This post originally appeared on VC Adventure, Seth Levine’s blog. Like many of you, I’ve been reflecting on the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank quite a bit this past week, now that the initial panic has faded into a dulled sense of disbelief. Certainly, there were warnings that SVB was in trouble (most notably from […]
Seth Levine
Hi, I'm Seth Levine, a Boulder, CO based technology investor and managing director at Foundry Group. While I love technology I’m also a husband, father, avid cyclist, snowboarder and outdoors guy.
Posted inInnovation
A Venture Capitalist Asks, Do We Add Value To Startups?
Editor’s Note: This post appeared originally on Seth Levine’s blog, VC Adventure in August 2022. Seth is a venture capitalist and co-founder of Foundry Group based in Boulder, Colorado. Companies looking to raise money turn to venture capital for a variety of reasons. Top among them is generally access to capital, but often on the list is the hope that raising […]
Posted inVC Spotlight
Take Your IRR With A Grain Of Salt. It’s A Vanity Metric
I’m observing that IRR is a metric that is becoming an increasing focus in venture, replacing fund return multiple as the key metric of success. I understand the draw of IRR, and – as a fund draws to a close – there’s no question it’s an important metric. LPs have plenty of options for where […]
Posted inMentorship
Older Entrepreneurs Are The Fastest-Growing Segment Of New Business Owners
We had the opportunity to talk with many great entrepreneurs doing research for our book, The New Builders. I was struck by how thoughtful, determined, and gritty they were. As most readers know, the book focuses on entrepreneurs from a diverse set of backgrounds – people that truly represent the next generation of founders in the […]
Posted inTrailblazers
Opinion: Overcoming Trump’s Legacy of Racism
As I listened to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden give their speeches from Wilmington on Saturday, I was struck by the contrast they offered to the rhetoric we’ve heard coming out of the White House for the past 4 years. Perhaps I had forgotten what ‘normal’ actually was. Both Biden and Harris spoke to the […]
Posted inMentorship
Venture Capital Returns Are More Skewed Than People Realize
This post originally appeared on Seth’s blog. Some of the most popular posts I’ve written over the past couple of years were the two that focused on just how rare outsized returns for an individual deal are in venture capital. You can see the original posts here and here. In those posts I was analyzing […]
Posted inUncategorized
Work Lessons from the Pandemic
I’ve been thinking a lot about what changes in my work I’d like to keep, post-pandemic (can we even talk about a post-pandemic world? It still feels pretty far off). I’m trying to be deliberate and actionable about it. For me that means actually writing down what I’m trying to change and why. It also […]
Posted inUncategorized
Job Hunting In The Midst Of A Crisis
My posts last week (which included predictions of pending lay-offs at technology businesses) prompted a number of people to reach out and ask a variant of the question: “How can I find a job in the middle of a shutdown/meltdown?”. I don’t know that I have a great answer to that but I thought I’d take a stab at […]
Posted inTrailblazers
Options about your Options – How to think through your company’s option program
Quick break from Covid related topics for a moment to post something I’ve been intending to write about for a few months but haven’t had the chance to commit to paper. It’s perhaps a boring topic – Options and your company’s option program – but an important one. Despite how much time companies talk about […]
Posted inHealth
Social Distancing or Social Distrust
I was at the grocery store the other day and thankfully most people were wearing masks (a big change from a few months ago when I was literally laughed at when I wore a mask to that same story, early on in the crisis). However, walking around, people’s body language really struck me. In our […]
