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How To Find A "Damn!" Startup. Phin Barnes is a principal at First Round Capital, a venture capital firm that backs some of today's buzziest startups, like Fab, Uber, Turntable.fm and GroupMe. Before that, he worked for two startups. One was a success; the other was an utter failure. Both experiences taught him how to interact with entrepreneurs and how to pick startups for First Round's portfolio. He tells us entrepreneurs get to make three choices: The ideaTheir cofounderTheir investors When you don't pick all three of those things correctly, your startup doesn't stand a very good chance. Barnes also says he looks for a "damn factor" in startups. Produced By: Kamelia Angelova & Robert Libetti Don't Miss: • Privately, Investors Admit There's Big Bubble In Tech Startups • The 10-Year Shakeout In The VC Industry • Suster: Group Texting Companies Are Doomed • Mark Suster: Here's How Entrepreneurs Should Be Raising Money Now.

Moneyball—It’s Not Just About Baseball. Larry Chiang9/28/11 Are we trying to sell jeans here or are we trying to win baseball games? —Billy Beane, Oakland A’s General Manager Baseball scouts used to judge players on looks. Moneyball, as a method, revolutionized the evaluation of baseball talent. It turns out that VCs pick entrepreneurs using a highly parallel method. VCs are big fan boys of Moneyball. This is how VCs use Moneyball against entrepreneurs: 1. I studied engineering. Now, VCs test you via the mediocre intro. 2. Baseball GMs have all sorts of ways to character compass a player. VCs like to ‘open field interrogate’ an entrepreneur. Similarly, baseball GMs will treat a player they’re on the fence about with extreme kindness to evaluate them. You see, VCs have a fraction of the domain expertise that your average Stanford CS Major intern has.

How you handle the VIP treatment from the VC or the GM is going to impact how they evaluate you in the “kill ‘em with kindness” maneuver. 3. These bird-dogs get them deal flow. 4. 5. Private Equity Blog. 10 Biggest VC Mistakes. Our guest blogger, Larry Chiang, is an instructive humorist. If you liked “9 VC’s You’re Gonna Want To Avoid,” you’ll like this submission on some all-important fundraising mistakes to avoid for entrepreneurs. by Larry Chiang Who is the biggest fundraising loser (ever)? Me. And you will benefit from my pain. ** My fundamental thesis is this: ** “Entrepreneurs need to get benefit while temporarily ‘failing’ at the fundraising process”.

These definitely fall into the category, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School” – yeah I’m turning my pain into GigaOm blog posts and even a book coming out 09-09-09. Why wait for the book, here are my 10 tips. -1- Set aside your ego. The business you gave birth to and nurtured into rocky adolescence will get hammered and torn to shreads by VCs. . -2- Know how knowledge flows. It is like heat transfer and the three laws. Entrepreneurs need to get feedback and advice but not get mentored by someone who just reads coverage.

Solicit granular advice. 9 Blunders of VCs Turned Entrepreneur. Our guest blogger, Larry Chiang, is an instructive humorist and blogs at Business Week. If you liked “10 Things They Don’t Teach You at Business School“, How to Work a Cocktail Party and “10 VC Mistakes,” you’ll like this submission on some all-important mistakes VCs make when they become entrepreneurs themselves. By Larry Chiang Jumping from venture-capitalist-board-member to “start-up founder and CEO’ is near impossible for the HBSer / GSBer to successfully do. The b-school molded HBS-Harvard Business School / Stanford Graduate School Business (GSB) need to navigate eight pitfalls. -1- Too self indulgent. Being smarter than a billionaire you met during b-school show-and-tell, does not make you a better entrepreneur. Stop the ego massaging and set aside all 170 IQ points and dumb it down. Look at the biggest hits: “eBay” – pretty retarded selling beanie babies and Pez dispensers in the 90s “Google” – please.

“Duck9″ – are you effen kidding? -2- Too focused on perfect formula vs market pain. How does a VC estimate market size? Fifteenth in a series of weekly posts by myself and Nicholas Lovell of Gamesbrief which answer the fifty questions you should ask before raising venture capital. We expect the series to run for a year after which we will collate the posts into a book. You can find the rationale behind the series here, and the list of questions here. We welcome your comments on any and every aspect of what we are doing. There are three things that every VC looks at when they evaluate a company, market, product and team, and I will look at each in my next three posts in the series. The emphasis between the three varies between VC with perhaps the most important difference coming with the stage of investment. The first, and probably most important, evaluation of market size comes from an assessment of the problem the company solves (or entertainment value it brings) and how much people and companies will pay for the solution.

Hopefully this gives you a sense of how we think about market size. Top 9 Venture Capital Interview Questions. Venture capital (VC) careers are competitive, with many more interested candidates than open positions. Subsequently, you should only consider a venture capital job after you have many years of successful, relevant, hands-on experience. Venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki put it best when he said, if you were the entrepreneur across the table, "Why would you want advice from someone whose background consists of working in a college bookstore or cranking spreadsheets at an investment bank?

" If you have the requisite background, preparing yourself for common questions will help you shine in your venture capital job interview. Many of the questions you can expect during a VC job interview are general in nature, but others are unique to the venture capital industry. Let's explore nine important industry-specific questions and how you should answer them. 1. This is your opportunity to convey your passion for early-stage company activities. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. 8. 9.