Why We Don’t Invest In Competitive Businesses
I was trading emails with one of our portfolio company CEOs last week. The subject was a company that was looking for venture capital that offered a service that was similar to one of the services our portfolio company offered. [...] Read more
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