Holiday Video 2011 – The Circle of Startup Life
From all of us at ff Venture Capital: Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year, and a little cheer with our 2011 Holiday Video, a tribute to our startups and partners--The Circle of Startup Life:
Startup idea: marketplace for business research and students seeking internships / experience
We're looking to spend money with a startup business: a marketplace for businesses which want consulting research and students who want jobs, internships and experience. Specifically, we want a website where we can advertise the research topics that are important to us (e.g., best practices of operational improvement among VCs), ...
Portfolio Company Spotlight: Identified
Job creation is political topic #1, so we have a particular interest in portfolio companies like Identified and TheResumator, which help match employers and job seekers. Identified launched its public beta last month. Effectively, Identified gives you a score for your desirability as an employee. It's similar in principle to ...
Announcing ff Venture Capital fall interns
We’re fortunate to have two rising star interns this fall, Wei Deng and Raffi Sapire, who have already made real contributions to ff Venture Capital. We welcome applications for spring/summer internships.
Tax Credits for Startups in New York State
As our federal and state government continue to worry about job creation, they're trying their best to promote entrepreneurship. Our CFO Alex Katz just sent out a memo to our portfolio, attached below, about 2 tax credits available to companies that do business in New York State. For background, we rarely ...
How startups should report financial results
I asked Rick Eaton, CFO of Hashable, to write for you a sanitized version of some of the detailed reports that Hashable provides to its investors (which includes us). He's provided below a template for both the cover email and the detailed report. Rick was previously CFO of our former portfolio ...
For students interested in venture capital
If you are a student anywhere in the world seriously interested in venture capital, angel investing, and/or entrepreneurship, please consider working with us on your research papers. We're obsessed with research and data, and have a number of research topics we'd love to dig into with the right student partners. ...
Disruptive Companies in Asset Management
We recently hosted an idea dinner on "Disruptive Companies in the Asset Management Industry." The most attractive industries to disrupt are highly profitable ones, and asset management is traditionally a highly profitable industry. IMHO, the most successful disrupters in this area to date have been Vanguard (who popularized index funds) ...
Free Government Money for Startups
A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson discussed the role of government grants in helping launch tech companies. Fred is not a fan and argues that evaluating and aiding early-stage companies is not a core competency of government organizations. He concludes by asking his readers to look into grant programs available ...
Our Lending Library Principles, and overdelivering on an assignment
One of the first steps I took when I joined ff Venture Capital was to launch a lending library (the original social media). It's a very cheap employee benefit and more important, a way to promote a culture of both learning and knowledge-sharing. I think every company would benefit by ...
Announcing our summer intern class
A bit belatedly (due to a backlog of blog postings), I wanted to announce ff Venture Capital's summer intern class. We're actively recruiting interns for the fall. You've already heard from some of them, and you'll be hearing more over the course of the summer. Franklin Bi Franklin Bi became ...
Raising Capital for Venture Capital Funds and Bumblebees
Fundraising is not just limited to companies. Venture Capital firms have to do this as well. It is an interesting process and you get to meet fascinating people. Potential limited partners (or LP’s as we call them) come to the table with a set of beliefs that are, well, sometimes ...
Hire the Best, Expand the Nest
I am delighted to announce that ff is expanding significantly. Firstly, we are very excited to add David Teten as the second Partner in our history and Michael Yavonditte as a Venture Partner in the Firm. David is Chairman of Harvard Business School Angels New York and an experienced entrepreneur. ...
Okay..I Said it: This Time it's Different, or How The Bubble WILL Come About
This Time It's different [Source www.500px.com] We are entering a new era. A time when great wealth is being created, and old fortunes destroyed (but not let us dwell there). A time of convergence and disruption that has not been seen in anyone's lifetime. In the late 90's it was ...
Social Privacy
I was watching Mark Suster and Tom McInerney on This Week in Venture Capital mainly for fun, though Tom is a good friend. If you have not watched it you should as it is highly engaging. Well into the discussion Tom and Mark delve into privacy and Tom mentions that ...
There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
I really did not want to post about the Yuri Milner/Y Combinator/SV Angel announcement, but felt that there was something lacking in the debate. Like Roger Ehrenberg I think this is a "ho-hum" announcement, but time will tell. There are various surveys and analyses out there, and all the numbers ...
