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Tips for TechCrunch50 DemoPit companies
Yesterday, while attending TechCrunch50, I tweeted some tips for the companies presenting at the conference and those participating in the demo pit. By popular demand, I’m aggregating these tweets in a blog post:
Read moreIncorporate ‘yesterday’
Ever since I found the blog Startup Company Lawyer, I’ve had a high regard for its author, Yokum Taku, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Yokum’s posts are always chock-full-of-good-information. His most recent post was on the topic of When do I need to incorporate a company? I’ve spent some time thinking about this before, and, in […]
Read moreInsane Perseverance in the Face of Complete Resistance
It was 2:00 AM and I was still sitting in ‘The Cave’ — the name we affectionately gave to the cubicles in the bowels of Wean Hall at Carnegie Mellon. It was called ‘The Cave’ because it’s all under ground, with no natural light portals whatsoever. The cave was kinda like Vegas — once […]
Read moreRajeev Motwani: A pillar of Stanford CS & Silicon Valley
I was in complete disbelief when I read the first tweet yesterday evening that Stanford Computer Science professor Rajeev Motwani had passed away. I was still incredulous and hoping that it was untrue until the sad news was verified in a email sent to the department. Even now as I write this with Rajeev’s picture on my screen, it’s still hard […]
Read moreThe Case Against FREE
I’ll start by admitting up front that the purpose of this post is to hopefully incite a discussion, to start a fire, and to get you, and your startup to think really hard about what your business model should be. The title for this post ‘The Case Against FREE’ is a throwback to Chris Anderson‘s cover […]
Read moreStarting up is hard
Ultimately doing a startup is about passion and perseverance. It is an experience of a lifetime that cannot be replicated in any other setting. No educational program can even come close to what you learn in doing your own startup. And regardless of whether you succeed or you fail, know one can take that experience and that learning away from you. That is your true gift.
Read moreThoughts on “Another View: V.C. Investing Not Dead, Just Different”
Every once in a while, you read something and you agree with what the author is saying. As you read, you can hear the resounding “yes” that accompanies the comprehension of the text. What doesn’t happen as often is the experience of where you find yourself physically nodding your head in agreement. Well, that is […]
Read more70% drop in venture fundraising?
VentureBeat just blogged about some new statistics published by Thomson Reuters and the NVCA in this post: Venture fundraising: Going, going, gone?. Here is the most damning/shocking excerpt from this post: Venture capital funds raised only $3.4 billion in the last three months of 2008, according to new data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. Unsurprisingly, this is a big drop […]
Read moreVentureBeat: FAS 157 is stupid
Jason Mendelson, co-founder and managing director of Foundry Group has a brilliant (brilliant in the sense that I agree with it 100%) guest post on VentureBeat: FAS 157 is stupid. It is a must-read post in which he discusses the new accounting rules (FAS 157) in effect regarding valuation of portfolio companies in the venture industry. Jason makes the […]
Read moreThoughts about “The Coming Venture Capital Boom”
There will be another boom in Venture Capital — it will just be after we get through the current environment and hopefully change for the better.
Read moreHoliday Greetings
Holiday Greetings to all from K9 Ventures! I decided to post the greeting to our blog and website rather than sending it out via email to avoid the email-overload of holiday greetings that occurs every year. This way only those of you who come visit the K9 Ventures site (either on your own, or by […]
Read moreThe Venture Boutique
In my previous post, I claimed that “Venture Capital is a people business in every sense of the word. It is therefore a boutique industry and it cannot scale.” Let me expand on that thought a little more to qualify what I’m saying. Unlike investing in public markets, investing in early stage companies happens before those companies have […]
Read moreA Time for Change in Venture Capital
In my previous post, I talked about some of the reasons I felt that the venture industry was broken and needed reform. This has been something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time now (~1.5 years or more) and became the basis for me starting K9 Ventures. The logic there was that instead […]
Read moreThe Venture Spiral
The business of venture capital is relatively young. The birth of modern-day venture capital (not considering the European monarchs financing explorations and projects as venture capital) can be traced back to American Research and Development, which was started by Georges Doriot. Spencer Ante‘s book Creative Capital provides and in-depth history of the life of Georges Doriot. Without getting […]
Read moreK9 Ventures website launch
Welcome to the the website for K9 Ventures! “K9 Ventures is a true “early stage” venture fund that provides funding and support for concept-stage and seed-stage technology companies. We work with entrepreneurs, sometimes even before a company has been formed, to help evaluate, evolve and fund a company in its nascent stages. We focus on startups in […]
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