One Jackson is a new online children’s clothing retailer which is surprisingly fresh – all of its designs were created by independent designers and then curated with love from its community of parents.  The results are high-quality fashionable creations at an affordable pricepoint – which look great and are uniquely different from mass clothing brands.  Today [...]

As more transparency to seed-round funding transaction details have emerged, especially with the advent of Angelist and accelerator programs (which both educate and even sometimes set terms & structure for graduating companies), I’ve noticed an increasing number of entrepreneurs signal pricing expectations much earlier in the seed fundraising process.  By communicating pricing expectations with potential [...]

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen extremely positive headlines about the surge in VC fundings like “Venture Capital Hits Highest Level Since Dot-Com Bubble.”  It must be the best of times for the industry with $8.1B invested in startups during the second quarter of 2012 (the highest in a decade!) along “…with seed-round venture [...]

Personal networking is a key business skill.  And as a VC, I get plenty of practice doing it.  As one of my former high school coaches used to put it, “Practice doesn’t make perfect.  Practice makes better.”  While I guess you could develop a “strategy” to networking successfully (… with many a book written about [...]

There are essentially two distinct basic strategies for startup entrepreneurs to raise a seed round of capital: Subscription approach – An entrepreneur sets a structure (usually a convertible note) and recruits individual angel investors who subscribe to the round, all without a term-driving lead investor. Term-driving investor approach – An entrepreneur finds a lead (quasi-)institutional [...]