Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was first thinking about what would become Venture for America, I was trying to figure out how to solve a problem - that our top young people were being driven to roles that did not, to me, address the needs of our time. That VFA would be a non-profit just seemed like the most efficient way to solve the problem.
Libraries are at a cultural crossroads. Some proffer that libraries as we know them may go away altogether, ironic victims of the information age where Google has subverted Dewey decimal and researchers can access anything on a handheld device. Who needs to venture deep into the stacks when answers are but a click away?
State funds, private equity, venture capital, and institutional lending all have their role in the lifecycle of a high tech startup, but angel capital is crucial for first-time entrepreneurs. Angel investors provide more than just cash; they bring years of expertise as both founders of businesses and as seasoned investors.
I want to open up investment even further so over the summer we'll launch a consultation on indirect investments in social enterprises - including exploring the possibility of a new scheme based on the success of venture capital trusts which will enable investors to pool their funds to support a variety of social enterprises.
In a world with many blockchains and hundreds of tradable tokens built on top of them, entire industries are automated through software, venture capital and stock markets are circumvented, entrepreneurship is streamlined, and networks gain sovereignty through their own digital currency. This is the next phase of the Internet.
My buddy Alex Blumberg learned - he was very public about his learning process, and I know for a fact because we sat next to each other for many years, that he knew nothing about venture capital or seed rounds or "A" rounds or whatever you call them, and he had to really learn, like, pitch by pitch. He just screwed pitches up.
The basic idea of 'The Venture Brothers' was taking the world of 'Jonny Quest' and jumping back into 30 years later, seeing how someone who grew up like Jonny - with that kind of space race enthusiasm and disregard for other cultures - would turn out. Dr. Venture is a boy genius who didn't grow up to be what he should have been.
My venture investing career has three phases, all roughly 6-8 years long. The first, at Euclid, was software to Internet. The second, at Flatiron, was Internet to bubble. And the third, at USV, has been web 2 to mobile. I have always used a new firm to denote a new investment phase for me. Throw away the old. Start with the new.
We had this unbelievable faith that no business has done, quite frankly, and we tripped along the way doing it, but within two years, we were in 40-plus countries. So we ran at an amazing pace, and this is where venture capitalists play a role. Making Groupon into what it is today, we had no role in it; the entrepreneurs did it.
I would have loved to invest in Salesforce when I was active in venture. I didn't know the founder, Marc Benioff, well enough, and he didn't really rely on venture capital, but I remember the first time I met him and got to talk about Salesforce when they were still private. I thought, 'Damn, that is going to be a huge company.'
A startup job is an investment, after all: Venture capitalists may wager money, but you're staking something more precious - your time. And unlike VCs, you can't spread your risk by betting on a bunch of companies at once. Start with TAM. That's 'total addressable market,' and if it's not big enough, there's no point in talking.
I think it's very dangerous for people who do anything that's public to venture on the Web and check out what people are saying about them. Yes, you're bound to find things that will delight you - but you also find things that will make you brood and feel bad about yourself. Why would you intentionally invite that into your life?
You don't think, when you start a company as the founding CEO, that if your venture actually works, you end up with three jobs: founder, CEO, and chair of the board. The first eight years at Bonobos, I have learned a lot about the tension between the first two. It didn't even occur to me that I had the third job until much later.
I'm keeping my day job, because Poptropica is something that really energizes me. I'd love to create a TV series or write a film that's not in the 'Wimpy' universe, but I know it will be difficult to create something from scratch. But I love creating good comedy for kids, so I hope to have another successful venture in the future!
You've got athletes who are politicians, venture capitalists, musicians, rappers, etcetera. It's becoming more of a popular thing to have other interests outside of basketball, and I think that's normal. Just like when people work day jobs, they have interest in sports, they do investments, they do all these other types of things.
The truth is that the greatest innovations in health-care delivery haven't come from federally contrived oligopolies or enormous hospital chains. Novel concepts - whether practice-management companies, home health care or the first for-profit HMO - almost always have come from entrepreneurial firms, often backed by venture capital.
To be honest, I wasn't a sci-fi geek at all. But I do love a good sci-fi film, especially one that can really take you away. And I read some reality-bending novels growing up, like stuff by Vonngeut, so I already had one part my brain open to the unnatural and unusual, and it's generally fun to venture into that world and film in it.
I think the feeling was that 'Venture Brothers' really has something to sell in terms of a feature. 'Aqua Teen' is an element minute cartoon, and its very subversive and non sequitur and weird. We were writing the one show where we were constantly like, 'God, I wish we had another hour to tell this story.' It seemed like a natural fit.
Those in technology who can afford to stay in Silicon Valley all know it as one of the most beautiful places to live in the world, but a wariness has sunk in as folks from other walks of life are forced to leave: coffee shops are wall-to-wall with aspiring entrepreneurs, and restaurants buzz with talk of valuations and venture capital.
You know what works in venture capital? A group of incredibly smart, connected people who have the financial wherewithal and risk appetite to make multi-million dollar bets on unproven ideas and inexperienced founders. People who can make decisions quickly, and who spend their time trying to help entrepreneurs make the most of that cash.
. . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.
That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor.
When farming became a corporate venture, and the distribution of food became corporate, the variety of foods that were considered good diminished greatly. I know that there's a lot of misconception about this, that people think we have more food variety than ever before, but, in fact, if you read any of the studies, you'll find we have fewer foods than before.
A lot of the philosophies of the businesses are just 'we're interested in getting customers now and if we're losing money with each customer now that's okay because we have this huge hoard of venture capital that we can subsidise the operation with and once we have the required number of tens of millions of customers and we drive our competitors out of business, then we can start to raise prices and become a proper business.'
It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method. I venture to think that the people who talk most about it are the people who do least about it. Scientific method is what working scientists do, not what other people or even they themselves may say about it. No working scientist, when he plans an experiment in the laboratory, asks himself whether he is being properly scientific, nor is he interested in whatever method he may be using as method.
How many of the unicorn companies are really prosaic businesses - like limousine services or renting rooms in your house? The original VC firms from the '70's made their money and established the reputation of their respective brands by leveraging big cleverness with small capital, not small cleverness with big capital, and that's what's going on with these unicorns. That has never worked and it won't work this time. It doesn't produce venture quality returns, and it never will.