I'm baffled whenever I hear from a CEO that he's having trouble getting a response from one of his VC investors.  Unfortunately, this is a very common occurrence in VC-backed company land.

After noticing this during the Internet bubble around the turn of the century (doesn't that make it seem like so very long ago), I'm starting to notice this again more frequently.  As I pondered this the other day, I tried to discern a pattern, but ...

Yesterday a couple of friends stopped by to tell us about their plans to launch a $100MM fund.  Ironically, this might be the perfect time to do so (at least for people with a track record of excellent returns).  During our conversation we began talking about venture fund economics and I recalled a couple of posts Fred Wilson wrote that give a great insight into the process (I have mentioned them before).  In any event I am repost...

Jason Calacanis (via Mike Arrington) has some wise advice for web startups interested in improving their demos.  Here is Jason’s email to entrepreneurs:

For the past 10 days I’ve sat through 200 company demos for the TechCrunch50 conference. These demos are mostly done over the phone for 10 minutes using the phone and web conferencing software like WebEx or Adobe’s wonderful new “Connect” service.

After doing 2,500 minutes of demos (40 ...

One of my graduate students, Jeffrey Williams, just published a paper that examines angel investor tax credit laws through the Angel Capital Educational Foundation.  His paper looks at four state programs as examples of differing approaches. 

If I had to come up with a single reason I started this blog it was to share my own ’startup’ experiences; the most cathartic of which was a post I wrote in 2005 titled “LayerOne: My Biggest Failure!“  Around 1,000 people read the post back then, but my readership has grown in the last three years to between 50,000 and 75,000 unique people; readers who never heard the story.  I believe some of the most important lessons one can learn a...