Venture Capital

Venture Funds Sweeten Terms

Law Blog - WSJ.com (Free subscription) | yesterday

Venture-capital funds are cutting fees as they scrounge for cash amid a bruising fund-raising environment.

Looking For Product and Marketing Talent

A VC (Free subscription) | 6 hours ago

Our portfolio company Covestor is looking for a VP Product and a head of marketing. Both positions are in New York City. Covestor has created an entirely new form of investment product - people powered investing. With Covestor you don't...

• Looking For Product and Marketing Talent - The Industry Standard

Tell me why VCs are so disliked by entrepreneurs

Fred Destin (Free subscription) | 1 hour ago

You have to listen to your audience right ? I would like entrepreneurs to help me understand what it is about VC's that irks them and what behaviour they have witnessed that makes them a poor development partner. One of my (blunter) posts was recently reposted on Silicon Alley and generated some aggressive commentary, some of which seemed to stem from people who actually had extensive experience in...

Get the best of the startup blogs

Nivi (Free subscription) | 1 hour ago

We read a lot of startup blogs and share our favorites on Twitter. But not everybody uses Twitter. And the folks who use Twitter follow too many people to catch all our links. So we’ve put together a daily digest that we’re calling “Startup News”. Once a day, you get links to our favorite posts via [...]

3 customer development case studies

Nivi (Free subscription) | yesterday

If you’re trying to implement customer development at your startup, you’ll learn more from these 3 case studies than anything else I’ve seen. I consider each of these a “must-read”. I’ve quoted some great bits from each case study, but make sure you click through and read each one in full. 1. Using an LOI to [...]

Israel's Design Problem

Six Kids and a Full Time Job (Free subscription) | yesterday

The world of software, internet and services has changed rapidly over the last two years. We all know the buzzwords: Social, Cloud, Saas and Crowdsourcing to name a few. What I think has been lost in this tectonic shift is a fundamental change in how and why software and services are built and its potentially dire consequences for many legacy software companies and particularly for Israeli start ups...

The Best Way to Get Your Favorite Airline's Attention

Six Kids and a Full Time Job (Free subscription) | yesterday

On Thursday, I was returning home from New York and my El Al flight was delayed out of JFK because the crew was stuck in traffic. In my frustration, I tweeted this out : Well, I got El Al's attention. How do I know. I just got this email. Gotta Love Twitter!

Weekend reading

Nivi (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009

Some weekend reading culled from our most popular tweets this week. Steve Blank and I have a good discussion about his and Eric Ries’ new customer development overlay. Regarding the Atlas Developer Beta, John Gruber says that “Access to the beta program is $20″ — this is the new way and I like [...]

The ignorant VC

Nivi (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009

Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is an interview of Fred Destin — one of Atlas’ general partners — by David Woodward, a journalist and blogger. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. And if you want an intro to Atlas, send me an [...]

The Story Of My Avatar

A VC (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009

I saw this tweet when I got up this morning: hey @fredwilson - whats the story behind ur avatar? While longtime readers know it, I figure many of you don't. So here it goes. Starting about four years ago, Howard...

• The Story Of My Avatar - The Industry Standard

Apple's Mistake

Paul Graham (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009

"Software isn't like music or books. It's too complicated for a third party to act as an intermediary between developer and user. And yet that's what Apple is trying to be with the App Store: a software publisher. And a particularly overreaching one at that, with fussy tastes and a rigidly enforced house style. How would Apple like it if when they discovered a serious bug in OS X, instead of releasing...

Cambridge-based Ligon Discovery Raises $1M in Seed Funding

PR News Wire (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Ligon Discovery, Inc., which uses proprietary small molecule microarray technology to find drugs against high-value targets, today announced that it has raised $1M in seed financing led by incTANK Ventures. The company will use the capital to complete its initial discovery campaign that will screen over 100 high-value disease protein targets. With this investment,...

Chegg.com Secures $112 Million to Fund Explosive Growth in Online Textbook Rentals

PR News Wire (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Chegg.com, the No. 1 online textbook rental company, announced today that it has successfully closed $57 million Series D equity funding, led by Insight Venture Partners. In addition, Insight Venture Partners also led a syndicate that has provided a $25 million credit facility, adding to the $30 million in debt facility recently secured from Pinnacle Ventures...

The sultan of startup marketing

Nivi (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009

I recently met with a venture capital Associate who thanked me for introducing her to the masterworks of Steve Blank and Eric Ries. I told her to check out Sean Ellis’ blog and mentioned that I’ve learned just as much from Sean. Like all intelligent people I know, she did exactly what I said. Later that [...]

How a great entrepreneur deals with complexity

Fred Destin (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009

I aksed Joe Cohen at Seatwave how he deals with the ongoing complexity and varied demands on his time that come from managing a hypergrowth company, and I thought I would share the thoughts he jotted down for me: Oversimplify and execute well. If you make a mistake in strategy you can generally correct it by executing well even if you execute something else Only do what only you can do - this is really...

A search engine to locate investors for venture capital

Peter Brooke | 03/09/2009

The challenge of entrepreneurs with a new business idea to raise enough money to start up can be daunting. Enter Angelsoft, a company who has just unveiled a search engine specifically engineered to locate investors. The company Angelsoft makes software for investors that enables them to manage their workflow, and runs a website for investors and entrepreneurs. Angelsoft took into consideration the...

Norwest Venture Partners Invests Rs. 20 crores in Appnomic Systems

ramasasthri | 01/29/2009

Appnomic Systems, a leading infrastructure management services (IMS) company (formerly Vitage Technologies), announced today that it has secured Rs.20 Crores from Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), a leading global venture capital firm. Appnomic Systems, headquartered in Bangalore , India , with operations in India , Middle...

Recession hits Silicon Valley as layoffs pile up

dhall987 | 01/26/2009

The recession turned up late on Silicon Valley's doorstep but is likely to stay awhile, as technology companies slash thousands of jobs and rein in costs to make up for shrinking earnings and tight-fisted customers...(read more)