When was the last time all of your startup’s management team came together to take a step back from day-to-day minutiae and think big picture?  I think it’s actually incredibly valuable for startups to occasionally, and regularly, have offsite planning sessions.  Unlike at “big companies,” a startup offsite isn’t about a boondoggle, it’s not about [...]

VCs rarely go into an entrepreneur’s pitch meeting with a completely open mind. Of course they have biases given their past experiences, like with any human interaction. More importantly, though, they have biases about whether or not they are going to find the opportunity attractive even before a word of the dialog has been spoken. [...]

People ask us at NextView all of the time: “What is the typical profile of an entrepreneur in your portfolio?”  Subtly behind that question is often one about the experience-level of the founders.  The answer, however, doesn’t fit into a neat soundbite.  We have and will continue to fund young entrepreneurs in their twenties – [...]

Over the past decade, VCs have been lamenting about the poor state of the IPO markets and that the number of real potential acquirers for consumer internet startups has dwindled down to a handful, if that.  Many of formerly rich acquirers like AOL and Yahoo have long since faded past their heyday, and their appetite [...]

It always feels anachronistic these days to exchange business cards when you usually have someone’s contact information anyway in an electronic format before (via email introduction) or just after (via LinkedIn connection) you meet.  Many people, though, take the opportunity with a physical card to make an impression with a unique spin on their card [...]