Kellblog’s 10 Predictions for 2020
As I’ve been doing every year since 2014, I thought I’d take some time to write some predictions for 2020, but not without first doing a review of my predictions for 2019. Lest you take any of these too seriously, I suggest you look at my batting average and disclaimers. Kellblog 2019 Predictions Review 1. […]
Summary of the 4Q14 Fenwick & West VC Survey
Because I was reading it and had a minute, I thought I’d do a quick post summarizing the 4Q14 Fenwick & West Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey (PDF). As the name indicates, this is an ongoing quarterly survey on the state of venture capital that pulls from many sources, integrating lots of data into a single […]
Corporate Venture Capital’s Role in Innovation Part 4: Setting Up a CVC Organization
In the previous post I introduced a five-dimensional framework to employ while setting up a corporate venture group and discussed in detail two of its dimensions: strategy and people. The corporation must establish a long-term strategy for its venture group. As part of this strategy it must create a set of objectives, formulate an investment […]
Corporate Venture Capital’s Role in Innovation Part 3: Setting Up a CVC Organization
In the first part of the series on corporate venture capital I explored how the disruption of institutional VCs (IVCs) and the imperative for corporations to innovate provide an opportunity to corporate VCs (CVCs) to make their mark in the startup ecosystem and be viewed as viable and valuable financing sources to private companies. In […]
Corporate Venture Capital’s Role in Disruptive Innovation Part 2: Will the Big Numbers Result In Big Success this Time?
I started writing these posts with the hypothesis that in their effort to innovate, corporations must re-invent the traditional R&D model with one that augments the R&D efforts with venture investments, acquisitions, strategic partnerships and startup incubation. Corporate VCs (CVCs) are expected to play a big role in this innovation quest. With that in mind […]
Why You’ll Need Just about $3,000,000 to Build Your First Real Sales & Marketing Team
Every week, I meet with several entrepreneurs, often bootstrapped or close to it, who fit the following sort of model: Gotten to Initial Traction (~$1.5m ARR), or getting close to it, or a bit beyond; and With nice growth (>=100% YoY); and Company isn’t really burning much cash because The CEO basically is the VP […]
Corporate Venture Capital’s Role in Disruptive Innovation Initiatives
A large corporation recently requested my advice on how to set up and structure their venture fund, which they wanted to base in Silicon Valley. This corporation had initially set up a venture fund in the late ‘90s to invest in Internet startups. By 2002 they closed down the fund after determining that its portfolio […]
Additional Considerations for Corporate Incubators and Accelerators
In my last post I wrote about corporate incubation/acceleration models, presenting four distinct ones, discussed how to start one of these organizations, and how to increase the value derived from them. In this blog I provide additional details on the topic by: Presenting the criteria and guidelines a corporation should use to start an incubator […]
Software Firms Now 42% Of Venture Capital Invested In 2014
Just over $4B was invested in software deals by venture capitalists (VCs) during Q1, 2014, four times as much as biotechnology. Software deals netted out 42% of all dollars invested in the first quarter of 2014, with biotechnology receiving 11%. VCs invested $816M in IT Services or 9% of all dollars, making this the third largest […]
A Look at the Zendesk S-1 (IPO)
I thought I’d take a quick read of the Zendesk S-1 today, so here are my real-time notes on so doing. Before diving in, let me provide a quick pointer to David Cummings’ summary of the same. My notes: 40,000 customers in 140 countries 2012 revenues of $38.2M 2013 revenues of $72.0M, 88% growth 41% […]
