I came across this great quote by a guy whose father ran a jewelery store during the Great Depression. He carried on to build Helzberg Diamonds into a big enough (and wonderful enough) business that Warren Buffet eventually wanted to buy it: “When growing up, I was intrigued that my father only concerned himself with those business …
Almost every venture capitalist I know lists passion as one of the most important traits they look for in entrepreneurs. Most VCs, I am sure, also talk about their own commitment and passion when pitching themselves to limited partners. My personal lessons in observing people with real passion came from my Army days as a …
One of the most mystifying parts of venture fundraising is the murky process of due diligence. There is a ton of advice out there on how to get in and pitch a venture investor, but little on how to manage the boring-sounding but critical due diligence process. Yet this is where make or break happens …
A version of this post was originally published in July, 2008 right after Diane Greene, the co-founder and CEO of VMWare, was ousted from her company. The post has since been updated. There is no doubt that Diane Greene was a controversial CEO. She was difficult to work with. It was her way or the …
I am often asked by entrepreneurs what constitutes a really great startup pitch. I’ve literally seen thousands of pitches and given a fair share of my own. I’ve been convinced, amazed, bored to death and even moved to tears. I’ve given hundreds myself – to receptions ranging from standing ovation to heads-on-table. Fundamentally, a good …
“In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a …
The original version of this post was published in PandoDaily on January 20 2014 Over the last two years, much has been made of the “Series A Crunch”, a steep drop off in the number of seed-funded companies that are able to close an institutional Series A financing. For the companies that make it that far, there …
The most experienced and successful venture capitalists grok the concept of the power law and how it describes the outcomes of startup investments. Simply put, 80% of the returns come from 20% of the deals. The 80-20 rule can be seen in both natural and man-made phenomena such as the size of earthquakes, the size …
Imagine two very different business worlds. One is a world in which market forces work their magic. If companies are profitable, new competitors enter and profits get worked down to nothing. If there is too much competition, companies exit (or go out of business) so that they neither lose nor make much profits. The other …
According to a Gartner, vertical-specific software is by far the largest category of the software market posting $100B in sales in 2013 and accounting for 28% of the market. The second biggest category, operating systems, holds only 8% of the market, ahead of database management systems, ERP, middleware and security. $100B is a surprisingly large …