As an investor in internet companies, I have the good fortune of getting to play around with lots of new consumer services. One of the biggest frustrations I sometimes have is when I first start using a product, only to […]

Over the course of 2009, I’ve encountered a number of companies that are advertising on Facebook’s self-serve ad platform to great effect. For those who may not be familiar with it, Facebook’s ad platform allows advertisers a fairly broad range […]

Monday’s announcement of Google’s acquisition of AdMob for $750M seems to be a good outcome for both companies. AdMob has established itself as the leading mobile ad network in the US, with a focus on contextual text ads on mobile […]

[Sorry this is a longish post, but I kind of felt the need to build to the question I wanted to raise] It’s widely acknowledged that initial startup costs for many internet-enabled companies (SAAS, consumer web, mobile apps, etc all […]

As a VC and simply being in the startup ecosystem, I have the good fortune of encountering a number of people just beginning down an entrepeneurial career path. Sometimes these are older, more experienced professionals who are moving from a […]

Many entrepreneurs have blogged about a liquidity event and the impact it has on their life. But Jason Cohen has created perhaps the best visual representation I’ve seen of the non-linear relationship between how much money an exit puts in […]

UPDATED: Some corrections below courtesy of my friend and former colleague Keith Rabois. Apple received funding from Venrock, Sequoia, and Arthur Rock. Dell and Oracle got funding from VC Bobby Ray Inman who served on both companies’ boards through IPO, […]

TechCrunch had a guest editorial by Vivek Wadhwa which has been sparking debate about the impact and role of venture capitalists in the startup ecosystem. I respect Wadhwa’s perspective and would tend to agree that the NVCA’s paper [PDF link] […]

We’ve all heard the phrase “Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results” in some context or other. It’s a common disclosure in the investment world that’s either mandated by regulators or simply made as a prudent footnote when […]

As a VC, it’s not always easy explaining what you do for a living to people who may not be intimately familiar with the startup ecosystem. Most folks might understand that VCs invest in innovative companies. But there’s also plenty […]