Speaking On Raising VC

I'm giving a speech on how to raise VC next week. 

Sine the email promotion for the event just landed in my inbox I thought I would share.  Details of the email pasted below.

November 18, 2008
Mark Davis
Associate – DFJ Gotham Ventures
Getting a Venture Capitalist to Say “Yes”

Marriott Hanover,
1401 Rt. 10 East, Whippany, NJ
Phone: 973-538-8811 

Registration 11:30
Luncheon 12:00 noon – 2:00 PM

Please pre-register; an attendance list is distributed at the meeting. Use the form below and mail with your check payable to VANJ (charge for members is $35 and $55 for nonmembers), to be received no later than Monday (12 noon) before the meeting to VANJ, Box 1982, Morristown, NJ 07962-1982. Telephone reservations are taken only if mail would not be timely. Call Clara Stricchiola at (973) 631-5680, or fax your reservation to (973) 984-9634 / E-Mail: clara@vanj.com. Door Registrations/Late Registrations - $75

Missed Prior Posts? Check Out The Get Venture Index

For those of you who became subscribers to this feed more recently, you can find many of my older posts on how to raise venture capital on the page titled The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Raising Venture Capital.  A list of pages can be found in the left column of the blog.

After I write each post I link to it from that page. I try to organize the links to the posts in the chronological order of the fundraising process so that you can easily find content that will be helpful. The page is organized into chapters and subtopics, giving it a book-like format.

Hope that helps.

Mark...What's With The Clipart?

Some of you may have noticed that I started adding pictures to my posts.

Here’s what’s going on. In general, I’m a “less is more” kind of guy. My office usually has almost no paper in it – just a computer, a phone and a lot of unused shiny wood surface space.  I went paperless a few years back.

Essentially, I woke up one day and realized that my blog, true to my style, looked pretty Spartan.  So I decided to spice it up.  I’ve been doing a quick image search for the key phrase in each post on Google Images and have been taking the most relevant (and least hideous) picture on the first page of the results.  Sometimes that generates decent pics, other times it forces me to grab some pretty lame clipart.

That’s the scoop.

PS – thanks to my intern Alex who suggested I explain the clipart phenomenon.

Video - It Used To Have Subtitles

Turns out the took they subtitles out of the video I posted earlier.  For those that don't speak Hebrew (I don't either) - my apologies...

Taking A Day Off

I'm in Hawaii for the week and taking today off from posting.  Be back online on Wednesday.

-Mark

NY VC Cruise

Wednesday night I went on a cruise around the Statue of Liberty with 30 other young VCs. For those who follow me on twitter, you probably saw the terrible picture I took from my phone of the sunset (it was one of the best I had seen in a few years - not a cloud in e sky to hide a single hue of colored light). The complete lack of wind left our double-masted sailboat to rely on its engines; the water streaming from the man-made falls below the Brooklyn Bridge avoided any air current that might have disrupted their symmetry.

I thought I would share a couple of observations on the night. First, this New York City event attracted VC professionals from Connecticut, New Jersey and Philadelphia, demonstrating what all the passengers (and most area entrepreneurs) already know: these places constitute one geographic market for venture capital. Somak from Greenhill included all these people in his invite list for this reason, and we at DFJ Gotham do the same when we put together our own networking events.

The event also served to remind me of how different venture firms are.  For the most part, all of the firms are composed of agreeable people and use similar language on their websites. However, each firm has a distinct culture and thesis. People from the same firm typically share investment philosophies and attitudes - birds of a feather.

The firms’ strategies vary by stage and by the sector. We at DFJ Gotham make series A and seed investments, whereas others invest later. While many of the folks on the boat invest in IT, we all focus on different spots in the market. Some prefer certain sub-sectors (e.g, new media or games), others concentrate on businesses with specific characteristics (e.g., consumer feedback loops, network effects, etc.). At Gotham, we're somewhat averse to hardware companies and startups that rely on generating their own content - the rest is what we consider our corner of the IT market.

There are a couple of lessons for entrepreneurs in these observations. First, if you are talking to a potential investor in Connecticut, you should probably also consider talking to VCs in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia. As an aside, if you run a later-stage company, you probably already know to cast an even broader net, as later-stage investors typically invest nationally if not internationally. Second, it’s worth repeating: seek out venture firms that fit your company, both in terms investment focus (stage, geography, bite size and sector) and culture.

All-in-all it was a hard night's work.

Sway – Worth A Read

I recently had lunch with Ori Brafman one of the authors of Sway, a recent New York Times Best Seller.

Ori is about as high-energy as they come, wound up by an insatiable curiosity. When he wasn’t rapid fire injecting insights into our discussion based on research from his two popular books, he was asking “why” and jotting down mental notes for future book topics.

At the lunch he gave me a copy of his new book, Sway, which I knew would be good after our conversation. Sway is a deep dive into the drivers of our irrational decision making – how we are “swayed”. It’s a fun read that weaves all sorts of interesting studies and insights into a coherent thesis about this aspect of human behavior.

Reading this book is helpful for two reasons. First, it makes its readers brutally aware of their own shortcomings – when they were swayed for the wrong reasons. Second, its insights comprise a toolkit for entrepreneurs on how to influence others: employees, customers and yes, VCs. In a nutshell – I thought it was a fun read.

Twitter

Now that I have settled into more of a routine in life I am starting to twitter more.  If you want to follow along you can find my tweets here:  www.twitter.com/markpeterdavis

Searching For Monetization Partners

Darren Herman of Media Kitchen (one of New York's finest) is helping a client find a way to monetize its 750K US users. They are only looking for above-board submissions - new types of yield management systems (advertising), widgets, AIR apps, etc would make sense

You can learn more via the links below.

Link:  http://www.darrenherman.com/2008/07/09/entrepreneurial-challenge-need-distribution/
Snurl: http://snurl.com/2vvbw

Back In Town

Hey everyone,

I'm back in town from China and am sufficiently jetlagged.  I will start posting the daily writeups about the trip today.

Enjoy.

Mark