Disqus - Latest Comments for gregory

Re: Twitter Lists…What do YOU Think?

gregory — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:53:01 -0000

Thanks for the rec Howard!

Unlike team, http://listorious.com has an "i" in it.

Re: Dow 10,000 and economic reflexivity

gregory — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:28:45 -0000

This is all well and good, but what do you make of the fact that while the likelihood of a great depression occurring has fluctuated over the past six years, the likelihood of a teleport machine being invented has steadily dropped http://bit.ly/4bKr3q

Re: The problem with not hitting your seed round milestones

gregory — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:35:41 -0000

Charlie, I think the best solution is to be born filthy rich.

Re: The problem with not hitting your seed round milestones

gregory — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:30:51 -0000

Charlie, as you point out, a lot of it comes down to the investor's reputation for follow on financings. Imagine if Paul Graham lead follow on larger financings in his few favorite Y Combinator companies every year. If Graham didn't put a term sheet out on on a Y Combinator grad, everyone else would wonder what Paul Graham knows that they don't and be very wary of investing. Of course since Graham never does (to my knowledge), he can credibly help all Y Combinator-backed companies raise their next round.

Firms like First Round pretty much do they same -- if they lead your series A and you do well, there's no expectation they'll lead the B because they're not set up to do that no matter how good the deal is. (Eric made a similar point.)

That said, I think it makes sense these large VC firms (Charles River and the like) to put some small portion of their capital in seed deals for R&D if nothing else, and it's always good to have more seed money out there for entrepreneurs. Perhaps the solution is to have a middle man. RRE kind of did this by investing in Betaworks, which makes angel investments in addition to their own products. Because there's different management, I don't think anyone expects RRE to lead the next round of a Betaworks investment. Sequoia invested in Y Combinator, but there's no expectation that Sequoia lead the round for successful YC companies.

I could see a couple of big VC firms putting money into a new entity that'd make fast $200-500K investments. They could have regular interactions with the fledgling companies, without setting the market expectation of an investment if things work out.

Re: Paying attention to the anti-VC opinions

gregory — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:41:14 -0000

Good point about entrepreneurs being the customers of VCs. If VCs' customers are LPs, then one could extrapolate that entrepreneurs' customers are VCs -- and that would be some truly messed up thinking.

Re: First Round Capital, NYC, and Our “Born Again” Startup

gregory — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:24:29 -0000

Congrats on the new gig! But I thought the Ticktock Diner was already FRC's NYC office.

Re: Cohos Hike, We have showered and replaced our smelly synthetic...

gregory — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:24:44 -0000

Thanks for not coming to the office today!

Re: Extroversion

gregory — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:30:03 -0000

When the person who put wifi on the Hampton Jitney tells you your tweeting at inappropriate times, you'd better pay attention!

Re: Scott Rafer's Blog

gregory — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:02:54 -0000

I have plenty of things to be ashamed about, but I don't see how this is one of them. I grabbed this quote from Dennis's book -- he mentions this attitude while explaining his decision to invest heavily in The Week magazine in the late '90s when it was running out of money (and of course long before it had mass distribution or proved its financial viability). His board of directors and CFO were against it, but he did it anyways. As we now know, it was the right call as The Week is a critical and economic success in the UK and US (I've been a paid subscriber for the past 5 years).

How is this quote out of date or in the Arrington/Denton style? This quote reminds me more of a Jeff Bezos interview in which he was asked if Amazon's at a point now when all decisions can be made based on data and A/B testing. His answer was no -- that while many decisions can be derived from the data, big choices like launching the Kindle have to ultimately "come from the heart".

Re: The Ideal First Round Term Sheet

gregory — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:16:12 -0000

Fred, I hope more investors follow your lead. It'd be great if VCs published their preferred set of docs on their websites so entrepreneurs knew what they're getting into before the term sheet or even the first pitch, as Y Combinator (http://www.ycombinator.com/seriesaa.html) and TechStars (re: Brad's commen,t http://www.techstars.org/2009/02/07/techstars-m...) did.

I wrote a blog post related to this issue but focused on angel deals last August when the Y Combinator posted their standard docs. You might appreciate the cartoon if not the post:
http://www.venturevoice.com/2008/08/angel_finan...

Re: The Ideal First Round Term Sheet

gregory — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:10:35 -0000

The reason not to is to more easily put lawyers' kids though college. Some deals are different, but there have been enough early stage tech financings that it's a rare deal that needs special terms. And even in that case, it'd be more efficient to make changes off a known standard set of documents so the lawyers only have to look at the changes rather than read the whole thing.

I once had a lawyer who was working on a pretty standard doc tell me they do custom work and it's higher quality because of that. I'm still scratching my head over that to this day.

Re: Relying on others

gregory — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:23:16 -0000

Not that I meant to, but it's more effective to agree with what someone doesn't mean than to disagree with what they do mean.

Re: Relying on others

gregory — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:04:14 -0000

I agree. Just seems funny that business users are perfectly willing to go with Twitter itself over a private label version (not that there is a viable one), but worry about the URL shorteners that are often more reliable than Twitter.

Re: Moving on

gregory — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:09:12 -0000

Good luck on the new gig! It was a blast working with you, Brad, Lisa and team on the Shorty Awards.

Re: Andrew Parker - The Gong Show

gregory — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:53:05 -0000

Someone should start a three-partner VC firm to invest in SEC compliance companies.

Re: How to find journalists on Twitter

gregory — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:17:04 -0000

Thanks for covering Muck Rack! That's a great summary these two sites.

Re: Adam understands. Google doesn't.

gregory — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:57:53 -0000

Google Voice clearly never counted on southern drawls. Is there an opportunity to launch a rebel Google?

Re: Social Media Hub: New York

gregory — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:35:14 -0000

Thanks for mentioning the Shorty Awards! We could not agree more about NYC's importance, and Dumbo, Brooklyn specifically (where we held the awards and where our office is).

Re: Motivatr - They needed a vulture in court, someone very...

gregory — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:22:09 -0000

Welcome to my blog. Who are you?

Re: Twitter Fools' Day

gregory — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:44:25 -0000

Just wait till next year when you can get your Disqus Pro account.

Re: Advsiors - how much equity is right?

gregory — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:28:19 -0000

Steven, I just saw your responses. As I said in my origional comment: "in my experience" and "often". I have had advisers who I've given equity to and have added value.

However, it sounds like at least a couple other folks in this thread have had a similar experience as I did. Which is why I'm glad we're all comparing notes.

Re: Shorty caught on camera

gregory — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:46:39 -0000

Yes he did. If you watch the first video you can see his Rick Roll acceptance speech and big hug to @GaryVee.

Re: Shorty caught on camera

gregory — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:21:41 -0000

It was our pleasure. Nice to meet you at the ceremony.

Re: Advsiors - how much equity is right?

gregory — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:10:06 -0000

Great post. In my experience the advisers who don't ask for equity (unless they're investing cash) often do the most.

Re: whitneymcn on tumblr's Tumblelog

gregory — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:39:14 -0000

Me to.