The “Early-Late” stage startups: the emergence of a new investment stage

“初晚期”创业：新投资阶段的出现

Source from: Chemi Peres

Recently Chemi Peres wrote in his blog about the emergence of a new investment stage: “Early-Late” stage. He states that this stage refers to companies who, for all intents and purposes, should have been defined as young startups. They are usually in just their second or third year of operations, and in most cases, their management teams are incomplete.

However, when they present their company to potential investors in the hopes of obtaining a first round of institutional VC financing (a “Series A” round), it would appear as if they are instead seeking “Late” stage financing. 

This is mainly because their pre-money valuations are relatively high, and the amount of capital they are seeking to raise more closely resembles a late stage investment – in most cases, they contemplate raising $10M-$20M.

To read more reasons that caused the emergence of the new investment stage, please visit here. 

New book: Startup Rising: the entrepreneurial revolution remaking the Middle East

新书：《创业革命重塑中东》

Book: Startup Rising

Christopher M. Schroeder, a seasoned U.S. internet executive and venture investor travelled to Dubai, Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Istanbul and even Damascus and met thousands of talented, successful, and intrepid young entrepreneurs willing to take on the political, cultural, legal and societal challenges to their worlds.

Equally important, major regional and international private equity firms, venture capitalists and global tech players like Google, Intel, Cisco, Yahoo, LinkedIn and PayPal are making significant investments, despite the uncertainty in the region.

After the book Start-Up Nation on Israel, there are more nations rising to embrace the entrepreneurial revolution.

For more information, please read here.

Journey of a start up

创业之旅

The Journey of a start up

The FT has started a record of some start ups emanating from universities; often with a social venture bias. So far there are only journeys for three : Luminaid | Spotted | Social Project PH.

Some have worked and others, after early accolades, have faded. Read why. Not to be " a glass half empty " sort - reading why start-ups fail is not schadenfreude but genuinely positive for those involved with new businesses especially those start-ups that have high digital dependency. Here is another from Tech Crunch

As populist as it may feel, 98% of VCs aren’t dumb

创业者跻身风险投资家 阐释多数风投并非不懂

98% of VCs aren't dumb

Mark Suster is a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He joined Upfront Ventures in 2007 as a General Partner after selling his company to Salesforce.com.

When he read Andy Dunn’s scathing post about Venture Capitalists, he thinks that many of the assertions in the post – while populist – aren’t exactly how things are in reality.

So by having his hand at a friendly counter point, he listed 7 assertions that he thinks aren't true. Giving the experiences of being an entrepreneur, and later became a VC, Mark does have a good standing point.

For more information, please read here.

VC explains the advantages of New York City over San Francisco

解析风投所在地 纽约势压旧金山

New York City by Danielle Buma

GGV Capital venture capital associate Andy Manoske talks about the advantages of New York City over San Francisco in term of venture capital.

However, he said he wouldn't go that far:

I think there isn't an absolute "better" or "worse" for VCs when it comes to geography. San Francisco and Silicon Valley certainly have many regional benefits due to the sheer size of their entrepreneurial community. But many other areas of the country - NYC being one of them - benefit from having unique characteristics conducive to building certain kinds of businesses there.

Geography is only one of the factors for VC firms, there are many more elements need to take into account.

For more information, please read here.