.  His job was to keep everyone up-to-date but also to know [...]

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4 Types of CEO Behavior when Dealing with Boards

Apr 30, 2010
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

As I have stressed over the years, it is imperative for board members and their management teams to have open dialogue.  If you are a CEO, I encourage you to share more rather than less information.  One of the best tools that a number of our CEOs use is a weekly email summarizing by department [...]

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Google acquires portfolio company Gizmo5

Google acquires portfolio company Gizmo5

Nov 13, 2009
in Venture Capital, VOIP

Congratulations to Michael Robertson and team at Gizmo5 for all of their hard work and perseverance!  There is not a lot I can tell you about the future plans for Google Voice, but I do believe it is important to look back to see how we got here.  We made our investment in Gizmo5 (aka [...]

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Occam's Razor and the current state of venture

Jun 2, 2009
in Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

I have made many posts in the past about focus and doing more with less, and as I continued on this path it reminded me of Occam's Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation to any problem is the best explanation.  Of course Occam's Razor can get more complex but over the years it has [...]

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