Category Archives: Venture Industry
No, I really DON’T want to see your demo (part 2)…
It’s been slightly over a year since I wrote the following post about not wanting to see product demos and I am somewhat amazed how controversial it was. But with a year of extra data I have a few new insights: (1) Some people are personally offended that I don’t want to see their product […]
Early Registration for Venture Shift 2013 – July 17 at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco
Venture Shift 2013 Wednesday, July 17th 3:30 PM – 10:30 PM (PST) Cafe du Nord, San Francisco Venture Shift, hosted by Vator and Bullpen Capital, has become one of the most anticipated events focused on the changing venture capital landscape. Last year, Shift focused on the JOBS Act and how it would affect fundraising. In […]
VC Outlook 2013
At our recent LP meeting we presented our view of where the venture capital markets were today, and where we thought they were going. A year ago, most funds had ebullient outlooks, as we were amidst the Social Mobile Local bubble. Zynga and Groupon had gone public, and Facebook was anticipated to set the stage […]
Tech Crunch gives Bullpen some credit for predicting series A crunch…
It’s nice to get credit for spotting a trend before it happens. That said, this was not really a tough one to predict. With the massive growth of the super angel (seed) funds and flat lining of the series A funds, a crunch was inevitable. I can’t say that me or my co-founders knew WHEN […]
Series A Cliff
All this chatter of a Series A Crunch makes light of a widening gap that looks more like the jaws of death for many seed funded startups, as the gap between Seed and A is becoming a yawning cliff. As part of our VC Outlook for 2013, we incorporated the latest info from CBInsight, as […]
Surviving the Series A Crunch
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that funding of consumer web companies is down 42% in the first nine months of 2012 (as compared to the same period in 2011). This is not due to a shortage of seed rounds, but rather a shortage of adequate follow-on financing. Fred Wilson attributes this shift to three […]
SF Giants owner and Atlanta Braves pitcher explain how Bullpen Capital got its name…
People ask us all the time how we got our name at Bullpen Capital. We’re not just baseball fans, there’s more to it than that. We asked two of Bullpen Capital’s good friends Dan Scheinman (co-owner of the SF Giants) and Chad Durbin (relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves) to help us make a short […]
Square Rounds Out the Faceplant Storyline
A big concern in the VC community after the series of disasters beginning with the Facebook IPO fiasco was whether we had seen the end of the recent increase in IPOs and eagerness to pay $1B valuations in private companies. A key test of that worry has now been successfully passed: Square was able to […]
Photos From Venture Shift 2012
We had a really great turnout for our Venture Shift event earlier this summer. The highlight of the show was Lawrence Coburn’s brutally honest story of fundraising. Here’s a picture of Lawrence telling the story. I hope to have the video up soon. The other real highlights of the event were two discussions of the […]
Re: Defining the Series A
The newest Cooley Venture Financing Report indicates that median Series A pre-money valuations were at an 8-year high in Q2 2012, leaving some seasoned venture capitalists scratching their heads. Michael Greely, a partner at Flybridge, put it succinctly in a recent post when he said “Series A round sizes have been coming down over the […]
