Courtside Ventures’ Post

Bump raises $3 million seed to help creators manage finances "...Bump allows creators to track income and market value, which can help them negotiate better deals and see how much money they are owed from partners..." #creators #financialmanagement ImpactX Capitalize VC Serac Ventures James Jones, Esq. Kovalyov Anton TechCrunch _____________________________________________________ If you want to immediately see new content that I curate 👉🏻 Ring my bell (🔔) and follow #informationbanker or if you want to get the posts that got noticed in my weekly What’d I miss newsletter, subscribe here: "https://lnkd.in/d5_KvWwu"

💵 Weighing Equity Cost Against Taking the Absolute Right Shot 🚀 🧐 Thinking of working with a venture studio? In this clip, Ted Yang outlines why it may be worth trading equity to put a venture studio on your team for guidance, including team expertise, streamlined processes and, most critically, increased funding opportunities. ❔ Want to learn more? Visit the link in the comments watch Ted's full conversation with Michael McClure and schedule a consultation with Sticky Ventures. #startupgrowth #venturestudio #StickyVentures

Discover how Grwth Club's new €5.8M Grwth Ventures fund is reshaping Seed and Series A investments in sustainable consumer tech. #VentureCapital #SustainableGrowth GRWTH Club.

How pro-rata actually works → Earned, not Given (this is a segment from our in-depth Last Money In Media piece on pro-rata) So here is the thing. I don’t ever hear about investors suing their portfolio company for not getting their pro-rata, although I’m sure threats have been made in which founders may have caved. This is why I don’t always prioritize (for the most part) if we contractually have pro-rata or not. I know that more of the weight on getting my pro-rata down the line falls on my relationship with the company and the dynamic of the round. I realize this approach may be different for some. This is why I feel that pro-rata is really earned and not given, especially at the earlier rounds. I have plenty of examples on both sides where I don’t contractually have pro-rata but I get it, and also where I do contractually have pro-rata, but we’ve been squeezed out due to a competitive priced follow-on round. Was I going to take legal action with my portfolio company? Of course not. I don’t really ever hear of this happening. I’m sure there are some behind the scenes scenarios that lead to a bunch of friction across founders and investors, but I never heard that anyone actually took legal action in the early rounds. That investor would have a tough time defending their “founder-friendly” brand. Whether you’ve got pro-rata or not, when it comes time where the next round is being put together, and assuming this is a competitive round where not everyone gets an opportunity to re-invest or their full pro-rata, it really is up to the founder to decide allocations. So, being helpful to the founder or being friendly becomes important here. This is especially true for syndicates! Sometimes the flexibility in our check sizes or the fact they are smaller versus institutional can be an advantage here as it might be easier to fit our smaller check size in. Not always the case, but if you are in touch early with the founder as they are piecing the round together, it certainly can play to our benefit. Link to full Last Money In Media post in comments. -- Powered by Sydecar and Forge, Last Money In Media is the most actionable venture capital newsletter. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ SPVs invested.

Excited to share that my article, Defending Your Pro-Rata Rights: How VCs and Angels Can Monetize Growth Rounds and Avoid Leaving Millions on the Table, has been posted by Last Money In Media. Big thanks to Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis (Calm Ventures) for partnering on this piece and allowing me to breakdown how early investors can maximize their positions in high-growth companies. Whether it’s syndication, raising opportunity funds, or partnering with growth funds, there are so many strategies to defend your pro-rata rights and capitalize on your winners. Shoutout to my team at Alpha Partners for pushing forward this conversation and highlighting how we help investors realize more upside. If you have access to growth rounds and want to capture additional upside on your best deals, shoot me a note! https://lnkd.in/ebQXPKx5 #venturecapital #proratarights #growthinvesting #vcinsights

(A day late but...) Officially 5 years on this path as an investor. Cribbing off the famous Gates' quote: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 5 years.” It's really been an incredibly fun, challenging, and rewarding journey. The top 3 all come down to people: + Have had the opportunity to invest and work with amazing founders & teams + Be able to co-invest with great partners walking the walk + Folks investing in my journey - esp as LP's in the fund and trusting me with their hard-earned money, and as mentors, and friends (w/ lots of overlap on these categories). Would never have imagined where I'd be just a 'short' 5 years later from pushing the chips in. After exiting my agency, I realized there was something special about early-stage founders + teams. The excitement around building 0 => 1 is palpable and I wanted in! Started as an angel investor and advisor for ~2.5 years. Fortunate to invest in lots of special companies but shout-out to Nabeel 🦄 and Lunchbox. Before Covid, I worked out of the Lunchbox office. Was furiously reading Secrets of Sand Hill Road, so I could sound smart in all my meetings with Nabeel and the VCs we were pitching. After 25 investments, 7.5x+ TVPI in the angel portfolio, and pushing by folks like Kevin Weatherman, Ben Zises, John Neamonitis and others > I launched my fund in Summer 2021. Fortunate to have 60+ LP's trust me with their capital but special shout-out to the fund anchor Apple Core Holdings. And ofc thanks to the founders who have allowed us to be part of their journey. We are now fully deployed ~$9MM into 21 companies. Special shout-out to two Israeli companies Visually Anya Geimanson 🇮🇱 and Monocle Noam Szpiro Mark Lotman. Esp awesome to support them during these times. We've also deployed an additional $8MM+ into five later-stage opportunities via SPV. Fortunate to learn about these deals via our strong network and earn allocation via our value-add on GTM and product roadmap! Onwards and upwards, excited to see what the next 5 years bring!

🤲 Co-Syndicating your first ~50 Deals!?!? → How to Grow Your LP Base My Last Money In Media partner Zachary brought in a co-GP for his first ~50 investments because he was very focused on growing an LP base quickly even if it meant he would give part of his profit share (carry) to other GPs. He was seeing the big picture here. Per Zach, he believed it has paid dividends in many ways (hard to argue when he has done 400+ investments w/over 6k LPs today). He was able to add an additional 20-75 LPs per SPV run by bringing on at least one large other syndicate GP to support a wider audience (among other value add). At 25 investments, he was already above 1,000 LPs. It’s relatively straightforward to build a 1,000 person LP base if you understand this formula and can access/diligence great startups. Though, as you get bigger (>2,000 LPs) it becomes harder to attract new LPs, but if you happen to get that large, you are very likely to now have a brand, and LPs start to find you organically. Once you get to thousands of LPs, it becomes easier to add ~50 -100 new LPs a month. At this stage, LPs are no longer coming through GP partnerships, but rather through the brand you’ve built – in other words because of your size, investors are now finding you organically through referrals, LinkedIn, and your fund admin platform and more. It’s a trade-off though. Many would not want to co-syndicate their best deals and cut someone in on their carry/economics. One could understand that as they do not need to co-syndicate, and that is perfectly fine. But… your syndicate will not grow as fast versus partnering with larger syndicates for your top deals. -- For more content on SPVs in Venture Capital, subscribe to our newsletter Last Money In Media (Powered by Sydecar), the most actionable venture capital newsletter.

This genuinely hurts to read. I can’t emphasise it enough: there is good money and there is bad money, and no money is better than bad money (the same axiom mostly applies in the context of dealmaking, more broadly). Founders often diminish their own value – whether in making a sale or raising capital – to get on *that* accelerator, or land *that* deal with a given investor/company. Walking away, knowing how to utilise your limited box of ‘yeses’ and actively saying ‘no’, is easily amongst the top 3 skills required of any good founder. (Also, in 99% of instances, unless the accelerator is at the pinnacle of a given domain, or in the startup world generally, and can communicate their value to your business compellingly, giving away equity or paying a fee is almost definitely not a good idea.)

YOU WANT 💵 multiple streams of income! I had multiple ventures and having multiple negatively affected all of them. I focused on one and it began to work. If you're spread too thin I would recommend focusing on one venture. #multiplestreamsofincome #multipleventures #suggestions #spreadtoothin

Check out my latest episode with Dan Conner, CFA, FSA. Vikram Lakhwara & I loved hearing about his childhood all over the world, surfing a hurricane, and learning about the one book that influenced his thesis. I also loved how he shared how he uses thoughtful gifts to create product storytelling that can help founders find PMF faster. So much to learn from Dan, listen in!