Once upon a time, Venture Capitalists used to have all the fun. They still can- but they have to learn the new rules of the game.   Identifying small, niche business opportunities with massive potential for growth and long-term success was the game winning strategy.

Angels beware, Pre-Seed investment funds are returning. And this time around they’re a little more sophisticated. Your average tech related start-up (that can raise money) typically goes through 3 rounds of fundraising: 1. Friend and Family 2. Seed Round 3. Series A

It used to be that if you wanted to develop a high growth company you sprinted to raise capital first and build a business second. As a result VC’s sprung up like weeds. You raised as much as possible as quickly as possible – grew at warp speed and then hung on for the ride. [...]

As entrepreneurs there are times when we need to turn to VC’s. Most of the time we do so at our peril. VC’s can be the most frustrating, greedy, calculating sons of… Well, that’s the rule. Every rule has its exception. VC’s worth partnering with are the very rare exception.

Okay, okay. This video will almost certainly not turn you into a smarter, savvier and more effective entreprenuer.  But it might make you laugh. It does contain a few truths though (maybe even a few home-truths). The online space is the place to be to make money.

Entrepreneurs can change the world. Bill Gates changed the face of IT and PC’s. Henry Ford revolutionised the way we travel on the ground. Frederick Terman was effectively the founding father of Silicon Valley. And Georges Doriot set up the first publicly owned venture-capital firm. The space is clear for the next entreprenurial great.

Fred Wilson is a New York-based venture capitalist and a prominet blogger. He is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, a venture capital firm with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, Indeed.com, Oddcast,Disqus and Clickable.

In the cliché driven world of business and marketing, it’s easy to roll out the old adage that success breeds success. But as any good entrepreneur knows, it’s the experience of failure that ultimately drives long-term career glory.

In this latest video interview, entrepreneur Michael Birch (famous for creating Bebo in 2005) explains  challenges surrounding the choice of domain names and the misconception that social networking websites are not easily profitable.

Here’s a story to warm the cockles of his Lordship, Alan Sugar. The former Labour government-appointed ‘Enterprise Tsar’ is currently concentrating his efforts to discovering his first Junior Apprentice: “What I am looking for is that killer instinct, that spark of genius and that nose for doing a good deal,” said Lord Sugar to the 10, [...]

An excellent interview with David S. Rose, one of the most highly regarded Angel Investors in the USA. David Rose is an entreprenurial executive and investor with experience in high technology and communications,angel investments, finance and government. Described as ” The Father of Angel Investing in New York ” and a ” world conquering entrepreneur “,  David is Chairman of [...]

Traditional venture capital is not working. Just look at the average returns of the vast majority of funds. The downturn hasn’t exactly helped. Early stage investing flew out of the pram. We asked our entrepreneurs what they would like to see as a manifesto for change. Here are some thoughts: – treat entrepreneurs like customers [...]

I remember one of my venture investors, from the Valley, telling me ‘Phil, remember, a VC only ever has to do one thing for you. Write a cheque!’ He went on to add: ‘To get the deal they will promise you everything else under the sun and deliver none of it. So all that matters [...]

If you run a startup or are planning to do so you’ll bump into venture capital (VC) funding. So what is it? Photo by Darrren Hester via Flickr Venture capital is the backbone of a select few, more successful startups but reality is few entrepreneurs really understand what it is about. Getting the mechanics of [...]

Finding early stage investors can be like looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack. And in downturns it gets even worse. In depressions like we have just gone through its like finding nats on camels asses while they sprint for their lives in a sandstorm. Given that venture capital dudes have [...]

The venture capital industry as we know it is going the way of the Dodo. There are 3 key reasons for this: 1. As startups, technologies and innovation become more global the ‘Silicon Valley’ ecosystem is sidelined. And VC’s outside the Valley have poor track records and weak managers. Startups abroad happily build businesses without [...]

I’ve been reading a bunch of interesting articles on how investment dollars are flowing back to startups and on how to raise money. It got me thinking. I can remember when I was running my second startup, called CMI, which was a digital publishing company when digital meant floppy discs. We needed to raise money [...]

Techcrunch has a couple of interesting articles you should look at – one on how much VC’s really support innovation and another written by the founder of Meebo on what it takes to make it from nothing. Both support our view that entrepreneurs need the right independent advice and guidance to get it right. Investors [...]

A couple of seismic events occurred yesterday in the Web world. First up Facebook announced that they have 300 million registered users, $500 million in revenues for ’09 and are cashflow positive – all supporting their recent private equity valuation of $10 billion and a probable Facebook IPO in 2010. Meantime Twitter seems to have [...]

Raising money from angel investors or VC’s is a stressful and complicated process – particularly in this climate. It needs to be done at the right time and in the right way. Try and raise money too early or without the right tools or docs and you’re guaranteed to crash and burn. And raising money [...]

A while ago I was told by one of my mentors that they key to any successful fundraising is finding, marketing to and closing ‘the lead’. It’s good advice. Just look at the maths. Leaders probably account for less than 1% of the population. That means the other 99% are followers. And followers follow a [...]

The Glasshouse event in London last night ‘Show Me the Money’ was well attended with some interesting VC’s speaking including London’s latest – PRO Partners. It seems that Spotify and Playfish are the VC’s favorite ventures right now – proving that they still hunt in packs/follow each other like sheep. They repeated that venture investments [...]

TechCrunch recently put out a list of the top 100 ‘networked’ venture capitalists – following some interesting research. They defined ‘networked’ by the number of co-investors that they had in deals and rated firms by the number of exits they had achieved. The top 10 lists most of the usual suspects. Which got me thinking [...]

I was spoilt. Two companies ago I was introduced to Bill Draper III – a legend in Silicon Valley and reputedly the West Coasts king of early stage venture capital. He invested in the company I ran at the time and sat on its board. He was a legend for a good reason – he [...]