Last week, I participated in a panel at CITE (Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise) with fellow VCs Arif Janmohamed of Lightspeed Venture Partners and Aaref Hilaly of Sequoia Capital. Aside from the humor we found in the trifecta of our first initials (the AAA panel!), our discussion on innovation and trends in consumer technologies for enterprises yielded some interesting insights. More…
The social networking sector has seen over 10 great successes from an investment standpoint: MySpace ($580 million), Beebo ($850 million), Instagram ($1 billion), Tumblr ($1.1 billion), Yammer ($1.2 billion), Facebook ($150 billion market cap), Twitter ($35 billion market cap), LinkedIn ($25 billion market cap), Pinterest (valued at $3.8 billion), Snapchat (reportedly valued at $3 billion), and most recently WhatsApp ($19 billion). Add to that Weibo, Vkontakte, Renren, and many other huge social networks that are popular overseas.
Given these successes, are there opportunities for more winners in this space? Absolutely. More…
Pat McGovern pictured in the front row center with the IDG team
Pat McGovern, founder and chairman of IDG, passed away last Thursday at the age of 76. Much has already been written about his remarkable accomplishments as a businessman and philanthropist. Instead of adding to that outpouring, I want to write a few words about my personal experience with Pat. More…
Recently, we hosted an IDG Ventures CIO Tech Demo Day to bring together founders, CEOs, and CIOs for discussions on technology and emerging trends. Attendees comprised a combination of founders from our portfolio companies, CEOs with whom we’ve had long-term relationships, and other VCs with whom we have co-invested. The founders and CEOs delivered presentations to CIOs from Akamai, Cox Communications, Credit Suisse, Hess, Gartner, IDG, Paypal, Vail Resorts, and Vertex. All that experience, leadership, and vision in the room made for engrossing and spirited conversations that led to some valuable insights.
In the last two decades as a venture capitalist, I’ve seen three primary styles of VCs working with startup founders. I found that one of them works best for me, and want to share the alternatives:
1. Mentor: This is a classic “old school” venture capital model. Think John Doerr and Michael Moritz working with Larry Page and Sergei Brin in the early days of Google. The VC is often older, sometimes a repeat entrepreneur, sometimes not. The VC provides lots of hands-on advice and coaching. The interactions between the VC and founder are frequent, and the VC spends much time regularly at the company.
I’ve heard too much hyperbolic talk in the valley of a “Series A Crunch,” meaning startups are currently hard-pressed to raise funding following a seed round. As the blog title suggests, I do not believe there is a Series A crunch.
It’s important to understand the data before being swayed by anecdotal information, on any topic. So let’s take a look at the data here.
The Empiricist VC 