Venturing Forth

No Scandal at Zynga

2011-11-11T07:55:44-05:00

The WSJ reported yesterday that Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, has addressed underperformance by some of his executives by cutting their unvested equity grants. There has been lots of discussion in the blogosphere about whether or not this is ethical, or even legal. Dan Primack covered the brouhaha in his lead on PE Week today, and I read through the comments to his post and then joined the fray with the text below: ----- This is a tricky issue and it's obviously controversial, as evidenced by WSJ's article and the comments below. Fundamentally, though, Pincus has done nothing unethical (based...

It Can Be Costly To Stay Private...

2011-09-27T18:43:30-04:00

One of the big, recent trends among the high-profile consumer web companies has been to raise big rounds of private equity capital instead of going public. It's a great deal for the companies: 1) they get the capital they need to fund growth without having to live with the scrutiny of the public markets, quarterly numbers; and, 2) given the plentiful supply of private equity dollars (can't bring myself to use the term "venture capital" here because it isn't) chasing these deals, the companies get the rich valuations they used to have to go public to realize. Everything works with...

Really Looking Forward to URES Tomorrow...

2011-03-30T21:08:43-04:00

Tomorrow I'm hosting the 4th annual URES (University Research and Entrepreneurship Symposium) - an event that keeps getting better every year. We'll have 300+ investors, entrepreneurs, and startup executives in the audience hearing 10-minute presentations by 30 technology entrepreneurs who have developed, and intend to start companies around, technologies within world-class research universities around the US. This year we've expanded to include 3 tracks: Life Sciences, Energy, and IT. Having worked with the other members of the Executive and Steering Committees (which include Jeff Fagnan and Bruce Booth at Atlas Venture, and Bilal Zuberi and Hemant Taneja at General Catalyst,...

Calling All University Spinouts - Present at URES 2011!

2011-01-04T12:55:25-05:00

University Research and Entrepreneurship Symposium (URES) is the "go to" annual event in Boston for the country's world-class research universities to showcase their most commercially promising technologies for spinning out into startups. Over the last two years, 5 URES presenting projects have raised venture capital. Last year, we had projects from Cornell, University of Illinois, Purdue, RPI, Harvard, Yale, and MIT among others. It's a unique event - 300+ investors, entrepreneurs, and technologists talking about startups and big technology ideas. The criteria are simple: Technology must be breakthrough and disruptive... ie kick-ass Potential applications must address really big markets Project...

My 3 Favorite Books of 2010

2011-01-02T20:59:41-05:00

Figured it was the time for annual lists and this topic came up over the holidays a few times so wanted to jot this down... The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. Coyle studies how talent is grown and developed by examining the training and coaching methods used in seemingly unrelated "talent hotbeds", from a tennis club outside Moscow to a cellist camp in upstate New York. This book literally blew me away - many of the lessons resonated with things I'd picked up or observed as a student, athlete, and parent. And mostly it just appealed to my love of...

A Useful and Fun Analog

2010-12-15T08:30:00-05:00

Investing in startups is a tough challenge given the long odds of success, and the analysis of an opportunity is an incredibly subjective exercise. The decision inevitably comes down to judgments about the 3 primary elements of the business: team, product/technology, and market opportunity. Getting to the right answer is in part a science, gathering data and feedback from customers, partners, technologists, domain experts, and past colleagues. But it is also an art and this is the real trick -- infusing the judgment with past experience, instincts, and pattern recognition (or "analogs" as venture investors love to say). The obvious...

Guarding Against the Recency Bias

2010-10-13T18:56:24-04:00

One of the biggest traps entrepreneurs (and their investors and Boards) commonly fall into is the recency bias, aka the tendency to overweight the most recent information received. It's easy to see how this happens to entrepreneurs and how it has enormous impact on long-term outcomes, as they're typically using horribly imperfect information to make hugely important strategic decisions. As a Board member, the telltale signs usually reveal themselves over time, as the entrepreneur spends way too much time articulating the latest great idea (sparked by a customer meeting) and the company's focus whipsaws from one idea to the next....

If We're Not Careful...

2010-07-25T23:52:35-04:00

China is fast-becoming a leader in cleantech

Capital-Efficiency in Cleantech

2010-07-08T14:22:11-04:00

In an interview with WSJ/Venturewire yesterday, Vinod Khosla made the distinction between capital-light and capital-heavy cleantech businesses. The capital intensity of cleantech investment opportunities is the subject of much debate in entrepreneurial circles, and it's a subject I've touched on in this blog as well (link). Vinod cites the example of Stion, a thin-film solar company that recently closed a $70m Series D financing, as a capital-light solar play compared to the $100-500m raised by competitors such as Miasole, Nanosolar, Solyndra, and others. On one level, it is an important point: if Stion is able to reach cash-flow breakeven on...

Energized by ARPA-E Coming Out Party

2010-03-03T18:05:07-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days where you get to take a step back for a minute and take in the real progress that is being made in the US to address the world's energy problem. The ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit was held in Washington DC and featured 100+ ARPA-E awardees, finalists, and other showcase participants. The amount and quality of the startups and innovators on the showcase floor was astounding - everywhere I turned I bumped into another world-class researcher working on a disruptive approach to solar, wind, energy storage, water purification, carbon capture... and unlike so many university...