Writing

Choose

Founders and Management

It's been a while since our last post on this blog. Year end activities got in the way. We were in the midst of a string of posts on what we look for in our investments when we went radio [...]  Read more

Geography

Each month we see something like thirty to fifty new investment opportunities that generally fit our investment strategy. They come from all over the place. Just in the past month, we've seen opportunities in Israel, Australia, China, London, San Diego, [...]  Read more

Customer Service is the New Marketing

I had a cup of coffee yesterday with Craig Newmark. Toward the end of the conversation, I told him that one of the most important things I learned by studying Craigslist was the importance of customer service. Craig is, famously, [...]  Read more

Deal Size

Brad and I have been doing early stage investing since the late 80s (me) and early 90s (Brad). For most of our career, a typical early stage venture round was $5mm to $6mm and you'd put two firms together and [...]  Read more

Lead Investor

My good friend Charley says that I "don't follow very well". He means that I don't like to participate in the Series B and C rounds of deals that have been funded by other venture capital firms in the Series [...]  Read more

Traction

This is my second post on "other things we look for". I hesitated to use the title Traction because its certainly one of the most overused words in the venture capital vernacular. But it is also the "shorthand" peope use [...]  Read more