twitter: @msuster
Bio on GRP website
Video:
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/vc-videos/
And of course, the series This Week in Venture Capital
Here’s one favorite: A Founder Speaks - A video from This Week in VC with Farb Nivi discussing how he nailed his first few angels and led to mega VC rounds
Blogposts:
For Entrepreneurs
1. Angel Funding Advice – Tips on how, with whom, how to find them, how much to raise, at what value
2. How to Price an Angel Round – How angels think, how entrepreneurs think, how to bridge the gap
3. Should You Take Seed Money from a VC – Understanding why the “signaling problem” is overplayed and how some VCs can actually be a great thing early on
4. Understanding a VCs Seed Policy is Critical – Before you consider taking VCs as a seed – consider what their seed strategy is
5. Is Convertible Debt Preferable to Equity? – A primer on how to think about debt vs. equity in angel funding
6. How to Use ‘Social Proof’ in Fund Raising – It shouldn’t matter – but it does. Which angels commit to you early can determine your funding trajectory.
And from his archives arranged by subject:
- Entrepreneur Advice (58)
- Featured (1)
- Launchpad LA (2)
- Non Tech (1)
- Pitching VCs (43)
- Raising Venture Capital (23)
- Sales & Marketing Advice (8)
- SoCal Stuff (8)
- Social Media (13)
- Start-up Advice (1)
- Startup Advice (171)
- Tech Market Analysis (43)
- Term Sheets (2)
- This Week in Venture Capital (18)
- Uncategorized (2)
- VC Industry (26)
[...] Mark Suster says to invest in lines, not dots. And watching those lines go up means you’re seeing traction in action. The best form of traction is sales, and Draker has that kind of traction. The company’s order backlog is 10x bigger than a year ago. (Hopefully that’s more a reflection of demand than production bottlenecks.) And what won me over was learning of a new pilot project with a very big, well-known utility company that has 6 more large solar installations in various stages of advancement. Should Draker be able to delight this giant with their product and service, “same store sales” alone with this customer would be sufficient to meet the bulk of their revenue projections in the next few years. Even better, it should get them “into the club” of large, legitimate, established vendors to not just the US, but global market. Landing a respected, referenceable giant account is everything to a startup. I don’t invest in food products, but if someone can talk about a successful product with Whole Foods, they may have something. I’ve seen this movie before: my company, eSecLending, owes it success to its founding client, CalPERS. This could be a similar big milestone for Draker Labs. [...]