I moved my family. I sold my Swiss farmhouse, bought a Victorian money pit instead. I forced my wife to change job. And all for what ? Boston. A place that so painfully undersells itself you?d think Indianapolis had more going on. A place that has such surly drivers that even a broken down MTBA transit feels homely. Why, oh why ? It turns out, like...

It's been over 4 years now since I have been involved with Seedcamp, as investor, board member and mentor. In the early days was a group of entrepreneurs thinking about how to leverage the scarcest of resources (talented people's time) and today we are two funds into a promising international initiative that is starting to deliver results. Looking ...

My partner AJ Shanley and I dropped by the 500 Pirates' Den the other week, more officially known as the 500 Startups accelerator in Mountain View. For those who don't spend too much time inside the world of high velocity startups, it offers a fascinating look inside the engine room of modern company building. 500Startups is the poster child of hig...

I hear a lot of commentary in the Boston area about how VC's have needed to replace angels in seed rounds. In an area with some much technology wealth created over the years I always found this puzzling. Angel groups in the Boston area are a force. My simple question today is : do they work or are they de facto doing a disservice to the ecosystem ?...

He's young, he's hungry, he's lean. Here is the all new 2012 model of the Atlas Venture tech principal: Dustin "Double D" Doooolginow. Dustin joined us almost two years ago. It's not that we care too much about titles, but when entrepreneurs reliably come in and tell you about how great the guy is, how they seek him out for advice and how they trus...

SOPA may not pass. What it tells you about the policymakers outlook on how to defend against piracy and copyright infringement is extremely scary. I don't think I have ever read proposed legislation that was such a clear backward looking move that fundamentally ignores how the web is reshaping our lives. Forget censorship and job creation for a mom...

Insider view on the investment banking mayhem, take two. My friend Sean Park (read Park Paradigm) dropped this excellent comment / beautiful rant on my previous "how banking lost its way" post. Another guy who lived inside the belly of the beast. You may wonder what Algorithms have to do with #OccupyWallStreet. The answer is: everything. You don't ...

In the last few days if you're a a twitter user you've probably been saturated with raving comments about this conference called f.ounders. Whilst as a hashtag it does not exactly work, man, what a success it was. Whether it's Davos for geeks I don't know (and don't care), but it's certainly the best conference I remember attending. Keeping audienc...

I spent the first years of my career in derivatives. I made it Executive Director at Goldman Sachs before I decided to pack it in. The year I left the City for a bubble incubator called Speed Ventures, I divided my compensation by 10. But I never looked back. I wanted to share briefly my story and how I think banking went really, really wrong. Trut...

I see so much crap being written for and against Lean Startups that I thought it was worth setting my simple thoughts down on what lean means to me. Concepts to be valid need to be used with some form of rigor and consistency. I am not attempting to rewrite Eric Ries but rather to give a layman's view of lean as an applicable set of principles. Fac...

The Uncrunching of Techcrunch. It's been one of the most entertaining saga's on the web recently, in a reality TV kind of way. But in the process, a discourse has emerged that seems to say "nothing matters except Influence". I don't buy that. Techcrunch = awesome creation, unique voice, machine for releasing breaking stories. Great entrepreneurial ...

The excellent Roger Ehrenberger is angry ("Geting Real"); so am I. I am angry at the continued bickering that paralyses Europe in the face of is sternest test yet. Note: This is not a post about the impact on startups -- for that you can go read the recent gigaom writeup by Bobbie Johnson. Of course there is little to be surprised at; our supranati...

"My name is Boris and I'm from Russia". This is how the CampusLive founder opens his pitch for the FutureM audience. He's one of eight startups presenting to an assorted crowd of people interested in advertising. "When you run a startup, burn your bridges. If you have anywhere to retreat, you will inevitably, because building a startup is just hard...

Today's a meaningful day. Like everyone else, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the planes hit the tower. For those of us who have not known war, this was the closest we came to experiencing it. And in a way, it was the start of an odd war, the so-called War on Terror. I was hesitant about how to mark the day and but wanted t...

We're all delighted to announce today a partnership between Seedcamp and Angellist. Seedcamp has been running strong for 5 years now; it will continue to be a work in progress for many years to come but it's clearly doing a fantastic job in helping startups from Europe and beyond in accelerating their progress at the earliest stages. I am always am...

The new Startup Genome project tries to bring structure and data to the following question: why do so many companies die from premature scaling ? I was impressed by the first report the Startup Genome team produced so when Bjoern asked me to comment I was more than happy to comply. The first Startup Genome Report dealt with understanding causes of ...

The video and accompanying presentation gather much of the current thinking around building startups from scratch to scale. This was my annual contribution to Seedcamp, in the form of a new Prezi and accompanying commentary on Startup Lifecycle, which I presented at Seedcamp Ljubljana. An awesome editing job was done by Lecture Hub using flowplayer...

My most recent seed investment is in UK company Secret Escapes. Whilst there's nothing original about the model (think Voyage-Prive for Brits), there is a definite difference is the method behind building a business that's sustainable over time and aiming for leadership versus simply cloning. Clones Clones have been widely derided as pale copies of...

It?s probably the best time in history to become an Angel, yet the market is moving with a velocity that is sometimes mind boggling even for the most maverick among us. There is no better time to all get together, learn from the best and think about the future. Jon Pierce and team are putting together the year?s must attend event for angel investor...

I recently organized a little event around Angellist with our friends Nate and Boaz at HTML5 stalwarts Bocoup. We had invited Nivi (angellist founder) to town for our annual meeting and this event but he underwent a root canal surgery instead and could not make it over. So we got together a ?last minute yet great? group of people: Steve Kane, repea...

Recently I was interviewed by Andrew Perlmutter at BostInnovation. The very candid interview does a good job of capturing my views on personal brand and the use of media in venture capital, and which I republish below. BostInno: Why did you start blogging? FD: I started blogging for two main reasons. First, I wanted to help entrepreneurs get inside...

"Your project is in a queue, if we don't respond it's not because we don't like it, in fact we think you team rocks. We usually don't respond, but rest assured we read your material, tried your app and tweeted it our to our 17 followers. [Michael Robertson] loved it, Dan and Brian talked about it on namesake, but unfortunately our bar is insanely h...

When away from the Valley Vortex ?, building sustainable and efficient communities is hard. I am in violent agreement with Paul Kedrosky when he recently argued that the first failure of smaller innovation markets is a misguided attempt to ape the Valley. His quote: The insider/conveyor game is why venture is such a profound disappointment in almos...

Today Atlas Venture and Wellington Partners announced that they were combining to create a new powerhouse in the global venturing world. ?This is going to be huge? commented Frank Boehnke. ? I always wanted to be huge?, added Fred Destin. ?The market really went with their headfake about leaving Europe? said Dan Primack, reporter. ?I like the gutsy...

Vivek Wadhwa shows up at MIT and tells a bunch of smart people that Boston is being left behind in the sand by Silicon Valley. Sand, silicon, haha; the Valley won. Ensues a stream of cheap shots and angry denials that makes the National Enquirer look pro and some fun headlines, including a scorcher of a headline from the New York Observer: ?Vivek f...

The crossover fund has finally arrived. Liz Gannes has done a great roundup of the latest trend, with Zynga, Facebook and Groupon taking money from the likes of KPCB, Battery, Greylock or Andreessen Horowitz. There are few too many smart guys doing this to dismiss it as hype, so let?s think about what?s really going on. [I was engaged in a great co...

Today France Telecom / Orange announced that it had entered into exclusive negotiation with DailyMotion to take a minority stake in the business and potentially grow its share over time. I have been an investor since 2005 and my wife has nicknamed DailyMotion ?my second wife? so this is an ambivalent if generally positive moment for me ! Under the ...

Late on Friday we launched the new website of Atlas Venture. The launch prompted me to tour our VC brethren in the Boston area and was surprised at how many have been redesigned recently: NorthBridge, General Catalyst, Charles River or Longworth. Since I am new to the Boston scene, I thought it would be fun to take a designer?s viewpoint on what VC...

Finally made it to #Techcocktail / Startup Mixology conference in Chicago First guy I see is Travis Kalanick (@KonaTBone), a co-founder of Scour and later RedSwoosh (acquired by Akamai). He?s full of fun factoid (such as influencing Parker in ?getting? Zuck and fb, says he?s been replaced by an Asian woman in the movie, or getting sued for $250bn)....

On stage right now is a nice brochette of European entrepreneurs: Kosciusko-Morizet (PriceMinister), Granjon (Vente-Privee), Hoberman (lastminute), Niel (free), Simoncini (Meetic), Blanc (allocine). Grandjon stands out with a great delivery of a rousing speech: ?we are only writing the first few lines of online interaction and the future of commerc...

We all know that the ability to condense a business down to its essentials is a requirement, from fundraising to allowing everyone in your company to elegantly explain what your company is about. Sequoia Capital puts as the ability to ?summarize the business on the back of a business card?. David Cowan at Bessemer puts it elegantly : ?I know it sou...

I did an interview recently with Pemo Theodore at Ezebis and she generated a transcript which is a godsend since I am stull trying to keep my typing light. So if you will excuse the slightly subpar editing compared to my usual fare, here are some edits from that video: On Atlas ?We are very old fashioned in many ways. We invest at Seed or Series A....

Brian was CEO of aquantive and now with Madrona Venture Group. Here shared his management maxims with the audience at the MIT VC Conference at th Charles Hotel in Cambridge and I thought they were worth sharing. Quick background on aQuantive aQuantive was founded as Avenue A in Seattle in 1997. The company went public in 2000 with $44M in revenue a...

Sujal Patel and Paul Mikesell founded Isilon back in early 2001. Now, just shy of 10 years later, the founders can proudly celebrate an awesome $2.25bn exit to EMC. The story is noteworthy in part because Patel came back to the top spot after the company came under investigation from the SEC. No take anything away from the work done by the rest of ...

We have just moved into our new digs in East Cambridge (the Davenport Building on 1st St). I took some poor pictures on my iPhone to give you a sense of the space. There are a ton of places to meet and interact and we look forward to helping as many great entrepreneurs leverage this infrastructure as we can. Being in a new building does wonders; th...

Brad and David, with typical Rockies cool, are here to talk about their new book, ?Do More Faster? (buy it more this startup). Brad and David embody early stage investing as it should be and it?s great to hear such an inspirational set of speakers. For me, in venture for about 10 years now, guys like Brad are the reason why I joined the business an...

Apologies for the long hiatus but right wrist is giving me trouble and hence keeping the typing down to a minimum. Working on it and hope to be back soon.

Let's look at how investors manage a portfolio of startup investments and what that means for you as an entrepreneur. You may not like it. When investors commit to your company, they will invest some money upfront (say $2M) and allocate reserves for future funding (say $6M). Why ? Well, we know from experience that successful businesses take real c...

What looks like a great exit for the team at Fortify to HP (rumour says it's a pretty decent acquisition price) comes with a probable added benefit for Boston-based Veracode. Let's look briefly at how a company innovates on multiple levels to out-compete the 8,000-pound gorillas. Application security in the cloud If you don't know Veracode, it's gr...

Last few weeks I was in the South of France waiting for my kit to arrive to the Port of Boston. By chance I hooked with a good friend of mine who's enjoying a season off after selling the last company he was involved in (he's on his third exit, bless him). We talked business for a bit and about his next role. When I asked him whether he wanted to b...

Poor European entrepreneurs. They can only dreams of SuperAngels, salivate from afar about the land of Ron Conway, the cool shirts of Sacca and the awesome dollar power of Angellist, whilst they're stuck with old school business angels or fee-charging networks, whilst European VC's, never a risk taking breed as we know, have all retreated back to t...

I swore to myself I was going to say out of this super angel versus VC debate but now I had this compelling urge that I need to satisfy. First of all, let's move away from Roe vs. Wade style debating. There is no super Angel class that somehow redefines what venture is about, and venture is not a species threatened by sudden shifts in temperature. ...

This week was a fairly big week for me. On July 4th I officially emigrated to the US, a date I am not likely to forget. Wednesday, we announced our new investment (my first in the US), leading a $7.5M round in adtech company AdSafe Media. Previous investors include Founders Collective and a serious group of ad tech insiders (chek out the advisors),...

ITA is the GDS of the future; the best, most dynamic, most admired airfare system in the world. Finally the rumours are confirmed: it's now part of Google for a cool $700M. The MIT computer scientists behind the company should feel right at home ! If you are in the business of providing the world with all the data it may ever need, there is no reas...

It's a beautiful summer Thursday in the English countryside. I am at Founders Forum, surrounded by iPads and beautifully tanned entrepreneurs. The Founders have spent the last two days working together on big themes and issues facing the entrepreneurial community, from major trends to where Google is going, to taxation and labour policy issues. On ...

Last Wednesday, one of the companies in my portfolio announced its sale to Rakuten, the $3bn retail giant that has Amazon and eBay taking notice after its second major e-commerce acquisition in the "West", following buy.com last month. At ?200M it's a super exit, but it's also a great tale of entrepreneurship. First a few words on the deal: Speed t...

Some of the startup companies I work with do awesome board presentations. Stylish visualisations, tons of data. I suppose it's because most of them are consumer facing businesses, but boy are they good at communicating. I always feel very sorry for the poor souls who have to prepare this every 5-10 weeks and, yes, wonder if their time (and my money...