We've been lucky enough to have heard Gil Penchina opine a lot. Unfortunately, most of this was well before he became known for angel investing and his Angel List syndicate, and was usually about his failed romantic exploits. Whatever -- truth is we usually didn't listen anyway. But now we do, and gladly. Burnished to a brighter shine as one…
Read MoreLeadership transitions within private equity firms are icebergs: sometimes the tips are spotted in the distance, but the vast majority are usually out of sight and only significant in a catastrophe. Large crashes became well-known, but even then information is largely anecdotal -- stories passed around with cocktail glasses. Most leadership transitions float past, largely hidden from view. However a working paper from researchers at Harvard…
Read MoreLooking at venture capital investment during the first half of 2016, Redpoint's Tomasz Tunguz has a nice piece (and several graphs) on the flux in the fundraising market -- early stage deals (Series A) have nosedived by a whopping one-third, as have later stage financings, while expansion stage financings (Series B) are up substantially. This view is a little bit…
Read MoreOne of many interesting changes in venture capital in the past few years has been the emergence of mutual fund companies investing in very late rounds. In many ways this makes sense -- technology companies are delaying IPOs, and a late-stage investment gets a mutual fund pre-IPO equity at a slightly better price (they hope) and often with significant downside…
Read MoreWhen you're in a boom, it's always hard to see if a down quarter is a welcome correction or the beginning of a slump. For venture capital, Q3 could be either. Based on data from Pitchbook, the number of Q3 financing were down significantly: 22% from the second quarter and 34% from the same period last year. However the dollar…
Read MoreWell, we all have something to say. Our picks this month include Y Combinator's Sam Altman who lays out the playbook for startup companies; which leads you to the A13Z team's helpful list of the best startup company metrics; Mark Suster's lets us in on what he knows about venture funding (with a nice graph on knowledge evolution); the Economist magazine…
Read MoreDo venture capitalists get paid very well to lose other people’s money? That is the thesis of a piece by Diane Mulchay, director of private equity at the Kaufmann Foundation. Along with misaligned fee structures and the limited downside risk, the core of her critique is particularly brutal: despite a claimed expertise to recognize and reward new ideas, the venture…
Read MoreWe are catching up on the venture capital scene this month, with a good profile of Sequoia Capital (the VC "It Girl" of the past, oh few decades), a primer by Bill Janeway on the future of venture capital, a piece on the changing nature of competition, some great data on the VC Power Law for exits, and the invaluable…
Read More2013 in a word? According to at least one economist it was: Bitcoin - a secure peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency created in 2009. New Bitcoins are mined by software programmers, and although users can remain anonymous, central to the system is a public database and sequential record of all transactions (as if one could track the use of…
Read MoreIf blogs aren't visual enough for you, WonkBlog has a series on the best graphs of the year, while back on the blog side, here are some thoughts from Ben Horowitz on taking the mystery out of scaling a company; Tim Harford on why there are no new ideas, only remixes; the folks at First Round suggest the best advice for entrepreneurs in 2013; a…
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