Browsed by
Tag: #VCs

A Much-Needed Perspective on Investors

A Much-Needed Perspective on Investors

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay

We were in an online webinar recently, with a young investor as the guest speaker on the virtual dais. He is a former founder with several failures and one success under his belt. Given the fact that he has sat on both sides of the table, we were particularly curious about his investment approach, especially since he is a partner in a quite large fund.

While he is new to the investment side of the table, he has already developed his philosophy: if he is predisposed to investing in a company, he advises the founder to get some traction – meaning paying customers – and check back with him in a few months, whether the founder had achieved this or not. After said time, provided the founder is in the same position monetarily, he advises a pivot.

He does position himself as a very early-stage investor. Maybe not back-of-the-napkin, but fairly close. Read More...

The Tortoise and the Huh???

The Tortoise and the Huh???

Comments 0 Comment

How often have we heard that slow and steady wins the race? We’ve been looking at funding reports lately and there’s no doubt that this has been a banner year for both funding – and exits. Win-win for both sides of the table, and all the better when seemingly everyone wins, what, eh? Or do they? And funding, in some cases, seems to be happening at incredible speeds.

 

According to Pitch Book, Venture capital rewrites the record books, with “Venture-backed companies having attracted $150 billion in 2021, more than 90% of last year’s record total…IPOs and SPACs helped to drive the exit value of venture-backed companies to $372.2 billion in the first half of 2021. That was 30% higher than 2020’s all-time record…Firm-level fundraising also (took off), with investors closing funds worth $74.1 billion, about 91.5% of 2020’s record-breaking amount.  And Deals, exits, funds—US VC’s records for value are going to get even bigger Read More...

The Great Tech Disconnects

The Great Tech Disconnects

Comments 0 Comment
Jennifer, Mara, Astrid & Aniyia on Medium

How many times have we heard that the VC model is broken? Of course everyone is looking for a unicorn and the big pay-off, but considering the rate of failure of startups, are investors missing the forest though the trees?

That’s not the only disconnect. Again, pay attention.

We found an interesting piece from a few years back (2017) about investing in zebras (Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break), as opposed to unicorns which, let’s face it, are mythical creatures after all, while are zebras slow but steady growth companies that tend to solve real world problems, as opposed to a unicorn such as, for example, Google, which has created more problems for the world than it has solved. That sort of software isn’t eating the world, as Marc Andreessen once said: it’s more or less attempting to chew it up and spit it out. Read More...