Venture Studio (26): John Frankel, Founding Partner, ff Venture Capital

I recently had the pleasure of visiting with John Frankel, founding partner of ff Venture Capital, at their beautiful new NYC headquarters.

Originally from England and with 21 years at Goldman Sachs under his belt John brings an unconventional background to the table as a venture capitalist. Yet his approach is not what one might expect upon hearing this singular detail.  I learned, for example, that he's been actively investing in early stage startups (such as Quigo (sold to AOL) and Cornerstone onDemand (now CSOD on NASDAQ) for well over a decade before finally deciding to leave GS and starting his own fund full-time. I also learned that he has a unique (and refreshing) sense of the notion of "risk" in the realm of early-stage investing. Lastly, I learned that he's immensely thoughtful about the macro trends and forces at play in and around the tech space- not surprising from a guy who studied philosophy at Oxford.

Anyway- my favorite line was when he said in a tongue & cheek way that during all those years at the bank he was asking himself what he wanted to do "when he grew up". Looking at ff's formidable portfolio and the amount of fun he's having working with great entrepreneurs who want to change the world- it seems that he's found his calling.

Enjoy!

00:05    Coming to VC from  a so-called non-traditional background

01:32     Transitioning from angel investing to full-time venture investing

02:23     John's great and original take on the notion of early-stage investing being "risky"!

03:21     What motivates him as an investor? (Some great stuff here) "A better education than he received at Oxford"... "Working with great entrepreneurs who   want to change the world"

04:19     John's take on where things are going and all the "bubble talk" these days

05:50    "We continue to see an unbelievable number of amazing companies"

06:22     On getting in touch with @ffventure  (warm intros please!)

For the full interview click on the image of John just below: 

Venture Studio (25): Ari Rabban, CEO of Phone.com

I recently sat down with Ari Rabban, CEO of Phone.com, a company that offers cost-effective VOIP phone solutions and services to the SOHO market (small office/home office). Phone.com is a portfolio company of ff Venture Capital in New York City.

Ari is an experienced entrepreneur and it was great to get his take on what founders should look for in a partner and some advice he has for first-time entrepreneurs. Enjoy

00: 12      What is Phone.com

00:42      How the service works

01:39       How they got into the business

02:29       Ari talks about some of the things you need to get right as an                           entrepreneur

03:42       What he looks for in a partner 

For the full interview click on the image of Ari just below:

 

Venture Studio (23): Neil Capel, CEO of Sailthru

I sat down recently with Neil Capel, CEO of SailThru, a company that was born out of a need for a higher standard of email delivery. We met at his offices @ AOL Ventures.

In our conversation Neil describes how he went from consultant at Morgan Stanley just a few years ago to founding a company that will soon be expanding globally. He takes us through his experience of first bootstrapping his company and building a team, to raising a seed round last year, to their $8 million Series A round.

He also gives specific advice to folks like himself who have the entrepreneurial drive- but who are working in large company environments.

Enjoy.

00:06 – What is Sailthru and how does it work?

01:14 – How Neil started out

01:36 – The story of Sailthru's scrappy beginnings, bootstrapping, credit cards, moonlighting, etc.

03:03 – Their first round: all NYC investors: AOL Ventures, RRE, Metaphorphic, Thrive, Lehrer Ventures, DFJ Gotham

03:21 – The big secret in building a team!

03:54 – Something about their customers

04:03 - What's next for Sailthru

04:45 - Neil's awesome advice for entrepreneurs that are just starting out! (Going full force!)

For the full interview click on the image of Neil just below:

Venture Studio (15): Brad Hargreaves, Co-Founder of General Assembly

   

Welcome to this week's conversation with Brad Hargreaves, entrepreneur, blogger and co-founder of General Assembly.

You'll find the full interview here at VentureStudio

Venture Studio (13): Jeff Clavier, Founder SoftTech VC (or, "A Well-Tempered Clavier")

This is Episode (13) of Venture Studio

I sat down recently to speak with with angel investor turned MicroVC, Jeff Clavier, @jeff, founder of SoftTechVC I, II & III on a recent visit of his to NYC. (My thanks to the great people at Polaris Ventures' DogPatch Labs down in Greenwhich Village for hosting our talk.)

Jeff is a fascinating guy who saw a special opportunity in 2004 to invest in capital-efficient Web 2.0-type companies and got into angel investing in a big way, investing his own money in 20+ companies. He turned out to be enormously gifted at it. Hearkening back to my recent Series on Angel Investing, he most certainly skipped the "Mug" phase that Mark Suster and I have joked about. 

He then had the opportunity to raise a small fund and thus became what the press like to call a "Super-Angel"- but what really is more aptly-named, a MicroVC. After 65 investments in this Fund (SoftTech VC II), he has now launched SoftTechVC III, (aka "the real-deal"as he jokingly called it) which will still be a "small" fund, but certainly considerably larger than II.

It was great to hear Jeff's perspective on early-stage investing, the market segments that interest him these days and how he has evolved over the years as an investor. Enjoy.

:26  -  A little background on @jeff & how he first got into angel investing

1:19 -  Raising his first micro-fund in 2004, which was $15M in size

1:43 - The pioneers in the MicroVC space, including Josh Kopelman

2:23 - On making 65 investments in SoftTechVC II w/10 exits already(!)

3:05 - Launching SoftTechVC III & venture partner Charles Hudson

4:14 - What types of companies/sectors will III be investing in? (See Matrix)  Listen carefully here about Jeff's approach to various sectors

6:02 - After 99 investments & reaching this level- what changes in your approach?

7:21 - Epic Line: "In our business there's no pride- we basically do whatever it takes to help our companies"

7:31 - Jeff's perspective on acquisitions (of which he's had 17!) and how he works w/his portfolio company entrepreneurs in this regard

9:01 -  Has he noticed network effects amongst his portfolio companies?

9:55 - Jeff invests in a bunch of NYC companies- what are his thoughts on NYC?

11:11 - What are the biggest challenges for him?

12:47 - What's an average day like for Jeff?

SOFTTECH VC III (so far)

                  

               

Venture Studio (10): Ben Lerer, CEO of Thrillist

This is Episode (10) of Venture Studio

Welcome to this week's conversation with Ben Lerer, CEO of Thrillist, which he started five years ago in NYC as a daily email/city guide chock full of product and experiential recommendations for a very underserved market- urban-dwelling guys.  Since then, Ben and his team have scaled the company to over three million subcribers, 90+ employees and into approximately 20 cities around the country. They have also just made their first acquisition: JackThreads and have launched a Rewards program.

I would say that "evolution" was definitely one of the major themes of our talk. Ben talks not only about the evolution of his business but also of his own from a "do everything kind of entrepreneur" to a guy who now oversees a large and growing business with talented people in important roles. It's a transition that any startup entrepreneur should aspire to make one day.

We also discuss Lerer Ventures, (the seed investment fund he and his father operate). Here too we talk about his evolution as a seed investor.  Enjoy.

:20  -  What is the story of Thrillist and how it got started?

2:10 -  On getting funded by AOL veteran Bob Pittman of the Pilot Group

3:34 -  What's an average day like for Ben lately?

4:04 - "Thrillist is definitely hiring!"

4:35 - How has Ben's role at Thrillist evolved as the company has scaled?

5:13 - What's with the Bowie Knife? (ok, ok, it's plastic....) 

8:19 - Biggest lessons learned... (it's that focus thing again!)

10:04 - All about the JackThreads acquisition

11:40 -  Lerer Ventures & their evolution as seed-stage investors

14:24 - What are they looking for in terms of entrepreneurs they back?

15:02 - What is the Rewards Program and what's next for Thrillist?

Click Here for Venture Studio (11) w/ Jonathan Glick from Sulia

                  

               

Venture Studio (2): Professor Evan Korth of HackNY

This is Episode (2) of Venture Studio

Get to know our guest, a huge figure in NYC's technology ecosystem, Professor Evan Korth. 

In this conversation we discuss HackNY at length, the role of the University in New York's technology ecosystem, some of Evan's student teams (including Diaspora!), NYU's Innovation Fund, and his passion for teaching, mentorship and NYC.

(This excellent piece was released today on TechCrunch about HackNY 2011)

Click for Venture Studio (3) w/ Mark Loranger of Square 1 Bank

                  

               

Venture Studio (1): Shane Snow of Contently.com

This is Episode (1) of Venture Studio

Get to know our first guest, the multi-talented writer, designer, entrepreneur and journalist, Shane Snow, and hear him discuss his new startup, Contently.  We also talk about life in Silicon Alley's tech community, how he was influenced by his time at Columbia's Journalism School, about surfing in Hawaii and more. Enjoy.

Click for Venture Studio (2) w/ Evan Korth of HackNY

                  

               

Welcome to Venture Studio

As a new feature to my blog, I'll be posting my one-on-one conversations with entrepreneurs, hackers, founders, vc's, angels and others who comprise New York's vibrant tech ecosystem starting next week. Getting some great guests working on fascinating projects! Our parter organizations below will be helping with identifying guests and getting the word out about the show. Stand by...

For Episode 1 of Venture Studio click here

Co-Hosting Organizations:

           
                                                        The Startup Genome Project

Some Reflections and Best Wishes for the New Year: Here Comes 2011!

As we officially launch the New Year today, a few thoughts occur to me that bear mentioning:

1) I would first like to thank all the readers of this blog for your kind encouragement, support, comments, valuable time and insights shared over the course of this past year. I wish you all the best for 2011 in both your entrepreneurial pursuits and personally. It has been terrific getting to know and learning from so many of you. Here's to another great year!

2) If you want to receive this blog via email in 2011 to make things easier, just click here. I'll also be sending out invites for readers to receive email updates within the next few days.

3) This year I'm looking forward to continuing my work on the following projects and activities:

• For those of you launching new businesses I'll definitely be continuing my Zero to One Series here.
• I'll continue to develop the crowdsourceable entrepreneur/venture maps which are part of what we're calling the Startup Genome Project. The goal of this project is to provide a powerful and rich resource for any entrepreneur in the world who wants to familiarize himself/herself with their entrepreneurial ecosystem and beyond. 
• I'll also be accelerating the Venture Studio Series with video interviews of the various dramatis personae of our incredible American entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• I'm really looking forward to working together with my newly elected colleague on the NY Tech Meetup Board, Evan Korth, to increase connections between our universities and the tech community here in NYC.
• Psyched to keep putting on great entrepreneurship events (and Happy Hours of course!) with the New York Venture Community.
• Working with the burgeoning entrepreneurial community at Columbia University through our ongoing Entrepreneur-Office-Hours, with Columbia Venture Community, and of course spinning-off excellent faculty spinoffs through my work at Columbia Tech Ventures.

4) Lastly, if you're looking for a dose of inspiration as you kick-off your year, see this video below in which Hans Rosling shows how the quality of life of humans worldwide has evolved/transformed and accelerated over the course of the past two centuries.

It occurred to me that Rosling's story is in many ways the story of entrepreneurship and innovation. We have and will continue to change the world for the better. That's certainly something to shoot for as the New Year arrives.

Mark Suster Brings Down the House at Columbia University

Last night I had the pleasure of conducting a wide-ranging interview with Mark Suster at Columbia University's Business School. The event was organized by the Columbia Venture Community and co-hosted by Columbia Tech Ventures and the New York Venture Community, although we had many guests from the Silicon Alley community at large. Mark spoke candidly about his life experience and insights gleaned over the years from being a 2x entrepreneur, mentor, and more recently as a venture investor in front of a packed crowd of entrepreneurship enthusiasts from the student body, faculty, alumni ranks and from the venture capital and angel communities alike. The video, which was shot by Tobin Schwaiger-Hastanan, is posted just above. 

It was a special evening, not just for his candor and insights- but also for the fact that Mark ended up staying with us for hours- late into the night, meeting and talking with everyone who wanted to chat with him after his talk had ended. The Columbia community has been abuzz about his appearance since then- and people were was still raving about him today at Steve Blank's talk. Ironically, I had posted my appreciation for people who give so much of themselves to the community just yesterday!

If you can't listen to the entire 2 hours of the talk itself, I highly recommend you go to the following sections of his talk:

Minute 33: What he's looking for in an entrepreneur. "Someone who can go right up to the line"... "Something you can't teach people"

Minute 37:27: "Life in a startup is a lot of fighting"

Minute 40: Co-founders and Compensation

Minute 42: On Mentorship and Mentorship Programs  

Minute 49: On the NY and LA entrepreneurial ecosystems

Minute 50: The Importance of "Patron" Companies

Minute 56: Super-Angels: "They don't exist, it's an extinct species" .... "It's Bull#*%!!"

Minute 57: New Class of Early-Stage VC's 

Minute 59: The Signaling Problem: "Complete and Utter Bull$%@"

Minute 59: VC's of all types

Minute 1:06 The Importance of Learning from Other Entrepreneurs

Minute 1:13 Awesome Q & A Begins!! 

Hope you enjoy!

(Suster prior to "bringing down the house" at Columbia University)

Remembering Dersu Uzala, Siberian Entrepreneur- Community Organizer

This is part of my Series on Entrepreneurial Culture.

As another epic (and frenetic!) week of awesome Silicon Alley entrepreneurship events draws to a close,  many of the thoughts and emotions I experienced last year around this time bubbled to the surface once more. Amazingly, the community energy, sense of togetherness and momentum here NYC is just getting better and better somehow. Just tonight at Columbia for example- we're actually hosting Mark Suster in front of a sold-out, standing-room-only crowd, and tomorrow morning none other than Steve Blank!  Here are examples of two very experienced and talented guys with a national presence who are constantly giving back, cultivating and educating the entrepreneurial communty. And here they are in NYC- joining us and enlivening our atmosphere. Anyway, I'm re-posting some of these thoughts once more, as I'm sure only a handful of early loyalists to these scribblings of mine actually saw it when I originally posted it last year:

It occurred to me recently that when you find yourself around folks that take great care to cultivate the particular ecosystem in which they dwell, the environment is always uplifting and enriching.  A recent venture event I attended of this kind brought to mind that great character, Dersu Uzala, who Kurosawa immortalized in one of my favorite films of the same name.  So as to set the stage for my main point, I’ll recall now one of the early scenes from memory, so forgive me if I omit some details.

On a freezing cold night in the Siberian forest a group of Russian soldiers are suddenly joined by a mysterious Nanai tribesman as they sit warming themselves around a fire. He seems ancient and does not greet them as they sit in stunned silence watching him as he slowly lights his pipe. After some minutes he breaks the charged silence and strikes up a conversation with them. It turns out that this is the beginning of their remarkable adventure with this nomadic tiger hunter who serves as their guide through the wilderness. The men soon learn that wherever he goes he is looking out not just for himself, but for those around him and who might come after him. Twice he saves the lives of Captain Arseniev and his men by virtue of his great experience and wisdom and in one scene they watch with fascination as he leaves some food behind in a remote shelter for anyone that might stumble there after their departure.

The Russian soldiers never forget Dersu. If you’re able to rent the film from NetFlix, I doubt that you will forget him either.  Let me know what you think.

We who make our livings in the world of start-ups also dwell in our own precious ecosystem comprised of entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, inventors and technologists. It seems to me that how we tend to it and how we treat each other along the way will be the ultimate measure of how much we can achieve.

Crowd-Sourceable Map of World's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

This is part of my various Series on Venture Capital, Angel Investing and Entrepreneurial Culture.

As described in this recent post, this mapping project evolved from that late night a few months ago when I decided to first map-out the Silicon Alley early-stage investor ecosystem. I wanted to provide a resource for entrepreneurs wherein they would be able to actually see the entire venture ecosystem in one glance. Due to much encouragement and postive feedback, I eventually created maps for Boston and then for Silicon Valley. This was of course not enough. I wanted these maps to be interactive and eventually, crowdsourceable. That's when I reached out to my good buddy Shane Snow. As I've mentioned here before, he is a super-talented entrepreneur, hacker, designer and journalist extraordinaire who can basically do anything.

Well, after quite a bit of effort, I'm happy to say that today we're releasing the next iteration of all this. We've now created a crowdsourceable global map of what we hope will one day be the entire world's entrepreneurial ecosystem:

Click here for the global map.

(Or, you can click on the global map icon on the right-hand side of my blog's homepage to enter the map environment. You will find instructions for using the map there- it's very straightforward.)

So as this is the first pass we've made, we're really asking for your help in adding investors to the map, in correcting mistakes we've made (which are no doubt many) and the like. You will see tabs above the map for adding investors and adding firms respectively. The map is meant to be crowdsourced and will only be as good as the effort put into it, so please weigh in!

Future releases will go beyond venture, angel, corporate investors and accelerators. We will be trying to comprehensively cover as many facets of the entrepreneurial ecosystem as possible in an easy to use manner- all in one place.

Thanks in advance for your help!

For the next post in this Series click here.

Attention NYC Students and Startups: Time to Gear-Up for HackNY October 2010!

I was talking to my friend and colleague Chris Wiggins today about the upcoming Hackathon. Chris, Evan Korth and Hilary Mason as you may know are the visionary founders of HackNY. If you haven't heard of it, it's perhaps one of the best opportunities for student hackers to dive into the startup scene and for startups to identify super-talented student hackers. Read all about it below and check out this awesome video to get a taste of what these hackathons are all about. Here's what you need to to do to apply:

ATTENTION ALL NYC-AREA STUDENTS AND STARTUPS:

hackNY is thrilled to announce the fall 2010 hackNY student hackathon October 9-10!

In April, more than 200 students from almost 40 NYC-area schools participated in the first ever NYC-area student hackathon. Some of NYC’s hottest startups presented their APIs, shared their datasets, and helped organize students into teams of coding monsters to work on projects of their own design. 24 hours of pizza, caffeine, and intense hacking later, teams demo’ed their code for appreciative judges from the NYC startup community. Winning teams presented at the New York Tech Meetup in front of an audience of hundreds of NYC area technologists, and several participants went on to join the 2010 class of hackNY Fellows, interning at NYC startups. For more about the Spring 2010 hackathon, see the FAQ or the movie by Eric Wu, official hackmeister of the Yahoo Developers Network.

The Fall hackNY hackathon will be October 9-10, back at NYU’s Courant Institute; we look forward to seeing what members of the NYC-area student hacking population will create!

Hackers: please hack on whatever you want but if you’re competing, we
are only accepting hacks based on APIs or datasets presented at the start of the hackathon.

STUDENTS: Register here.

STARTUPS: Apply here to present at the Fall 2010 hackNY hackathon. You will be asked for your startup’s name, a description of the API or dataset or other tech you’d like to demo, and availability to help organize teams among the student hacking population.

ABOUT HACKNY: hackNY is an initiative founded to federate and mentor the next generation of NYC tech all-stars. During the summer we organize the hackNY Fellows program, including internships with NYC-area startups as well as a lecture series and housing. During the school year we organize student hackathons to introduce students to fellow members of the hacking population and to the exciting startups in NYC where their skills are enthusiastically needed. For more information just email info@hackNY.org.

ABOUT HACKING: note that all hacking will be of the awesome variety, not the evil variety. Thanks.

Discussing University Entrepreneurship in NYC with MIT's Entrepreneurship Review

I was recently interviewed by MIT Entrepreneurship Review, MITER, a very cool new online journal covering the topic of innovation in and around the university space. One of MITER's founders, Erdin Beshimov, a Sloan MBA student formerly with Polaris-backed startup Experience and I had a good conversation about university entrepreneurship generally, but with a focus on all the good things happening in NYC.

I told him that whereas we still have a lot of work to do-  we are making great strides with university entrepreneurship in NYC of late.

For the full interview, click here.

Mapping the Whole Venture Ecosystem (or my new life as a Venture Cartographer)

                               
This is part of my various series on Venture Capital, Angel Investing and Entrepreneurial Culture.

It all started when it occurred to me that we were missing a nice visual map of Silicon Alley's early-stage ecosystem available for everyone to use. Entrepreneurs were always asking me about various angels and VC's and I just thought that such a map would be a good resource to which I could refer people. I also thought that adding the twitter addresses of all these investors would be a nice feature as well. So one night I did just that and mapped out New York's early-stage tech investor ecosystem and posted it here on my blog.

After receiving so much great encouragement and so many submissions and corrections, I thought I'd do the same for our neighbors to the north- my old stomping grounds- Boston! That took me a bit longer, of course, because the ecosystem is quite a bit larger than NY's coupled with the fact that I couldn't do most of it from memory. I haven't lived in Boston for over nine years now! 

Well, the encouragement and emails kept flowing. There was a real need for this. No one enjoyed wasting hours looking various funds up online or clicking through some spreadsheet or flipping through one of those venture capital directories for that matter. I knew then that I had to take the next step into what appears to be a new discipline- I think I am going to call it Venture Cartography.  :)

The Silicon Valley/San Fran map was soon to follow and I'm happy to say it is now up and running! Corrections, submissions, etc. more than welcome as usual. Bring it on!

At this point, however, I realized I needed help. I really wanted these maps to be interactive and provide richer information for us all. So I gave my friend Shane Snow a call. He is a super-talented entrepreneur, hacker, designer and journalist extraordinaire who can basically do anything. 

Our collaboration has resulted in this interactive map, which is a precursor to us mapping the venture ecosystem of the entire world in its component parts. Now all you have to do is just click on the city you are interested in and then click on any investor to get a good understanding of his or her background, investments, blogs, opinions, twitter-feed and the like. 

We've put a lot of effort into teeing this up, but this is meant to be crowd-sourced on an ongoing basis- so please- send us all the names, the people, the angels, the accelerators and the funds we are missing! You can email us here: info at venturemaps.co   (yep, that's .co, not .com)...

We'll be thankful for all the help you can provide. Apologies in advance to anyone we've left out.

I want to offer a special thanks to the folks who have given us excellent insight into their respective ecosystems, especially the venture investor and irrepressible gadfly Stewart Alsop  (@salsop) as well as my buddy JJ Freitag  (@jjfreitag) over at Azure Capital. Thanks guys!

Map of Boston's Early-Stage Tech Investor Ecosystem (Updated)

This is part of my Series' on Venture Capital and Angel Investing.

After I posted the recent map of Silicon Alley's early-stage venture ecosystem, a healthy number of people found it to be very helpful and several suggested I do the same for Boston.

Well, here's my first stab at capturing what is just a massive early stage venture ecosystem! Until you lay it out on a map, you just have no idea of the sheer sweep scope of the venture/tech community. Amazing stuff really.

Though I lived and ran my first business from Boston for a number of years, I'm going to ask for your help again- especially from the Bostonians among you! I'm sure I have made plenty of errors, I definitely need the twitter addresses of those investors that tweet- and I'd love to hear from the angel groups and angel investors in Beantown. Please keep the twitter addresses coming!

I'll be updating the map periodically based on people's feedback and will eventually put all these maps on an interactive and hyper-linked template.

As the print is currently quite small due to the sheer size of the map, simply click on it and it will open in a separate window. You may then use your zoom feature or simply click it again to enlarge once more at that point.

Looking forward to your feedback!

For the next post, a crowdsourceable map of the global entrepreneurial ecosystem, click here.

Map of Silicon Alley's Early-Stage Tech Investor Ecosystem (updated)

This is part of my various Series on Venture Capital and Angel Investing.

In that I am a heavy user of mapping software and think programs like MindNode are excellent visual aids, I decided to put together a first draft of the early-stage tech investor ecosystem here in Silicon Alley as a resource for entrepreneurs. As this is a first stab, I would ask your help in the comment section of this post letting me know about any early-stage investors I have left out and/or about any corrections of errors you come across on this map.

As the print is quite small due to the size of this map, simply click on it and it will open in a separate window. You may then use your zoom feature or simply click it again to enlarge once more at that point.

Looking forward to your feedback.

For the next post in this Series, click here.

Evening Read: 6-10-2010

The 10-20-30 PowerPoint Rule by Kawasaki

Ten Things A Janitor Can Teach You About Leadership

The Panel Pile-Up: Avoid At All Cost!

Steering Grads to Startups at HackNY

How Dana White Built UFC into a Powerhouse Using Social Media

37signals Crushing It with ReWork!

New York's Webutante Ball!

Steve Blank Crushes-It According to Suster

Night Club Effect in Financings according to @cdixon

Hsieh on Why He Sold Zappos

USV Hires New Analyst

24 Year Old Sells Company to Google for $70M

Weekend Reading 6-4-2010

Investors, Entrepreneurs Discuss NYC's Rapidly Growing Seed Funding Community

Fetchback Sells for $40M

How to be an Angel Investor..... And Make Money!

HackNY Announces 2010 Fellows

Zuck at the D8 Conference

Feld Thoughts on Angel Investors

Will Herman with More on Angel Investing

Higher One Rockets to IPO, Puts a Smile on Every Yalie's Face

Google Acquires Invite Media, Another Student Startup

Zuck on Hot Seat