I decided last week that the next post in this series should be about Franklin “Pitch” Johnson, Jr. who has been a venture capitalist since 1962. It is a good follow up to my previous post on Georges Doriot and posts I have written on Arthur Rock and Don Valentine. These people and a few other innovators created the venture capital industry. Johnson is a founding partner of the […]
Why should people want to read about an ex-U.S. General born in France who taught at Harvard Business School and formed the first venture capital fund? The answer is that this fellow unleashed an industry that is harvesting optionality in ways that are dramatically changing the world. Once people saw that was possible to generate 5,000X returns on a single investment as was the case with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) […]
The comedian Louis C.K. was born Louis Szekely in 1967. He began his career writing for other comedians including David Letterman, Dana Carvey, Conan O’Brien and Chris Rock and has created several video series including the FX comedy show Louie, which he wrote, directed and edited. Louis has been a notable innovator in the business of comedy including releasing his debut standup routine Live in Houston directly through his website in 2001. He […]
You may be wondering: what does horse racing have to do with investing? Charlie Munger answered this question in his famous Worldly Wisdom speech: “The model I like — to sort of simplify the notion of what goes on in a market for common stocks — is the pari-mutuel system at the racetrack. If you stop to think about it, a pari-mutuel system is a market. Everybody goes there and […]
I am going to let the subject of this post introduce himself: “I am Josh Kopelman and I am a partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture firm. Before that I was an entrepreneur, founding and exiting three companies (one IPO, two acquisitions). I’m based in Philly – but First Round invests nationally, and our biggest office is in San Francisco. My fund has invested in the first rounds […]
One of the more legendary characters in the history of investing is Bernard Baruch. In his biography Jim Grant writes that Baruch was not as wealthy as most people imagine, but wealth enough to live the lifestyle “of a millionaire” (whatever that means). At various times in his life Baruch was an investor, philanthropist, statesman, and political consultant. The Dictionary of American Biography provides background: In 1891 Baruch joined the […]
My objective in this blog post is to contrast the investing outcomes of an amateur investor like Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) with the outcomes experienced by a professional investor. One type of investment where most anyone can see this difference is in venture capital, where Twain was quite active over the years even though the word had not yet been created. His performance as a venture capital investor was terrible. […]
Steve Anderson is the founder of the pioneering “micro VC” Baseline Ventures. What is a micro VC? As the name implies, micro-VCs are smaller versions of more traditional venture firms (e.g., they raise less money and invest smaller amounts at an earlier stage in life cycle of the startup business). Mattermark writes about the category: “Most (around 80 percent) of the initial investments that micro VC firms make are in […]
Mary Meeker is a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Before becoming a venture capitalist she was a Managing Director, Research Analyst, and Technology Analyst at Morgan Stanley from 1991 to 2010. She previously worked at Salomon Brothers. Meeker received her MBA from Cornell. Meeker and I lived through many of the same events, but in different places, which creates different perspectives. For example, […]
Jessica Livingston co-founded Y Combinator in March of 2005. The goal of Y Combinator is to provide seed funding for startups and help get the business to a point where they have “built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.” The next goal is to “introduce the founders to later stage investors—or occasionally even acquirers.” Livingston has written a book, “Founders at Work” (2007) based on interviews […]