Posts from VC & Technology

Seattle

I called Seattle a “third tier startup city” in a blog post earlier this week.

Which generated this series of tweets:

After reading them, I thought “geez, I really screwed that up” and replied with this series of tweets:

Here’s the thing that is amazing about Seattle. It doesn’t rank as high as NYC, LA, or Boston in the number of startups funded or capital invested. Here are the NVCA numbers for the first three quarters of 2015:

  1. San Francisco, $9.32 billion, 506 deals
  2. San Jose, California (Silicon Valley), $3.78 billion, 237 deals
  3. New York, $3.05 billion, 272 deals
  4. Boston, $1.05 billion, 158 deals
  5. Los Angeles-Long Beach, California (Silicon Beach), $768 million, 105 deals
  6. Oakland, California, $510 million, 41 deals
  7. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Washington, $471 million, 56 deals
  8. Provo-Orem, Utah, $462 million, nine deals
  9. Washington D.C., $456 million, 77 deals
  10. Chicago, $402 million, 57 deals

But the companies that have come out of Seattle over the past thirty years put NYC and LA and probably even Boston to shame. So on a dollars in/dollars in, Seattle outperforms. By a lot.

#Uncategorized#VC & Technology

Second and Third Tier Markets And Beyond

I am in Nashville for a couple days with The Gotham Gal who is giving a keynote at a startup conference today. I mostly came along for a chance to spend a couple days in Nashville. But I will also be at the conference later today to see her do her thing.

Last night we attended a cocktail party with investors from the southeast and then had dinner with an entrepreneur in Atlanta that The Gotham Gal backed a few years ago. At both we talked about entrepreneurship in the southeast and the funding environment for companies in this part of the world.

The way I think about the startup sector in the US is that the first tier is Silicon Valley. More than half of all startup activity and startup funding activity happens in the Bay Area which now includes SF and the east bay. You could simply focus on Silicon Valley and ignore every other part of the US and the world and do just fine as an investor. Many do.

The second tier is NYC and LA and Boston. Between these three cities, another third of startups and investment capital reside. All three of these startup cities are vital and growing rapidly. You could simply focus on NYC, LA, and Boston and ignore the bay area and other parts of the US and the world and do just fine as an investor. I am not aware of any firm that has that strategy as it doesn’t really make sense. But it could easily be done.

The third tier includes Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, DC, and a few other smaller places like Boulder and Austin. I am doing this entire post from my head and not referring to any survey. There are a bunch of these surveys and I’ve read them all so I am sure this is directionally correct but I am also sure that I am missing a place or two.

This third tier is a decent place to be an entrepreneur and an investor. But there are challenges. Entrepreneurs in the third tier can access the talent and capital they need to be successful in these third tier markets but it is a bit harder to do both. Investors can be focused on these markets if they keep their fund sizes small enough or they can take a hybrid approach by being focused on these markets and also investing in the first and second tier markets. The latter is how we have always approached being a NYC centric investor.

But there is a dynamic that goes on in these third tier markets where the local investors look to investors in the first and second tier markets to come down and “validate” their investments. And the investors in the first and second tier markets won’t come down and do that without a strong local lead. This game of “chicken” happens ways too often in these markets and is incredibly frustrating to entrepreneurs in these markets. These third tier markets need a few strong Series A focused VC firms who have large enough fund sizes to be aggressive lead investors and also have the conviction and stomach to play that game. That is what USV, and Flatiron before it, did in NYC. That is what Foundry did in Boulder. That is the game Upfront is playing in LA. Every third tier market needs a few VC firms like that. And being that investor is a terrific way to make a lot of money.

Beyond the third tier lies a lot of even smaller markets. I am in one today in Nashville. It has a huge health care sector that produces a lot of entrepreneurial and executive talent. It has a decent amount of local seed capital. But it is not a major VC destination. The southeast VCs will come here regularly looking for opportunities. But it suffers even more from the issues I talked about in the third tier. The same is true of places like Pittsburgh, Des Moines, and Kansas City. I mention those three cities because USV has investments in companies in all three places.

The truth is you can build a startup in almost any city in the US today. But it is harder. Harder to build the team. Harder to get customers. Harder to get attention. And harder to raise capital. Which is a huge opportunity for VCs who are willing to get on planes or cars and get to these places.

There is a supremacism that exists in the first and second tiers of the startup world. I find it annoying and always have. So waking up in a place like Nashville feels really good to me. It is a reminder that entrepreneurs exist everywhere and that is a wonderful thing.

#entrepreneurship#VC & Technology

Filling Out A Round: When It Matters, and When It Doesn't

Almost every financing I’ve been involved with over the years (seed, VC, growth, raising a VC fund) goes mostly like this:

  • Struggle like hell to find a lead
  • Come to terms with the lead
  • Turn your attention to filling out the round
  • The deal gets oversubscribed as all the investors that could not summon up the courage or did not have the checkbook to lead the deal scramble to get into what is now a “hot deal”
  • You end up saying no to a lot of people you wish you could say yes to

So how do you decide who to let into the round and who to say no to?

Well the truth is that it sometimes matters a lot and sometimes doesn’t matter at all.

There are two primary factors that I like to focus on when choosing who to let in and who to say no to:

  • Do they have deep pockets and have they shown a history and a propensity to follow on in future rounds. Yes means try to let them in. No means prioritize others over them at the margin.
  • Can they add value and/or will they cause harm in any way. Adding value is a plus. Doing harm is a negative (obviously). Harm should be avoided at all costs. Adding value is a nice to have but not a must have. And investors always claim to be able to add value and very few actually do. If someone has already added value without even being in the deal, that’s a strong signal that carries a lot of weight with me.

There is one other factor that is worth considering. If someone is a friend, a former colleague, a person you know, trust, like and would like to have along for the ride, that is as good of a reason as any to let them in. But just remember that having friends in a deal that goes bad is a good way to lose friends. So make sure these are friends who have lost money, can take the hit, and aren’t going to hold it against you.

So here is when it matters and when it doesn’t.

  • Seed investors aren’t likely to follow round after round and while some can add value, many don’t. I would not sweat the allocations/syndication decisions that much in a seed deal other than avoid troublemakers at all costs. Otherwise, get the money and move on.
  • VC rounds (Srs A, Srs B, Srs C) are generally where the syndicates matter the most. Find a strong lead who will take a board seat, manage the syndicate, and help you. Then if there is money left over find VCs who have deep pockets, who have demonstrated a bias to follow on in round after round, and are willing to follow your lead.
  • Growth rounds are generally where everyone wants to pile in and there aren’t a lot of board seats or governance issues to deal with. You may find investors that can help in these rounds but they are mostly about getting the money at a good price and getting back to business.

I have seen entrepreneurs try to optimize these decisions and spend a lot of time on them. Investors scrambling to get into the deal will fill your head with all sorts of promises, arguments, and the like. Which makes it even more tempting to spend time on the decision and make the best one.

My advice is to make good decisions and not try to make the very best ones. Focus on deep pockets who are known to follow on and be supportive and avoid troublemakers. Everything else is a nice to have but not a need to have.

#entrepreneurship#Uncategorized#VC & Technology

11 Years of the USV Investment Team

As part of the hiring process for our two year analyst position, we asked everyone who has worked at USV in an investment team role to make a two minute video (the same thing we ask applicants to do). We asked them to answer these two questions – when did you join USV and how has your perspective on tech changed since then? Here’s a compilation of all of the two minute videos. In its entirety it is about 25 mins long.

11 Years of the USV Investment Team from Union Square Ventures on Vimeo.

#VC & Technology

Experiment and Scandal

We are living in a time of great experiments. They are not happening in the lab. They are happening in the real world. And they are being financed by real people. We are witnessing the de-institutionalization of experimentation. We are returning to a time when anyone can be an inventor and innovator. Some of this has happened because of the explosion of venture capital, both in the US and also around the world. Some of this has happened because entertainment and culture has embraced the world of experimentation and innovation (Shark Tank, Silicon Valley). Some of this has happened because the tools for innovation and experimentation have become mainstream and anyone can use them.

I am not thinking of one thing. I am thinking of many things. I am thinking of The DAO. I am thinking of Bitcoin and Ethereum. I am thinking of Oculus getting financed on Kickstarter. I am thinking of the launch of equity crowdfunding for everyone in the US last week. I am even thinking of things like Theranos.

All of these things are great experiments that will produce great benefit to society if they succeed. But by their nature experiments often fail. They need to fail. Or they would not be experiments.

And one of the challenges with the de-institutionalization of experimentation is that some of these failures will be spectacular. Combine that with the idea that these experiments are being funded by real people and the idea that the world of media/entertainment/culture has injected itself right in the middle of this brave new world and you have the recipe for scandal. And scandal will naturally result in efforts to put the genie back in the bottle (Sarbanes Oxley, Dodd Frank). And these regulatory efforts will naturally attempt to re-institutionalize experimentation.

I find myself wishing we could keep the dollars invested and hype down when we do these massively public experiments. But the dollar/hype cycle is a natural part of being human. Some dollars are invested. We get excited about this investment. We talk it up. More people find out about it and more dollars are invested. More of us get excited about this investment and we talk it up more. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat and you get unicorns and distributed autonomous funding mechanisms entrusted with hundreds of millions before anything has even been funded. Eventually some of that gets unwound and the tape is full of red.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for distributed autonomous organizations and the innovation behind them and in front of them. There isn’t much out there that I am more excited about. But I am also very fearful that this could end badly. And even more fearful of what may be foisted on us by well meaning regulators when that happens.

So let’s celebrate this incredible phase of permissionless innovation we are in. And let’s all understand that we will have many failures. Some of them spectacular. Money will be lost. Possibly hundreds of millions or billions. Let’s expect that. Let’s build that into our mental models. So when that happens, we can suck it up, deal with it, and keep moving forward. Because an open permissionless world of innovation that everyone can participate in is utopia in so many ways. The good that will come of it will massively outweigh any bad. But bad there will be. I can assure you of that.

#blockchain#crowdfunding#entrepreneurship#hacking finance#law#regulation 2.0#Science#VC & Technology

Google I/O 2016

I was in meeetings all day the past couple days and missed all the news coming out of Google’s big event.

So I am getting my friends Bijan and Nabeel to explain it all to me.

You can do that too by hitting the play button below.

#VC & Technology

From The Investor's Perspective

I’m still not feeling great. So I’m taking the day off and posting a video from Disrupt featuring my partner Andy, Josh Kopelman (one of my favorite VCs), and one of Josh’s limited partners Chris Douvos. They discuss the challenges of operating in an environment with rising valuations and decreasing liquidity.

#VC & Technology