I am very excited for the team at Crowd Factory having just been acquired by rapidly growing Marketo. It was reported here on TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/18/marketo-buys-social-marketing-app-developer-crowd-factory/ I was one of the original investors in CrowdFactory back in 2006. It was formed by good friend Alex Mouldovan who was an early Tribe employee. (We actually met back […]

About this time last year I wrote about a great company I was advising called Condaptive. They were acquired by Millennial Media on May 6 of 2011 for mostly stock compensation. I wrote a little bit about it here: http://bullpencap.com/2011/05/25/condaptive-first-exit-of-the-bullpen-era/ There are a few comments to make now that the MM stock offering has been an opening day […]

We are very excited to be investors in a great company called Tello. This is Joe Beninato’s (the CEO) seventh company. That’s 7 and he has had an amazing track record thus far. You can read about the product launch and the company here: http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/28/tello-series-a-funding/  

I was the guest of Cory Johnson’s today on Bloomberg. I was glad that I was able to make a few points that I am sure Zynga would have liked to have made during the quiet period (about Facebook dependence, Mark Pincus’ management style, manufacturing hits, etc).  I was also to talk about the recent […]

We are very excited that FlashSoft has been acquired by SanDisk. The FlashSoft team has produced some of the most compelling caching software ever written for solid state devices and they were rewarded handsomely for this great technical achievement. Special congrats go out to Ted Sanford CEO. I must tell you how I met Ted. I […]

As many of the readers of this blog know, Bullpen has a unique value proposition in the new venture eco-system. We do the “tweener” rounds after seed but before the big money traditional venture funds come in. Given this unusual spot we have some interesting data to share about the likely Series A Crunch and […]

Being in the VC game now and not a start-up CEO, I am asked to speak at events frequently. If you have seen me speak you will know that I have two really big pet peeves. (1) No, I don’t want to see your demo. I really want to know: – Who you are? – Why […]

Our big event comes to NYC Thursday night. We have an all star line up that you can check out here: http://vator.tv/events/ventureshift-ny-nov-2011/speakers. I was able to get a few tickets reserved for readers of this blog at a 50% discount. So please register with code “bullpen50″. Registration is available here: http://ventureshiftny.eventbrite.com/. Hope to see you Thursday night!

I worked directly with him on the early Apple advertising.  The process was not pretty, but the results were.  I have never resolved in my mind the contribution his bedside manner made to the outcome.  No matter.  The outcome dominated. The current non-gossip part of the conversation about him credits his genius, but in a […]

The business of Venture Capital is undergoing a once in a generation disruption. This shift is having profound implications for how an entrepreneur starts, grows, and ultimately exits a company. Bullpen and Vator began a discussion about this topic in the summer with Peter Thiel keynoting our event: Venture Shift San Francisco. Many asked us […]