Venture Hacks

Thanks to George Zachary, a partner at Charles River Ventures, for sponsoring Venture Hacks this week. If you like this post, check out George’s blog and tweets @georgezachary. – Nivi

In my first post, A brief history of your investors (and their investors), I wrote about the history of venture capital. I described how the economy [...]

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Ho Nam (@honam):
“The blockbusters are oftentimes the ‘ugly ducklings.’ Cisco is probably the best example in the VC world. Everyone passed except for Sequoia. In the book world, almost everyone passed on JK Rowling.
“It’s just hard to predict the future looking into the rear-view mirror, yet everyone wants to pile onto the brand names [VCs] [...]

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Thanks to George Zachary, a partner at Charles River Ventures, for sponsoring Venture Hacks this week. If you like this post, check out George’s blog and tweets @georgezachary. – Nivi

Why should you read this post? So you know what questions to ask your potential investors about their investors (their limited partners). You need to understand [...]

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Thanks to FastIgnite, a startup advisory firm, for sponsoring Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Simeon Simeonov, the firm’s founder and CEO (and formerly a partner at Polaris Ventures). If you like it, check out Sim’s blog and tweets @simeons. – Nivi
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
Niels Bohr, [...]

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Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Fred Destin, one of Atlas’ general partners. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. – Nivi

In Part 1 of The Arrogant VC, I discussed 4 reasons why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs:

Poor first impressions
Getting strung along [...]

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Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Fred Destin, one of Atlas’ general partners. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. I’ve also generated an MP3 version of this post. Let me know if it’s useful. – Nivi

Below is the summary of all [...]

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Bill Burnham, hedge fund manager and former VC:
“Angel investors are becoming the dominant force in Consumer Internet Venture capital. The vacuum created by the withdrawal of VCs from traditional Seed and Series A opportunities in the Consumer Internet space has been filled by a motley collection of angel investors. It is angel investors, not [...]

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There’s an outstanding interview with Vinod Khosla on PBS’s web site. Here are some of the highlights.
On the real big opportunities:
“The real big opportunities are changing the infrastructure of society. We are talking about things like the $200 billion engines market for automobiles and trucks, things like lighting, billions of dollars spent on lighting. We [...]

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More wisdom from Randy Komisar’s The Monk and the Riddle (emphasis added):
Passion
“So why were they doing this? Why was it worth their time? I am always amazed that venture capitalists don’t ask that question. Perhaps at this point everyone assumes it’s obvious: to get rich.
“Passion and drive are not the same at all. Passion pulls [...]

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Tom Perkins from Kleiner Perkins slaps us with knowledge in this interview with Creative Capital. Here are some choice quotes from the beating:
On Timing
“It’s always a good time to be in venture capital.”
“You can’t look at the stock market and decide whether or not to invest in a startup.”
“The growth of technology has been [...]

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