Summary: BeyondVC
Ed Sim's blog on venture capital, technology, the markets, and life in a connected world...
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 [...]
Date Published: Jan 25, 2012 - 10:28 am
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. [...]
Date Published: Oct 21, 2011 - 8:24 am
"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 [...]
Date Published: Sep 29, 2011 - 8:29 am
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 [...]
Date Published: Apr 15, 2011 - 6:02 am
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 [...]
Date Published: Apr 05, 2011 - 9:46 am
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 [...]
Date Published: Feb 14, 2011 - 10:10 am
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 [...]
Date Published: Jan 13, 2011 - 6:21 am
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 [...]
Date Published: Dec 09, 2010 - 6:55 am
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 [...]
Date Published: Oct 20, 2010 - 3:41 am
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 [...]
Date Published: Oct 07, 2010 - 2:46 am