We love what we do, so ClearCreek writes and publishes pieces for a somewhat irregular blog about emerging companies and the capital markets. Or we did for a while anyway, then we did less, and apparently we stopped entirely. But we kept the old posts below. Any errors are ours exclusively while the occasional sharp insight is probably borrowed. We hope you find them of interest, and we always welcome feedback.
Startup death is a fact of startup life; most of us don’t need to hum Circle of Life to understand that it’s not all unicorns, roses and IPOs at the end. Indeed, the startup obituary has almost become its own literary genre, with lots of founders baring their souls about the individual circumstances of their company’s demise…
Read MoreIf there is an industry that thrives on upsetting unconventional wisdom, it’s tech. Don’t talk to strangers? How about hailing a ride — or renting a room — from someone you have never met. People will never buy things if they can’t hold them first. That sort of stuff…
Read MoreAn insightful and numbers-full piece in, of all places, Pensions and Investments, discusses the traffic jam developing in Venture Capital. As with any other backup, there is an excess at the beginning and less near than the end: as total capital invested continues to rise…
Read MoreWe’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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,,,
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…
Read MoreAmong the various images of venture capitalists, add one more: unicorn chasers. For it turns out that the billion dollar exit that most VCs obsessively stalk may not be mythical, but they are extremely rare. Seed-stage fund Cowboy Ventures went through the math for the past decade, and found 39 companies valued at over the elusive $1 billion milestone…
Read MoreThis month, read some very cogent reasons why an entrepreneur turned down $5 million in venture funding, or go the other direction and get Paul Graham’s advice on how to raise money, and if you have already tried, take comfort in some reasons why you can’t raise money…
Read MoreIn entrepreneurial culture, success dominates the airwaves. A brand new company can succeed in many ways: attracting press, landing influential seed investors, winning contests, and through stories of individual users. This culture is so strong, that the second act of an entrepreneur…
Read MoreIn this month’s five best blogs we are going all Venture Capital: start with some great startups whose ideas seemed absurd at the time, then check out six myths about venture capital — which might help, since some people believe there are now fewer than 100 tech VCs still investing,…
Read MoreOur regular feature of the five best recent blogs includes: why it’s better to be a VC than an angel; how Amazon’s same-day delivery strategy will shake up merchants on Main Street, Mark Suster on what you should tell your VC’s during diligence, some thoughts on social proof…
Read MoreThe good news? Venture capital investment equaled $5.9B in Q2 of this year, up considerably from the $2.6B in Q2 of 2011. The bad news? The number of funds raising capital decreased to 38 (from 45 in the same period a year ago, an 18% drop)…
Read More2011 saw a modest recovery, as venture capital firms raised $18.2 billion from their limited partners – up from $13.8 billion the year before. However, most of the money was raised by established funds with very few new entrants and a number of VC’s morphing into the Walking Dead…
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