Category: fundraising
Punitive liquidation preferences return to VC — don’t do it
Emergency bridge convertible notes create severe disincentives for new investors Pascal Levensohn 7 hours Pascal Levensohn Contributor Pascal Levensohn is a San Francisco-based venture capitalist with over 22 years of VC experience through Levensohn Venture Partners and Dolby Family Ventures. He is a former director of the National Venture Capital…
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Small businesses are out of time, but COVID-19 aid comes with massive roadblocks
Lexi Reese Contributor Lexi Reese is the COO of Gusto, which provides payroll, benefits, compliance and HR to more than 100,000 small businesses across the U.S. She has spent her career advocating for small businesses at American Express, Google and Accion International. Just a few weeks ago, Seattle-based small business…
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Silicon Valley restructuring veteran says his firm is winding down up to 3 startups a day
‘It doesn’t matter what size they are; when they come to us, they’re all broke’ Connie Loizos @Cookie / 8 hours Marty Pichinson gets called a lot of things: Silicon Valley’s undertaker, its terminator, a grave digger. These aren’t meant as slights; Pichinson is the founder of Sherwood Partners, a…
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Longtime VC Neil Sequeira: funding founders without in-person meetings is ‘quite difficult’
Neil Sequeira was a managing director with General Catalyst for more than 13 years before co-founding early-stage firm Defy several years ago with another veteran of the industry, Trae Vassallo, who’d spent the dozen years prior with Kleiner Perkins. We caught up with Sequeira yesterday afternoon and discussed whether he’s…
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Venture debt’s new reality: ‘The last thing we want is management walking away from a company’
Maurice Werdegar is the longtime CEO of venture debt shop Western Technology Investment, one of the most active venture debt lenders in the U.S. It’s also one of the older firms, having loaned out money for roughly 40 years to startups that needed to achieve certain milestones, reach profitability or…
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How to value a startup in a downturn
The value of technology companies has fallen as the broader public markets have repriced themselves in light of COVID-19-related market and economic disruptions. And as the public markets sort out the new value of a huge piece of global business, private companies are being shaken as well. What happens in…
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