Lawrence Aragon
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The opening sentence to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens sums up the current fund-raising environment for emerging managers. It is the best of times given the substantial and increasing demand from limited partners to invest in venture capital, but it […]
Ron Conway has been glorified and vilified for the wide spate of Internet investments that he made via Angel Investors L.P., which he founded in 1998. He had his share of bombs, making him the subject of a book, The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms. But he redeemed […]
When Connie Loizos first pitched me the idea of writing about entrepreneur horror stories, I said, “Sounds great, but do you think you’ll be able to get anybody to talk?” I’ve learned in my 17 years of journalism that people tend to be less friendly with the press when you want to discuss their failures. […]
JPMorgan Partners in March said that it would split up its venture capital and leveraged buyout activities. Senior Editor Jerry Borrell managed to pry some additional details out of JPMP Partner Shahan Soghikian, who is head of the firm’s West Coast investment activities. Q How big is your current fund? A JPMorgan Global Investors LP […]
It didn’t take long. Encouraged by the success of Google, venture capitalists are once again looking to strike it rich on the Internet. This time they hope to improve their odds by hiring Internet Sherpas, if you will, to guide them to the mother load. Benchmark brought on the founder of Expedia, Mayfield hired the […]
In the not-too-distant future most venture capital firms will have at least one blog. They will be as common as websites, but far more useful. Venture capital, when all is said and done, is a relationship business. And blogs, by their interactive nature, foster relationships and bring together like-minded people. Think about all the unsolicited […]
A mini-controversy is brewing about the 25% decline in Q3 venture investments. (See story, page 15.) Some VCs are of the mind that the numbers were down in part because more VCs are keeping their deals in “stealth” mode. I don’t buy that. For that reasoning to be true, a large number of firms would […]
While VCs were away on summer vacation, the Securities & Exchange Commission was hard at work drafting rules to regulate hedge funds-and mulling the possibility of doing the same for private equity funds. VCs had better get up to speed fast. The comment period for the proposed regs ends on Sept. 15. Paul Atkins, an […]
Some say that business publications have no business writing about politics. They say it’s too emotional, or that it’s not relevant to business. I’ll grant you that the former is true and gives me pause. But the latter couldn’t be further from the truth. There is no getting around the fact that the laws and […]
I want to turn the tables this month. Rather than share my opinions with you, I’d like you to share yours with me. I’m especially interested in your feedback on our cover stories. Loyal readers will recall that we tackled the topic of succession planning just about one year earlier. With so many folks going […]