VentureBeat - Latest Comments in Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Santosh — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 05:41:49 -0000

Has any other venture firm responded to this move by launching similar program?

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

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Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Eric Jackson — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 07:00:49 -0000

It will be interesting to watch other large VCs and how they react over the coming months. I believe many will follow CRV's lead. Of course some will do a little of this on the side and some will be more focused.

There appears to be a larger trend at work here in this new low start-up cost and low capital needs world, which will lead to winners and losers:

Winners:

- The bluest of "blue-chip" VCs. The Sequoias and KPCBs of the world shine brighter when the maddening crowd is rushing to chase the latest trend of VC investing. They've been there and done that time-and-again.
- Existing Angel Investors who have a track-record. When a space gets hot (i.e., angel investing), those who have been there for a while are the old wise men. Josh Kopelman, Jeff Clavier, and others will see a rise for their services even as others rush in. There will be a flight to quality.
- Traditional VCs who are able to make the leap and really differentiate from other angel investors. Although CRV is a great firm, their success is not guaranteed. They need dealflow; their GPs needs to be seen as credible by non-nascent entrepreneurs; and they really need to be able to deliver value to their investments (beyond the simple "we love to roll up our shirtsleeves alongside our investee companies" platitudes).

Losers:

- Stuck-in-the-middle VCs: Those VCs who do a little bit of angel investing and a little bit of traditional are likely to do neither well.
- Former Great VCs who don't adapt to changing times: Remember when Softbank was king of the hill? Hot VCs who have yet to reach the echelon of Sequoia and KPCB are not assured of long-term success. They are also likely to stick-to-what-they-(think-they-)know-best. Dangerous, when the rules of the game are changing
- Later-stage/Mezzanine Investors: They just got even less relevant.

Thanks,

Eric
http://breakoutperformance....

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Mark — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:16:49 -0000

Finally - a seed program that does not take advantage of startups.

Check out Utah Investors - http://www.connect-utah.com... or Junto Partners - 30% of the company, 50k debt and your left leg

Good luck! I am very excited to see where this goes.

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

acohen832 — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:58:43 -0000

This seems like an interesting concept. Often, small companies don't have the resources or expertise to find the right type of funding that they need, especially during the beginning stages.

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Dave Lavinsky — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 11:07:27 -0000

This is a great idea. Traditionally, it has been very difficult for VCs to differentiate themselves from each other, and this certainly does the trick.

CRV should see a major influx of new concepts and business plans. Most importantly, it should see new ideas/ventures well before its VC competitors.

This also reminds me a bit of Grameen Bank. Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. Grameen Bank specializes in microcredit or very small business loans (average of $200). Since 1976, Grameen Bank has made approximately $5.7 billion in loans to more than 6.6 million people in India, mostly poor people who were shunned by traditional banks. The repayment rate is an astounding 98 percent.

Hopefully CRV will have similar success with this great concept!

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Krish — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:16:14 -0000

This sounds more like reinventing the wheel. Some of you should remember - the VC model started with something like this and it failed since most of the funded companies wound up and the founders went bust. The loan turned bad and had to be written off by the lenders. In a typical internet startup, what collateral can a lender look for except a few leased PCs and some ready-to-flee employees at the first sign of trouble...? History repeats.

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Startups.in/India — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:10:45 -0000

I'd not want to sound stupid but I'm assuming that CRV would only be looking at ideas with a working model/prototype. Is my assumption correct?
or..would they even be entertaining just the ideas..brilliant ones of course :)

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Brian Berliner — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:37:30 -0000

I'm a big fan of the formalization of the seed program now known as CRV QuickStart. It's all bout the dealflow. Read:

http://www.brianberliner.co...

For more. Enjoy!

-Brian

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

keanu zhang — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:34:32 -0000

I like this idea and i think it can be called innovation in VC industry. and this model can differentiate real foresighted VCs from VC teams.

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Rohit Chandra — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:55:23 -0000

I am building a Web2.0 Killer App, that we KNOW will take off like a rocket!

While I would have liked to have raised outside money; and get more people involved; I ended up self-funding it because I did not want to expose the idea to other Angel groups. At the same time I don't want to get money from people that I know who do not understand the Consumer Internet space.

Chasing this elusive investor was not the best utilisation of my time, and I must applaud CRV on this initative.

Questions:
1. What is the duration of this note?
2. Do these investments close faster than a traditional venture round?

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Edward Miller — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:10:28 -0000

EXCELLENT IDEA! Sounds easier than trying to find 10 angels.

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Daniel — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 15:35:56 -0000

It reminds me microcredit concept.

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

Vaibhav Domkundwar - Better La — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 13:17:44 -0000

This is awesome news, and honestly something very much inline with the requirements of the entreprenuers today.

Now that more funds are opening up to smaller seed funding idea, the other part of the equation is really about making that money last longer, develop the initial product/service version with a smaller burn and test and evolve it slowly.

@Brian: I have atleast 2 founders in the same stage where they feel they are spending way too much time on raising a tiny angel round.

@Bill, @Mike: I think VCs with a formal seed model will help the situation Brain is talking about as QuickStart kind of models will likely be more risk-friendly than a group of angles, which can save everyone a lot of cycles.

At Better Labs (http://www.betterlabs.net), we have just started to open up our model to work with early stage startups in the Valley to deliver their alpha, beta and 1.0 versions which allows the founding team to run faster and more economically, as they evolve their service with user feedback. Look out for iLetYou (http://www.iletyou.com - the first one of our startup partners) going into Private Beta in the next few days. This fits right into founder who raise between $200k and $500K as we can work with them on a 18 month plan.

Re: Charles River Ventures introduces friendly “convertible” seed round

FundingPost — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 13:05:06 -0000

I think it's very smart. At FundingPost, we are seeing more and more companies raising less money to get started and there is a HUGE void left by the VCs in this area. While there are new Angel Groups popping up every day, seed VC is tough to find! It makes a lot of sense that the fund size is only $250M - down from $1.2B. That would be a lot of $250K deals to manage :)