Stay in the loop with San Francisco based Levensohn Venture Partner’s new VC podcast, which can be found here: www.VC-IO.com.
Episodes typical run from 10 to 12 minutes and are broken into two series: The Governance series and the Entrepreneur Series
The Governance Series:
How and why are VC boards different from other boards? What are some of the common problems faced by VC-backed company boards? Are there early warning signs of trouble in the board room? What are some of the signs of effective and ineffective venture boards and directors? VC-InsideOut tackles these and other important governance questions head-on in this series of interviews and editorial commentary on the state of VC boards. Each episode makes clear recommendations about best practices that can be useful to VCs and entrepreneurs in the field.
The Entrepreneur Series:
Is my idea good enough to attract VC funding? How do I make a real business plan out of inspiration? What should my pitch to VCs include? What are some common mistaken assumptions that entrepreneurs make about VCs? What do VCs need to know about entrepreneurs but are afraid to ask?
The VC-InsideOut Entrepreneur Series is focused on enabling entrepreneurs to gain access to the information, insights, and tools needed to build successful technology companies. Leading entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other service providers share their experiences on the “ins and outs” of creating an idea, business plans, hiring teams, raising capital, and building businesses that scale.
Heres a great introduction to the world of Cleantech and Energy tech coming straight from the Cleantech Venture Forum:
Coming out of last week’s Cleantech Venture Forum, it’s pretty clear that cleantech (and relatedly energy tech, which is not a 100% overlap, as regular readers of this site will understand) is fast becoming a mainstream investment area for VCs, in part driven by LPs’ interest.
In terms of energy technology investing, Rodrigo Prudencio of Nth Power was kind enough recently to share some of the data that his firm is tracking. As part of a recent presentation he gave at Rice University, Rodrigo showed how US energy technology VC investments are at $1.7B so far in 2006 — compare this with $0.9B for all of 2005, or with the $500mm expected this year in VC investments in Web2.0.
Here is also a nice recap of what happened at the Cleantech Venture Forum.
If I were to summarize the conference in a few sentences, they would be:
* Cleantech as an investment thesis and asset allocation is now mainstream. Some institutions are still skeptical, but they’re becoming rare.
* More money is coming into the space, but the quality of dealflow being tracked still exceeds this nicely.
Though it from the perspective of a VC, many Angels may feel these same pains when trying to scrap together a term sheet.
I’m wrapping up a term sheet with a US VC for a deal with are both looking at. I’ve been surprised at a few things that see a bit, well, not so cool side. At the risk of every US VC never working with me again, I’ll offer up some observations on some of this stuff.
Some numbers on commercializing research from academic institutions.
The University of Washington’s TechTransfer program, which assists in the commercialization of academic research, released new data for fiscal year 2006 that indicates that more UW innovations may see the light of day. It said that invention disclosures from the UW came in at 310, a 16 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. Meanwhile, licensing agreements increased 40 percent to 153. And ten new startup companies based on UW research got going. (Pavia Systems, Seredigm, Advanced Electroluminescent Systems, Focused Scientific, High Grade Technology, Mirabilis Medica, Project Implicit, Promentix, Retinagenix and VP Diagnostics).
A position is open in the Columbia Tech Transfer office here.
From the producers of the acclaimed Under the Radar, the Momentum Growth Conference honors industry leaders dominating the next stage of the growth cycle — a who’s who of leading companies with real customers, real revenue, real partnerships, and the vision to change their market landscape in the next 12–18 months.
The Line-Up
Accel Partners | Kevin Efrusy | General Partner
Amazon | Peter Krawiec | VP | Corporate Development
AOL | Toby Trevarthen | VP
Barrons | Eric Savitz | West Coast Editor
Blinkx | Suranga Chandratillake | CTO & Founder
CafePress | Fred Durham | CEO
Cellfire | Brent Dusing | CEO
CNET | Martin Green | SVP
……..Link to discount registration
Some quick notes for Demo presenters (and others). I’ll add to this post as thing continue to piss me off:
* Never call your product/service “award-winning”, unless you plan to talk meaningfully about the awards. It makes you sound like Ron Popeil, which is only a good idea if you’re selling hair spray.
* Remind people at the end what your product/service does. It’s amazing how many people end presentations with a tagline, rather than reminding us what the hell the damn thing does.
* Don’t describe your product by saying, “It’s kind of a Google of …”. That’s so-oooo 2003.
Venture capitalist Clint Chao gives himself a litmus test each time an entrepreneur pitches him. Clint asks himself if he wants to be the entrepreneur’s VP of Sales. His most recent local investment, he says, made him almost jump for the position. We’ll have more on this investment later.
I get lots of emails from people wanting to break into the venture business. While I have no good answer — it’s a nutty business, with no real recruiting program per se — one way to try your hand at technology commercialization is via being a technology licensing officer at a major university.
With that in mind, Columbia University, one of the best-performing technology commercialization groups in higher education, is searching for a tech licensing officer. Might be a good opportunity for one of my readers, or for someone you know: