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"n the race to get the check in hand, most entrepreneurs don't do in-depth due diligence - or any due diligence - on the venture capital (VC) firms they pitch. Founding teams eager to raise capital to grow their companies enter into long-term partnerships with VC firms they don't know well. It's a risky strategy that can leave startup CEOs in mis-aligned partnerships with unrealistic expectations. To better understand their investors, entrepreneurs should start by asking these four questions: What is the VC's track record?"

An amazing article about Marc Andressen and his a16z VC firm on Sand Hill Road. Covers the entire story and provides a great insight into how Silicon Valley and VC industry work. It's long, but nevertheless a must read. Very enjoyable! " At his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capitalist routinely lays out "what will happen in the next ten, twenty, thirty years." CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE PUGLIESE On a bright October morning, Suhail Doshi drove to Silicon Valley in his parents' Honda Civic, carrying a laptop with a twelve-slide presentation that was surely worth at least fifty million dollars. Doshi, the twenty-six-year-old C.E.O. of a data-analytics startup called Mixpanel, had come from San Francisco to Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, where many of the world's most prestigious venture-capital firms cluster, to pitch Andreessen Horowitz, the road's newest and most unusual firm. Inside the offices, he stood at the head of a massive beechwood conference table to address the firm's deal team and its seven general partners-the men who venture the money, take a seat on the board, and fire the entrepreneur if things go wrong. Marc Andreessen, the firm's co-founder, fixed his gaze on Doshi as he disinfected his germless hands with a sanitizing wipe. Andreessen is forty-three years old and six feet five inches tall, with a cranium so large, bald, and oblong that you can't help but think of words like "jumbo" and "Grade A." Two decades ago, he was the animating spirit of Netscape, the Web browser that launched the Internet boom. In many respects, he is the quintessential Silicon Valley venture capitalist: an imposing, fortyish, long-celebrated white man. (Forbes's Midas List of the top hundred V.C.s includes just five women.) But, whereas most V.C.s maintain a casual-Friday vibe, Andreessen seethes with beliefs. He's an evangelist for the church of technology, afire to reorder life as we know it. He believes that tech products will soon

"A startup that needs a small amont of cash (usually under $1.5-$2m or so) will find two typical structures to consider: a "priced round", where the investor and the company agree on the purchase of a certain amount of equity in the company for a given amount of cash.  The investor has a known fixed percentage of the company they own when the financing has closed. a convertible note, in which the investor gives cash in exchange for a discount on the next round of funding (which will typically be a priced round).  In this case, the investor does not know what % of the company their cash will eventually have bought and, consequently, the entrepreneur doesn't know how much dilution has occurred. There are advantages to each, but to start with, it's worth pointing out that you will rarely see convertibles used in seed financing for amounts greater than $1m or $1.5m.  (exceptions do exist).  Above that range, the investor typically wants to know what percent he or she owns of the company, so a priced round is far more common. Here's an attempt at a simple explanation of a convertible-note financing and why it is used:  If the concept is new and it proves challenging to agree on what the value of this company could be, a convertible is sometimes an easy way of the two parties saying "we're just not sure how to value the company yet until we see some traction or release the product, so let's set aside valuation until we get further down the road."  The investor gives cash, and in exchange gets a note (debt) from the company to pay back the amount (plus interest) or convert it to stock in a later round (usually the next financing).  Of course the seed investor is betting early and is therefore putting their money in with greater risk, so to offset that risk, they negotiate a discount rate on what their money will ultimately buy at the next round.  If the convertible note holder invested $500k in a convertible note, assuming the company wasn't able to pay off the n

"The great thing about ideas is that they don't cost anything. Today there are more ways than ever to turn your app ideas into something material for close to free, but at the next steps of app entrepreneurship, you'll need more than pocket change. This article is for app inventors who already have a minimum viable product on hand. When you're ready to truly launch your product into the world, you'll need sufficient capital and a team of people behind you who can help you take it to the next level. This role is often best filled by experienced angel, seed, and venture investors. The key to securing an investor or investors is doing your homework. You'll need to first take your idea to the people who can push the concept, and you, further. Think of securing funding as looking for a new job, because that's really what it is. You're on the hunt for the funds that will make self-employment and professional self-realization possible. So, where to start? First, ask yourself if you are prepared for conversations with investors. It's great to get a meeting, but you'll usually only have one shot with a potential backer. Have you validated that your idea works? Can you effectively acquire users and monetize your business? If the answer is yes to these questions, then make sure you have a concise and well-designed 10-page pitch deck that explains how you will execute and scale your idea. If you're not sure what should be in the deck, try a quick Google search for some helpful examples, or refer to this video that explains the key components. Next, you need to make a list of appropriate investors. Narrow the list to only funds that invest in your sector and understand the size relative to the round you are trying to raise. If you're contacting growth funds for your $200K seed round, you're wasting your time. Vet your list against Crunchbase and AngelList, two resources that will give you the full scoop on the funds you are looking at. Once you've p

"SaaS/subscription businesses are much more complex than traditional businesses, and SaaS performance cannot be measured in the same way as traditional businesses are measured. Based on a talk given at the SaaStr Annual Conference in San Francisco, this slide deck offers a comprehensive and detailed look at the key metrics that are needed to understand and optimize a SaaS business, and how these can be used to drive SaaS success. This presentation includes information on: An intro to SaaS metrics Unit economics LTV and churn: An in-depth look Variable pricing axes Months to recover CAC The primary unit of growth: Sales Understanding public SaaS companies"

"I'm thrilled to announce the public launch of Usermind, my first investment at Menlo Ventures, and one that I'm particularly excited about. Within the first 10 minutes of meeting Michel Feaster, founder and CEO of Usermind, I knew I had to invest. Michel is an impressive entrepreneur - smart, high-energy, passionate, thoughtful, and a big product thinker - and she just happens to be addressing an incredibly important problem in the enterprise that is getting more pronounced by the day."

"Nintex has partnered NEC Australia to provide customers with the company's workflow and forms solutions. The partnership with NEC Australia will allow Nintex to provide additional support to the many customers looking to boost their workplace efficiency and effectiveness. Nintex has a strong presence in Australia and is continuing to evolve its partner network in the region to ensure customers have the best possible experience with Nintex's workflow productivity platform. The rise of organisations focusing on streamlining and automating their business processes demonstrates an increase in partners looking to Nintex to provide a value-added offering around workflow automation to their services and solutions, according to a company statement. NEC Australia partner alliance practice lead, Tim Pagram, said he had seen businesses across the board experience significant gains in productivity and customer satisfaction by using Nintex technology."

Good interview but i'm looking for ways to short Box.net.  I left lots of sticky notes and highlights on this page - all of which are under the Visual Document list since i didn't have a Cloud Productivity list going.  I spend quite a bit of time studying Box.net, DropBox and a ton of other early Cloud sync-share-store operations while doing research for the Sursen SurDocs product.  Also MS-Live/Office/SkyDrive and Google Docs Collaboration.  No one has a good bead on a Cloud Productivity Platform yet.  But Microsoft and Google clearly know what the game is.  They even have a plan on how to get there.  Box.net, on the other hand is totally clueless.  What are these investors thinking?

"Google operates one of the world's biggest networks of computers. But its business of renting time on those computers to others-a concept known as cloud computing-lags far behind Amazon.com Inc. and others."

"As a means of measuring for how technology is being adopted in the marketplace, the most common metaphor is usually war. Companies are always involved in battles for consumers, new products are launched at strategic dates in the calendar and there is often an overwhelming sense that victory must be achieved at any cost. In the software sector battlefields are vast, ongoing and filled with casualties. More often than not, the definition of who has won and who has lost is blurred-victory is defined by market share and by how and by whom the technology is being used. In the last decade, there has been a war in the workplace, especially when it comes to the integration of the cloud into daily working and collaboration practices. Both Microsoft and Google want to be the dominant players in the arena, but it appears that neither side can currently claim total victory."