Feed: BeyondVC - AggScore: 76.3

What entrepreneurs can learn from Jeff Spicoli

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I know I may be dating myself here, but over the past few weeks I couldn't help but think about the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High and one of the standout characters, Jeff Spicoli.  When asked by Mr. Hand, his teacher, why he keeps coming late and wasting his time, Spicoli answers, "I don't [...]

Never give up but move on quickly

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As a young kid, I was always taught the valuable lesson of never giving up or quitting.  No matter how many times you get knocked down, you have to stand up and keep moving.  That is the same trait that I also admire in many of the entrepreneurs that I have funded over the years. [...]

Startups getting caught in No Man’s Land

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"No Man's Land" is traditionally known as the area between two trenches.  This is a reference to World War I and the vicious trench warfare and hand-to-hand combat that characterized that war. In "No Man's Land" lay a wasteland of dead bodies and other debris and shrapnel.  Increasingly I am seeing many startups who were ably [...]

The New York Startup Market Rocks and is REAL

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OK, I may be biased having been an early stage VC based out of New York since 1996, but I must say that the vibe, energy, and people at the Techstars NYC Demo Day event yesterday was simply awesome.  Dave Tisch and team simply did a fantastic job guiding the startups, recruiting the mentors, and [...]

Reflecting on passed investments

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Every 3 months I dig through my "passed company" folder to look at what investment opportunities we passed on and why.  Inevitably, there are a few companies that are near-misses, but we end up passing on for whatever reason.  Did we pass because we didn't think the team was great or because we didn't believe [...]

Know When to Hold 'em, Know When to Fold 'em

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I had a tough call with an entrepreneur this morning.  His company raised a fair amount of seed financing but did not hit the milestones it needed to in order to raise a real round of venture capital.  The product is nice but they took too long iterating and releasing a subsequent version while the [...]

Put your users first!

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As a VC who invests in seed and first rounds, I love revenue just as much as the next guy.  However, the focus on revenue should play second fiddle to a user/customer first experience.  Over the years, how many times have we seen companies grow from next to nothing in user base and somehow forget [...]

2 horse race in mobile – iphone and android

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I just caught this blog post from Seth Weintraub from Fortune on Android: Andy Rubin just Tweeted that Google (GOOG) is activating 300,000 phones a day. That passes Apple's (AAPL) iOS, that passes Blackberry (RIMM). That even matches any figures that Symbian has ever put up. Google is closing in on an astounding 10 million [...]

Standard investor update for startups

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I remember when we hired a new CEO for one of our portfolio companies and my tip to him was to overcommunicate.  We had a few large VCs on the board and a number of high-profile angels that could also help in various ways.  His job was to keep everyone up-to-date but also to know [...]

Don't build an empire overnight – lessons from FreshDirect and Webvan

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The other day I received a direct mail piece from FreshDirect, the online delivery service based out of New York.  What struck me is that the service has been around for years in NYC, and it is now getting out to some of the suburbs in New Jersey.  In fact, after having done a little [...]