I’ve asked many general partners this question over the course of my 20-year career. It seems to be a reasonable question, especially for venture funds that are nearing their five-year anniversary.

What I’m looking for is the fund manager’s view of which companies look like winners and which companies aren’t quite cutting it, so that they can manage the portfolio to support only those that deserve additional capital. I underst...

I love Jackson Hole, Wyo. It is one of the most extraordinarily beautiful settings in the world. One cannot help being in a good mood when observing the breathtaking wildlife, open sky and the awe-inspiring Grand Tetons.

Thus, reading the reports from last weekend’s annual economist confab in Jackson Hole could not have been more depressing. If the practitioners of the dismal science sound this pessimistic amidst such an uplifting setting, what will their attitude be when they trade in their cowboy boots for green eye shades and return to their drab offices to stare at spreadsheets? A usually staid Allen Sinai sounded positively hyperbolic, yet apparently spoke for many at the conference, when he told New York Times: “I’m more worried than I have ever been about the future ...

The advent of the Internet and such things as private equity blogs and newsletters have proved advantageous in many ways. Wider and faster dissemination of information allowing investors and entrepreneurs to benchmark and measure their operations, terms and attitudes against those of other players in this realm all seems quite positive, and interesting, to me. What seems less so to me are the endless hashings and re-hashings of subjects, the essence of which are so simple as to make the amount of digital ink applied to them by otherwise intelligent and thoughtful individuals unfathomable to me.

I’ll address just two. There was an article/editorial in one prominent newsletter just this week rehashing the complaints (dare I say whinings) of entrepreneurs as to the length of t...

The venture capital community has been getting slammed recently for moving too slowly.

And these accusations, no matter how well-founded, are beginning to stick. Entrepreneurs loathe the idea of fundraising for protracted periods of time, and therefore they are particularly susceptible to this form of VC bashing. But I don’t think that the accusations are fair. There are many of us in the venture community who are willing to work hard to get entrepreneurs a quick and definitive answer.

For a long time VCs have been lambasted for taking an unreasonable period of time to get to “no.” Yet now the mantra is that VCs take too long to get to a “yes.” Entrepreneurs are being trained to expect an answer during a first meeting and anything shy of that ...

In the beginning, there were angel investors. And it was good. As individual angel investors made more and more investments, they became super angels. One day a super angel woke up and thought to himself, “Gosh, I could do a lot more investments if I had a fund.” And so the super angels became micro-VCs (or “institutionalized super angels”). Everyone was excited and on the seventh day they did another deal instead of resting.

I’m a huge fan of the super angel movement. Some of my best friends are super angels and I’ve put my own money where my mouth is in funds like Chris Sacca’s, Dave McClure’s, Jeff Clavier’s, Roger Ehrenberg’s, and David Cohen’s. Not only am I an investor in these super angels, I love to have them on board with our investments at Foundry ...

Dave McClure is rather unlike most investors in Silicon Valley. He curses like a sailor, for one thing – publicly. He tweets almost constantly, no matter the time of day. He has also become a central character on the seed investing scene, seemingly through sheer will, and has taken to bashing venture capitalists on a regular basis.

He recently went on a 2,500-word rant against traditional VC firms that invest in Internet companies. “Most consumer internet investors, large or small, have no goddamn clue what they are doing,” he blogged. “They are getting killed on IRR, and ...

Yesterday, after unveiling an anticipated upgrade of its Apple TV set-top box at an event in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs surprised attendees by introducing Apple’s new social network, Ping. The service, made immediately available to iTunes’ 160 million users, enables those who opt in to it to view their friends’ music purchases, along with which shows they plan to attend and what songs they most like — along with other features, like concert tour information.

On the heels of the announcement, numerous comparisons were made to the social network MySpace, which has ceded virtually ...

I love Jackson Hole, Wyo. It is one of the most extraordinarily beautiful settings in the world. One cannot help being in a good mood when observing the breathtaking wildlife, open sky and the awe-inspiring Grand Tetons.

Thus, reading the reports from last weekend’s annual economist confab in Jackson Hole could not have been more depressing. If the practitioners of the dismal science sound this pessimistic amidst such an uplifting setting, what will their attitude be when they trade in their cowboy boots for green eye shades and return to their drab offices to stare at spreadsheets? A usually staid Allen Sinai sounded positively hyperbolic, yet apparently spoke for many at the conference, when he told New York Times: “I’m more worried than I have ever been about the future ...