It's upsetting to me that you have to be a millionaire to invest in your friend's start-up.
If you have a native monetization system where the atomic unit of content is the ad unit, that scales down all the way to a small screen experience. That's why Twitter is performing so well on mobile.
So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster.
One of the great things about young entrepreneurs is that they don't know that something can't be done. So they try something that's so audacious and usually end up pulling it off.
When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.
The venture business is a bit of an apprenticeship business, so the firm I worked for didn't let me make an investment until I was 30. That was probably a very smart thing.
My venture investing career has three phases, all roughly 6-8 years long. The first, at Euclid, was software to Internet. The second, at Flatiron, was Internet to bubble. And the third, at USV, has been web 2 to mobile. I have always used a new firm to denote a new investment phase for me. Throw away the old. Start with the new.
I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.
Twitter wasn't planned. It just happened.
The more entrepreneurs in the world that are getting their ideas financed, the more great companies there are going to be that we can all invest in.
The companies that do the best job on managing a user's privacy will be the companies that ultimately are the most successful.
Internet and mobile product development cycles are measured in months, not years. And the capital required to get a product built and into the market is less than $1 million. And the returns, when things work out, can be enormous.
Facebook is not an unstoppable juggernaut. There are a lot of other things people can do on the web.
Customers are a great way to finance a business for many reasons. First, customer financing is typically non dilutive. They want something from you other than equity in your business. Customers also help you fit your product to the market. And customers will help debug and improve the quality of the product.
It takes great salesmanship to convince a customer to buy something from you that isn't built or isn't finished.
Equity capital is expensive. Every time you do a raise, you dilute.
Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are all 'User First, Brands Second' services. The brands are all over these services now. But for the most part, these services didn't do much to bring them. The engaged users did.
There are so many startups out there raising money. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's a good thing. Entrepreneurship is in vogue. Innovators are innovating. Makers are making.
Being an entrepreneur is hard. Having supportive and caring investors helps.
When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn't lose a parent for good.
