Category: tech investing

• Pitfalls to raising venture capital

  Jeff Donahue is a good friend and battle-scarred veteran of venture-backed and private equity-backed companies. He has raised over $275M of funding for early and later stage startups and has been CFO of 10 emerging growth businesses. He’s worked across the table from leading investors like GRP (now Upfront Ventures), Invesco, ComVentures (now Fuse Capital), Allegis Capital, Alta-Berkeley, Invision, Steamboat Ventures and many more.…

• Taking the pain out of raising venture capital

  Jeff Donahue is a good friend and battle-scarred veteran of venture-backed and PE-backed companies. He has raised over $275M of funding for early and later stage startups and has been CFO of 10 emerging growth businesses. He’s worked across the table from leading investors like GRP (now Upfront Ventures), Invesco, ComVentures (now Fuse Capital), Allegis…

• How to raise money from VCs? Romance.

  I was up in Silicon Valley last month at the IBM SmartCamp finals. The finalist companies ranged from neurologic diagnostics, to agricultural data analytics, to office space optimization software (you can read about all six finalists here). The event included a panel on startup financing and the moderator asked Bill Reichert from Garage Ventures a…

• Inside corporate venture capital

  Mr. H is a good friend and frequent collaborator who works for the Silicon Valley-based corporate venture/strategy arm of a large Japanese company. He travels the world evaluating startups for investment and helps define the company’s innovation strategy. He graciously agreed to uncover some of the secrets of corporate venture capital for us. Read on…

• GRP morphs into Upfront Ventures with a $200M new fund

  Exciting news for startups in Southern California: Mark Suster‘s just announced that his fund, GRP Partners, successfully raised a new $200M fund. They also used the opportunity to rebrand themselves to Upfront Ventures. Mark is one of the premier thought leaders in VC and his blog has a ton of actionable wisdom for those of…