The first rule of venture capitalism is hands-on experience. You have to get your hands dirty.
If I'm an entrepreneur, and I have a term sheet from Sequoia and Kleiner, that's the safe choice. Google Ventures is the brave choice.
As I became a venture capitalist, it's almost like I went to the dark side for a while.
While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker.
I wanted to be a venture capitalist and join Sequoia Capital. They've financed and helped built some really special and enormously successful companies, including Google, Yahoo, Paypal, YouTube, Cisco, Oracle, Apple, and also Zappos.
I delivered lectures, and I was also a consultant for international companies in finance, both private equity and big venture capital funds.
Many of the best firms historically in venture capital have been multi-sector.
I think the development of the venture capital system has been an example of something which is a successful improvement in risk-bearing. It doesn't exactly remove the risks at the beginning, but at least creates greater rewards at a slightly later stage and therefore encourages, say, small companies to engage in technologically risky enterprises.
Dying venture firms are like the walking dead. They can have years of staggering around with stakes in still active portfolio companies, hoping they're still holding a lottery ticket that could put them back in the game. If not, they just slowly wind down.
