Just Add Money

1st February, 2013 No Comments Blog , Portfolio

Consumer credit is broken.  The economy has improved, if slowly, since 2008.  The cost of funds is low.  Even so, many consumers still have difficulty finding loans to help pay for new cars, homes, or education.  According to the Federal Reserve, financial institutions and securitized pools of capital drove more than $340 billion in outflows from […]

Smart Data, the Next Big [Data] Thing

21st January, 2013 No Comments Blog , Fundraising , Portfolio

Sailthru, a current Gotham Ventures portfolio company, just announced a $19 million Series B investment led by Benchmark Capital.  Gotham participated in the funding, having led the seed round for Sailthru in 2010 and participated in the A round last year.  Prior co-investors RRE and AOL Ventures also participated.  I’m excited about the funding and […]

An Agenda for a Better City

9th December, 2012 No Comments Blog

Today, the board of the New York Tech Meetup (NYTM), of which I am a member, released a NYC Technology Policy Agenda.  You can see the entire agenda and learn how you can influence and further it here; I’ve also included the major points from the document below.  I strongly support this agenda, and am very […]

The VC Seed Bogeyman

22nd November, 2012 No Comments Blog , Fundraising , Venture Capital

There is a popular discussion, which occasionally becomes a debate, about the risks inherent in taking seed financing from a venture capital firm (as opposed to taking it exclusively from angel investors).  The most commonly-cited “risk” is that of signaling:  if the VC firm does not invest in the company’s subsequent (Series A) financing, no […]

Why Founders Should Vest

24th October, 2012 No Comments Blog , Venture Capital

My experience has been that most founders have not thought about vesting their own shares before raising outside capital for the first time.  I think they should, in most cases, vest their shares of their own accord, even before talking to an outside investor. Vesting, for those unfamiliar with the term, refers to earning equity […]