VC Confidential

Why You Should Start a Company in Chicago

2010-02-23T17:20:09-06:00

The folks at Fast Company have a series on articles on starting up companies in different regions of the US. I had a chance to talk with them about Chicago, my home town. Below is the beginning and link to the article Why You Should Start a Company in...Chicago.

Why You Should Start a Company in… Chicago

By Laura Rich

Chicago may lack the crackling energy of other startup hotspots like Seattle [1], Austin [2], Boston [3] or Boulder [4], and its reputation for back-office, white-collar companies such as the former Andersen Consulting firm doesn't help much. But Chicago is where many Internet mainstays were launched, from the jobs site CareerBuilder and travel service Orbitz to RSS technology innovators Feedburner (bought by Google in 2007) and the online audience measurement outfit comScore. One hot startup right now is the coupon site Groupon [5].

Health-care companies also have realized great potential in the area, led by Abbott Laboratories. And lest one forget, it was at nearby University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where Marc Andreessen developed Mosaic, the Web browser that paved the way for the commercial Web. So there's that.

These days Chicago's startup culture is aimed at the steady and sure. As Matt McCall, a partner at New World Ventures and managing director at DFJ Portage, notes, Chicago is home to many of the largest companies in the country, including Accenture, Boeing, Integrys Energy, MillerCoors, McDonald's, ACNielsen, Trans Union, and Fortune Brands. The list is long and comprehensive. For startups, it means a rich source of customers for products that fill a need or enhance their businesses.

McCall spoke with FastCompany.com about what makes Chicago's startup scene so strong.

What makes Chicago a great place for startups?
continued at Article link...

AO Top 100 VC List

2009-11-18T14:36:57-06:00

Well, I got a very pleasant surprise last night in my email. Tony Perkins notified me that I had made the Top 100 VC list in their inaugural year of the list. I don't usually like to self-promote but this was a particular recognition for me. PE Hub just did a piece on this list which is expected to replace the Forbes Midas Touch list. Many thanks to all of the guys at FeedBurner, Lefthand Networks, TicketsNow, Everdream and others that did all the hard work and deserve the credit!

PE Hub Article: Always On's Top 100 Venture Capitalists

Copy of VC100 List Final

The Significance of the Karma Bracelet

2009-10-03T15:54:34-05:00

"If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place." -- Nora Roberts

I have an old, wooden beaded Karma bracelet that I wear most days on my left wrist in the place of a watch. It's worn down a bit and is held together with three loops of silver coated elastic line. It's dirty light brown with faded chinese symbols on it. It is definitely not the most appealing accessory.

People continually ask me about it and why I wear it. I originally bought it on a lark several years during a business trip. As readers of my blog know, I believe (as many VC's do) that Karma sits at the middle of our investment (& personal) universe. Good acts & intentions attract like. In my mind, the Venture Capital world is the single strongest proof point behind the Law of Attraction (made famous by the book & movie, The Secret). That said, at the time (around 2003), the venture world was coming out of the darkest chapter in its history. Let me give you a sense of what it was like.

I had 12 investments at the time that I had made between 1995 and 2001. Regardless of how compelling or promising the business, by 2000, everything was in free fall. I moved from board meeting to board meeting, reviewing how much each firm had missed its revenue plan and what draconian steps we would take to reduce cost (e.g. usually laying people off). As I stepped back and reviewed the bigger picture, it painted a pretty bleak scene. It looked as if I would lose all of the investments. Very quickly, my mind would linearly extend out this bleak future. Without success, my days as a VC would be short. Without a job, I'd have little to show new employers in the industry. Without strong job prospects, what would I do for a living. You can (or even have personally) imagine how this negative feedback loop feeds on itself. In fact, I see a lot of people today going down this path. Ironically, the best relief I had from this grind was to help others, to make introductions where I could, to counsel entrepreneurs or just listening to people in need. My philosophy has been that just because your world is not going as hoped, does not mean that you can't try to help others. In fact, you usually get as much out of it as they do.

By 2003, things had stabilized but I had little to no visibility on exits or good news from my companies. While I had lost several investments, the lionshare had pulled through. IT customers had not returned to the market in strength and it was difficult to see what trends or strategies would carry the day. I had had a long, grinding three years and was not certain how much resilience I had left nor how long this would drag on. I definitely had my days where I questioned if I should remain in venture capital. My confidence was shaken and I could point to only modest gains.

Ironically, during the day, I would counsel entrepreneurs about perseverance, resilience and hope. Jim Clark, the founder of WebMD, Netscape, Silicon Graphics and myCFO, has always said the great companies are not built, but rather willed into existence. I realized that I couldn't believe in and preach A while doing B (running away). So, day in and day out, I ground it out.

Fast forward to 2008. I was in the midst of a string of successes that, honestly, surprised me. Many of those struggling companies from years before, had managed to conquer their challenges, scale their businesses and realize strong exits. In fact, during 2007 & 2008, these companies sold for nearly a $1B to the likes of IAC, Google and Dell. In fact, the largest exit of all, Lefthand Networks, sold to HP for $360 million in November, 2008 as our economy was nearing the bottom of the world's worst downturn in 70 years. Furthermore, because of these exits, I had few portfolio companies to manage through the current economic mess, leaving me with more time to look at new investment opportunities.

So, when I look at my beaded bracelet, do I think of it as a good luck charm? Maybe a little bit. However, more importantly, it symbolizes to me that, no matter how dark things get, the world is full of good people & good intentions and that tomorrow will be better than today. It reminds me that success is driven not by brilliance & insight (though they help) but rather by persistence, resilience and faith. Often, just getting up in the morning and putting your feet on the floor is the best strategy when you don't know where you can muster the energy & confidence to go on. This is not to say that one should chase after the wrong windmills. However, if you still believe in your very fiber (during your good days) that you are on the right path, push forward.

As the Rolling Stones wrote, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

Appreciating Your Immediate World

2009-09-15T22:42:26-05:00

Don Wood sent this over today. It says a lot about how we all go about our daily lives and what we miss or overlook, especially as we have our heads down in the New Normal.

..something to think about...

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.... How many other things are we missing?

Need Help Finding Mobile/iPhone Apps?

2009-09-04T17:09:48-05:00

My long-time Kellogg/BCG friend, Al Warms, has gone public with his latest effort, Appolicious. Al sold his previous company, Buzztracker, to Yahoo and went on to successfully run & grow Yahoo News.
Appolicious is a community for application discovery. You can upload your current applications (names only) and the site will begin to profile your interests and those of your friends and others like you. Unlike the one dimensional iPhone App store, Appolicious has a myriad of discovery methods for community members to discover new apps or to share feedback/commentary about existing ones. I have no personal stake in the company today but am a big fan of Al's and think that he is addressing an increasingly significant issue in mobile apps as the number of options for users grows exponentially. Give it a try and comment on your experience.

Do You Need to Be in the Valley?

2009-07-10T13:40:29-05:00

I often hear entrepreneurs talking about how they need to leave Chicago or Austin or Denver to be in the Valley in order to succeed. This has puzzled me since results would indicate otherwise. Yes, a lot of the high profile firms (many still not exited) are out there. However, each region has its strong ecosystems that are capable of generating industry leading opportunities. Over the past 3 years, our firm has had exits worth nearly a $1 billion in enterprise value. Of these, only 1 deal representing $125m, was in the Valley. Nearly 90% of the liquidity (when little is coming out of the Valley or industry overall), came from elsewhere. This is the reason that many of the Valley firms have located offices in Asia, India and that DFJ has over 30 offices worldwide. Innovation takes place and can succeed anywhere.

I will not deny that the Valley has a strong culture of innovation and that it produces an array of marquee firms. However, it also suffers from higher deal valuations because of all the capital there, which often leads to overfunding & high burn rates. Talent is expensive and hard to hold onto. For new entrants, there is a lot of noise, so it is harder to be recognized either for a job or for funding.

In fact, I can not think of a single company that went on to become successful that couldn't get funding in my backyard, then went to the Valley, got funding and became a huge success. It is a little like the pretty Kansas farm girl who goes to Hollywood to become a star, enticed by the glitter. The landing is often much rougher than expected and the success more elusive.

Fred Wilson had a great post today, Startup Hotbed Inferiority Complex, in which he discusses this topic succinctly:

But at the end of the night, the 'silicon valley' question came out. A participant in the audience wanted to know if it was crazy not to do his startup in Silicon Valley. This is what I call the startup hotbed insecurity complex. Deep down inside, every entrepreneur working outside of the bay area worries that they are not as competitive and will not be as successful because they are not in Silicon Valley....
...To which I responded that the idea that you cannot build an important tech company outside of Silicon Valley is 'a crock of shit'. Somehow that line was tweeted numerous times as 'silicon valley is a crock of shit' which I found humorous.avc.com, A VC, Jul 2009

Like anything, there are situations where it makes sense to move (starting a router company in Indianapolis) and there are often others where it does not (starting an e-commerce or internet services business in Chicago). However, too many people feel insecure if they aren't in the Valley. Just be certain why you have come to your conclusion...because the ecosystem can't support your idea or because you're just following the herd.

Reducing Stress in the New Normal with Pareto

2009-07-08T23:28:23-05:00

I remember a period in 2000 when I was stressed beyond belief, I was getting little sleep and I had lost 15 pounds. As my portfolio plummeted downward with all others, I envisioned myself working as an evening janitor in some office building. I wrote a post a couple of years ago, Resilience in the Storm, in which I laid out the a number of key lessons learned from VC vets like Roger McNamee on how to manage through downturns.

Timothy Ferris, in his book, The 4-Hour Work Week, hits a couple of these lessons spot on. I will preface all of this by saying that I liked Ferris's book but it is loaded with hyperbole. Its goal is to make oversized claims, with the hope of moving the reader from the middle. A couple of his comments that caught my attention were around:

W4W: Work for work...you do excessive work because you feel you need to or should work. If you are in perpetual motion, you must be advancing the ball and managing through the crisis. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case. You are most likely burning yourself out, fraying relationships with family & friends, trying to solve issues that are macro, not micro, in nature. You also worry and extrapolate consequences well beyond where they would ever go. "If I don't get this sale (from the customer with no budget & limited appreciation for your product), I will miss my quarter for which I'll get fired and be unable to support my family, resulting in my wife leaving me...." (or a more modest, but equally disproportional response). So, you increase emails and visits to the customer and fixate on making the sale. The reality is that it is not a good prospect and you should move on to better candidates.

Pareto & the 80/20 rule: 20% of your sources are causing 80% of your problems & unhappiness AND 20% of your sources are resulting in 80% of your desired outcomes and happiness. So, while logic would say to focus on the latter, we somehow focus disproportionally on the former. Ferris suggests doing a "truth-baring analysis" to look through your activities, customers, associates, responsibilities and such to determine which fall into the former and into the latter categories. Eliminate your inefficiencies and multiply your strengths. You'll notice that there are some very productive sources of customer leads, for example, that you don't have time to fully mine because you have filled your day with meetings or unproductive prospecting activities. Some strategic initiatives feel important or look good, but produce little yet you persevere to save face or because of inertia.

Parkinson Rule: the more time you give something, the more complex and the more activity you will use to fill it up. By intentionally curtailing activities and giving yourself short time windows, Ferris challenges that you will eliminate the busy work and focus on the essential. He has a couple of exercises including assume you leave work at 4:30 and skip Friday's, how would you manage your work load & day. What & who would you say "No" to that don't? Do this again but only with half a day. You will begin to see where the fluff or non-core elements of your day are.

In closing, as I wrote two years ago in the post above:

"He(McNamee) said that in times of massive macro change, there is little you can do as an individual to change your environment. You can respond by, like Homer, lashing yourself to the mast, and screaming at the on-coming storm. Or, you can use the time to truly understand what is important in your life…family and friends. In fact, he advocated that you will have limited influence on outcomes during macro setbacks, and that these are prime times to increase the amount of time you spend with your spouse and kids."

So, starting categorizing what is working & what is not, what is causing stress & what is creating contentment and where you seem to be advancing the ball & where you keep hitting brick walls. Compress your day and see what falls out. Take the time to prune and re-prioritize. Often you are so overworked that you stop asking "what am I doing this activity for?". Time to ask...

The Secret to Success in the New Normal

2009-07-07T17:39:12-05:00

Meet Joel Bauer. His created character is a riot. I'm going to go one step better. 8x10 cards with music that plays when it opens (Rocky?)...Secrets for the New Normal :-) Enjoy

VC's Mathematical Challenge

2009-06-28T00:12:09-05:00

There is no doubt that the venture industry is going through a major house cleaning right now. Much of the pruning that should have been done post Bubble is finally going on now as LP's start to wake up and pull back a bit from the asset class. One of the main challenges has been the mismatch between LP demand in the category and the declining liquidity of it. The main question people as is what is the right amount of capital that should flow into the business annually to keep it healthy. Let's look at the mathematics from the exit perspective:

Average annual number of acquisitions: 250

Average sales price: $80 million

Average annual number of IPO's: 100

Average value of IPO: $150 million

Total annual value of venture backed exits: $35 billion

(IPO's have been down below 10 recently and above 200 in healthy times but below 60 for the past 8 years)

(sale & IPO values have fluctuated but these are swags)

Assumed VC ownership at exit: 70%

Exit Value going to VC's: $24.5 billion

Target Fund multiple: 2.5-3x

Capital Deployed to hit: $8-10 billion

This means that for the industry to continue (a la 1990's) generating IRR's north of 20% net in this exit environment, no more than $10 billion should be flowing into it during any given year. If the IPO market wakes up, this number goes up. If it stays asleep, it goes even lower. In a strong year (250 IPO's & 300 acquisitions at $200 million & $120 million avg values respectively), total annual exit value jumps to nearly $90 billion. Filter this through and the industry could handle roughly $25 billion in new capital.

Well, until just the first quarter of this year, industry fundraising has been north of $30 billion for several years and the exit markets have been significantly below even the initial levels above. Our industry stays healthy if no more than $10-15 billion per year is raised. So, we've been at 2x that rate. The LP's have hopefully figured this out and we'll see smaller brand funds and fewer total funds.

How many funds can survive in this kind of market? Let's do the math again:

Couple of mega-mega funds like NEA, Oak, TCV & Menlo: say 5 x $2 billion each = $10 billion

Number of brand funds: say 25 x $500 million each = $13 billion

Number of next tier funds: say 40 x $200 million each = $8 billion

Fundraising cycle: every 3 years

So, just these initial 70 funds results in $10 billion+ per year raised.

Assuming that there will be around 300 funds around in total, this leaves about $5 billion/yr for the remaining 230 groups. Using the 3 year cycle, this results in each of these funds being under $65 million in size. If the exit environment remains moribund, then all of these number have to discounted even more to get to $10 billion in total industry dollars annually.

So, the industry has to drop from 500-600 groups to 300 groups and the LP's need to pair everyone back. No more $4 billion Mega-mega funds, no more $700-800 million brand funds, no more $300-400 million next tier funds and no more $100-150 million remaining funds. If the LP's don't do this, we end up north of $25 billion per year again and terrible returns.

Can LP's contain themselves? We'll see once conditions start to improve in the economy. In the interim, it will be ugly times for VC fundraising...

Strategic Protectors

2009-05-03T22:01:21-05:00

In difficult times, strategic partners can be essential to survival. As companies fight for air in these cash strapped times, larger corporations have valuable resources. Our portfolio companies have leveraged partners in several ways.
1) Pre-paying revenue. Some customers will pay in advance of delivered goods. Future takedowns are applied against this.

2) Venture leasing: if an entrepreneurial company is investing heavily in equipment and capacity for a customer ramp, see if they can help finance it. This can be thru their in-house finance group or by helping guarantee payment of the loan. They understand that they benefit from your getting this capacity funded.

3) Distribution agreements: corporations with global distribution can expand the addressable markets and customers you can reach. If you deliver revenue to them (bundling with your product or a cut of the sale), it can be a win-win.

4) Strategic investment: corporations that see your strategic value to them may be more likely to invest in your firm than the traditional venture industry.

There are a million caveats around embracing strategics. You want to avoid firms who are known to be litigious or difficult to negotiate/ work with. More so, if they are known to absorb information and then build competing product, avoid them at all costs. There are many in the consumer electronics world that frequently do this.

Realize that corporations have limited cash themselves. But bringing solutions or ideas that bring incremental revenue or discretely reduce cost today (no "productivity gains") and they will take the discussions seriously.

Be careful not to lock yourself into having a one acquiror situation. Getting multiple strategics engaged, having other distribution channels and creating other alternatives gives you more freedom.

More importantly, use these activites as a way to start courtships with potential acquirors. Both sides will get a chance to understand where synergies and fit are. It is an investment in the future.

So, be careful but realize that strategics can provide essential lifelines to you.