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As a regular feature on the Forbes Midas List of top tech investors, Roelof Botha is a big deal. As a partner at venture capitalist company Sequoia Capital, Botha has helped fund some of the great names in tech today.Sequoia has funded heavy hitting tech players such as Apple, Google, YouTube, PayPal, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Electronic Arts, Yahoo!, Kayak, Meebo, Admob, Zappos, Green Dot and LinkedIn.Before joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Botha was the Chief Financial Officer of ...
Brent Hoberman is remarkably busy. It took three months and a couple of million emails to peg him down for 20 minutes to answer a few questions. Then again, that probably comes with being a pioneer of the dotcom era.
The late 90s were a turbulent time for the web: the burst of the dotcom bubble left many online companies in shambles, but there were survivors. One such survivor was Lastminute.com, the online travel and gift business Hoberman founded ...
With technological advancements in developing nations speeding the growth rate of high impact tech start-ups, many American venture capital firms are now looking further afield to expand their investment portfolios. But what is driving this trend?1. Lack of local funding
There’s certainly no shortage of innovative ideas coming out of emerging market countries. Africa, China, Russia and many others are growing steadily, and are producing an ever-increasing number of tech success stories, many with an extensive global reach.However, the potential for ...
Y Combinator, a leading seed investment incubator, recently announced that it would be accepting startup applications for this years fund from startup founders WITHOUT an idea.Here's how the incubator describes itself on its website:Y Combinator does seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you're getting started.Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds. There is no right answer. How ...
Over the past six months I have spoken with a wide variety of people who have shown, in varying degrees, interest in investing in my company. Many of these VCs have specific ways that they conduct a call, interview or meeting. Many of them have lead me down long and wasteful due diligence processes, many have been kind, some have been blunt and harsh but all have been pedantic and specific about the types of questions they ask.I have found ...
The value of attending networking events is often hard to quantify, as it takes valuable time, but it is worth the effort especially if you are considering starting your own business; building an innovative product or trying to raise funding.Funders invest in companies and founders they knowAlthough we receive many proposals through our website at the VC firm I'm part of, all of the deals that we have concluded (i.e. invested in) to date, have been sourced through our networks. ...
Every two or three years, VC's gear up to raise money for their next fund. They create a pitch deck, come up with a list of investors actively investing in venture capital funds, make sure they get introductions to them from trusted sources -- or go direct if they already have the relationship, and pitch the investment strategy and how they plan to provide better returns than the industry average. Sound familiar?
For established funds with a solid track record ...
Receiving venture capital (VC) funding is a significant accomplishment for any entrepreneur as it takes months of hard work and negotiation. Some entrepreneurs believe that once they have secured a funding commitment from an investor, they will have carte blanche with the cash and can report back to their investors as and when it suits them.Nothing could be further from reality. A VC will not write you a cheque for the full amount allowing you to spend it as you ...
I recently watched a documentary on Steve Jobs called "One Last Thing". It was well done, mixing a fair bit of the good, the bad, and the ugly about the life of the man.There was also a lot of praise for the "marketing genius" of Steve Jobs.Then it struck me: If Steve Jobs were starting out today in Silicon Valley, he would have trouble getting funding because he's a "marketeer" -- not an engineer. Venture capitalists(VC) generally won't fund startups ...
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