Patience and persistence remain necessary attributes for successful entrepreneurs seeking venture capital funding, according to a 2008 paper titled, “Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship,” (Gompers, Kovner, Lerner, and Scharfstein), available online from Harvard Business School. Even seasoned serial entrepreneurs wait an average of 21 months before they obtain first-round funding compared to 37 months for first-time founders, [...]
A whole book was written about so-called Black Swan events—blindsides that no one saw coming. Its message: “Besides anticipating the obvious, be prepared for things you never dreamed could possibly happen.” Real-world examples: The Japan and Indonesia quakes and tsunamis. The fiscal meltdown that caught Euro countries with their balance sheets in tatters. The cloud. [...]
SVForum is hosting a forum in San Ramon, CA, next week on the future of cleantech in the wake of the Solyndra debacle.
Venture capital funds are on an unsustainable path. In the past two years, venture capital funds invested US$24 billion more than they raised in new funding. In 2010 alone, they invested $26 billion against raises of $14 billion, nearly a 2X deficit. Contrast this with IPO statistics: in 2011, approximately 50 VC-backed firms went public [...]
According to a release today from the National Venture Capital Association, fourth quarter M&A exits outpaced IPOs by more than eight times.
It’s said that times have never been easier to get a startup off the ground. Between cloud infrastructure and efficient programming tools, ideas become reality in record time at low expense. We’ve seen a bevy of new startups take that path, perhaps fueled by a successful serial entrepreneur, a friends-family seed round, or an early [...]
Nothing is in shorter supply than time for an early-stage startup except money. Yet, often I see teams distracted from getting their product or service to the market as they enter an all-consuming focus on raising capital long before their venture has a value proposition investors can accept. Take last week, for instance. I spoke to a [...]
A funny thing happened recently on the way to the liquidity event…the much ballyhooed expectation of infinitely rising energy prices that many in Silicon Valley expected to drive a Clean Tech revolution failed to materialize, leaving conventional wisdom to scratch its collective head. Then, with a crash, the roof fell in. As Bloomberg reports, from [...]
This Reuters story on The Huffington Post reinforces what I wrote about last week – the need to remember that job #1 for the entrepreneur is to build a successful business, not raise money. It also repeats two recurring themes we’re hearing at Consultiq – too many companies chasing too few venture capital dollars, and [...]
The “thrill of the chase” when trying to raise money to get your venture off the ground can be so engaging that an entrepreneur can easily lose track of the prize. Your real goal is to turn your vision into a successful, profitable, enterprise; raising money is a means to that end, not an end [...]
CalTech Technology Marketing Center Leaders Blog The Funded Venture Hacks Venture Beat