In an interesting footnote to last week's Los Angeles Venture Association awards, it's noteworthy to see LAVA Hall of Fame winner Jon Funk (now running Ocean Road Partners, previously at Allegis Capital) has just booted up an effort to help educate entrepreneurs about receiving venture capital. Funk has just announced a plan to run a...

If you've ever lived in Silicon Valley or spent time pitching there, you realize the huge contrast in pitching local Southern California venture capitalists and the usual run through Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. I used to bicycle my way through Sand Hill Road every weekend after work (I was living in Mountain View,

from ussocom via flickr There's been a lot of attention given to the Navy SEALs in the last few weeks since the Osama Bin Laden raid, so I wasn't surprised to see the post from Jeff Bussgang, a well followed venture capitalist blogger, this week. Jeff posted a few tips on what entrepreneurs can learn

For those of you interested in the full presentation from Clearstone Ventures' William Quigley on why he thinks we're due for a venture capital revival (complete with cute title slide reference to the Sequoia "RIP: Good Times" presentation from back in 2006), we've embedded it below. Quigley draws on the recent fundraising numbers from venture...

Among one of the biggest issues new entrepreneurs face when trying to raise money, from both angel and venture capital investors, is not doing their research and getting to know their investors before approaching them. In my years tracking the high tech companies getting–and not getting–funding, particularly here in Southern California,...

An interesting article this week from Reuters, talking about how Venture capitalists set sights on Hollywood, implying that venture capitalists are flocking to fund entertainment-related startups in Los Angeles. Although the venture numbers are correct (yes, venture funding is up nicely in Los Angeles), the conclusion–that those investments a...

An interesting comment by Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital yesterday, claiming that all of the innovation in Silicon Valley can be funded to the tune of just $400 million a year. To put that into perspective, we recently tallied Q3 investments in Southern California at about $1 billion. $400 million is a fraction of the

In what is a twist to the typical startups-pitch-VC events, tonight's Meet the VC event tonight by the Los Angeles Venture Association in Santa Monica has, instead of startup pitches, local venture capitalists pitching startups about their firms. In the event, just about every local venture capital firm will talk about what they are about...

Anyone interested in hearing my opinions and observations on tech hostpots and venture capital on the 101 Corridor–or just interested in networking with other folks in the area in technology–might be interested in the Meeting of the Minds (MOTM) event next week in Westlake Village on Wednesday, September 1st. They've asked me to give my...

Just a quick disclosure. We (and many others) have covered that USC has appointed Pat Haden — former USC and NFL quarterback — as athletic director, after a long stint in private equity at Riordan, Lewis & Haden. By coincidence, my very first exposure to venture capital, what it was, and how it works (as

In what (to me) is a fascinating story,?Intel investor, and LA billionaire Max Palevsky?died yesterday?in Beverly Hills. Amazing and fascinating, because of his story (he sold his first firm, SDS, to Xerox in 1969 for $920M, and bankrolled Intel as an angel/venture investor along with Arthur Rock, of Venrock Associates) — and the fact that...

This morning, we published the results of an extensive study of the impact of venture capital companies on Southern California in terms of exit values, finding that exits from VC-backed firms between 1995 and 2009 generated an astounding $48 billion (billion with a capital B) in value. The study, which was conducted by Jon Funk of

Venture capital rating site TheFunded released their 2009 "most loved VCs" list via TechCrunch Tuesday — with a surprise, in that they actually had some Southern California venture capitalists ranked on the list. The SoCal folks I noticed on the list: 2. Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners, rated 4.8571 by 7 CEOs 23. Mark S. Menell, Partner...

A couple of Tuesday links: Wiring Los Angeles (John Savageau) – a look into how downtown Los Angeles became a telecom hub, converting empty office space into one of the most densely connected telecom hubs in the world VC Funding Season Ends Next Week (Mark Suster) – Yes, there is such a thing as VC funding season,

An interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the Wall Street Journal today has him citing Silicon Valley's weather as one of its key differentiators: When I'm asked about this, and I've been asked this for years, I answer this the same: It is the weather. There's a reason why generations of young people who

The Los Angeles Venture Association has launched a new entrepreneur and startup focused event next month, at their Meet the VC event, which will allow entrepreneurs to get to meet pretty much every one of the local (and some non-local) venture funds in a "speed dating" session. A few of the folks involved have told

Not getting enough of Jason Nazar, founder of Santa Monica-based DocStoc, at his many Startups Uncensored events recently? Nazar gets the spotlight, pitching Kara Swisher in this video.

An interesting chart in today's report from the NVCA on venture capital's impact on the U.S. economy shows the aggregate amount in venture capital–in billions– invested in the U.S. since 1970: It's interesting to note that — if you look all the way back to 1970, how Southern California isn't all that far up in the...

Mark Averitt, a venture capitalist at Okapi Ventures, has posted an open letter to Congress about pending legislation — the Privacy Fund Transparency Act — which threatens to derail the venture capital industry. Well worth a read.

Red Herring recently published their list of Top 100 Global Venture Capitalists ostensibly to help people identify the most successful VCs. The handful of Southern California firms to get into the list were GRP Partners (#23), Redpoint Ventures (#39), and Zone Ventures (#100). Leaving argument about how these lists typically are constructed (who kn...

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a startup founder, who mentioned he was planning on talking with venture capitalists from Northern California, because he thought that they would be much more interested in a consumer Internet startup than VCs in Southern California. It as fascinating to me, because there have been so many investment...

There's been a debate going around recently about how important it is for the founder of a startup to be locked into a company, and how much they should be living "hand to mouth" versus being paid well when running their startup. In particular, there are a fair number of investors, and startups themselves, who

Larry Cheng, a VC at venture firm Fidelity Ventures, has updated his list of the top VC bloggers, ranked by number of Google Reader subscribers. It's interesting to note the huge chasm between the top bloggers (Guy Kawasaki and Fred Wilson) and everyone else, and the huge dropoff in readers as you go beyond position

One of the better opportunities here for companies to approach investors, VentureNet, recently opened up applications for the event, and it's well worth a look by any aspiring startups looking for funding. The event, which is put on by the Technology Council of Southern California, allows companies to pitch what they're doing to a panel...

It looks like Southern California's venture capital community is getting some link love today: Jasmine Antonick at DealMaker highlights the top VC twitter accounts, and calls out the TCA's Sid Mohasseb (#56),? and Okapi's Marc Averitt (#59). Mark Suster at GRP gives the lowdown on who should and shouldn't look for venture capital, and how to find...

I'm sure everyone's seen Intel's big advertising push "Our rock stars aren't your rock stars"–comparing the firm's technologists to celebrity rock stars. I was thinking about this recently in respect to Southern California–land of Michael Jackson—and its technology industry, and I find it interesting how Silicon Valley's own list ...