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Monthly Archive for February 2009

Thank you Bart Schachter

February 26, 2009

Wonderful post by Bart Schachter over on PEHub on the continuing Thomas Friedman & VC saga. For the record, we’re squarely in Friedman’s (and Bart’s) camp.

The world needs more support for entrepreneurs and innovators, not less.

Well done Bart.

Entrepreneurs Can Lead Us Out of the Crisis – WSJ

February 24, 2009

Excellent op-ed this am in the WSJ about the power of the entrepreneur, which (so far) has not been tapped in the stimulus.

Syncplicity to the Rescue

February 24, 2009

Last week, my computer died. It was a painful experience that caused lost productivity, sunk time, and several headaches. What was supposed to be a simple memory upgraded ended in a hard drive crash. Thank goodness for Syncplicity! If all of my data had not been backed up, it would have been lost and the damage would have been much worse.

And to think it was all synching up in the background without any extra effort on my part.

An appreciative and now devout customer,
Shea

More on Friedman, Connie’s got the right take at PEHub

February 24, 2009

Funny how one column can create such a big controversy in venture, and the week’s only one day in.

Connie has a great take on the Thomas Friedman vs. venture capital debate raging over here on PEHub. Thank you Connie!

We’re perplexed as to why so many in the venture business are seemingly against more resources for entrepreneurs. We believe in creative destruction. We believe that the power of a small, very talented entrepreneurial team can topple an entire industry full of the status quo. While we’re not directly advocating the government get into the venture business, we completely agree with Tom Friedman that stimulus dollars would be better invested with early stage entrepreneurs than into ailing auto companies.

Let’s spend some of that valuable stimulus time, attention and dollars on making a real impact on our future: foster innovation by repealing SOX, revitalizing the SBA, creating sensible tax policy to encourage early stage and angel investment. There’s loads of value that stimulus time and attention could provide the early stage entrepreneur.

Start Up Risk Takers – Friedman in Today’s NYT

February 22, 2009

A wonderful piece in today’s New York Times article by Thomas Friedman (found here).

We strongly agree that innovation is the key to our country’s (and world’s future). At True we have resources and platform that can help, but we need the ecosystem revived.

We’d welcome your ideas as to how we can (all) foster a stronger Seed and Series A ecosystem to stimulate early stage investment and help talented entrepreneurs

Please tell us how we can help:

Does the stimulus help nurture existing startups? If so how and where should entrepreneurs go to access Washington? Can you help us get more entrepreneurs plugged in?

Are there new areas targeted in the bill that all of us should be focused on?

We’ll post all ideas here and simply want to foster the discussion and do our part to create entrepreneurial opportunity and growth.

The LoopFuse Solution

February 19, 2009

LoopFuse automates the process of collecting and analyzing large volumes of marketing data from websites and email campaigns. Its offerings include lead management, marketing campaigns, lead nurturing, closed-loop reporting, lead scoring, CRM integration, lead analysis, and web analytics. Their flagship software, OneView, converts web leads to enterprise level sales. Let the LoopFuse Marketing Solution go to work for you.

Welcome LoopFuse to the True Family

February 10, 2009

We are thrilled to announce True’s recent investment in LoopFuse, an exciting company building the next generation of lead management and marketing automation software. Creating a profitable and scalable business today requires a clear focus on generating, managing, and closing qualified leads. LoopFuse founders Roy Russo and Tom Elrod lived this challenge during their early days at JBoss, and they were inspired to build a mission critical solution to make marketing measurable and ROI driven. LoopFuse provides a SaaS solution sold into enterprise customers that is extraordinarily powerful, low cost, and easy to use. We were especially impressed by how their customers evangelized for them, describing LoopFuse as “addictive,” “critical,” and “essential” for their businesses – statements that are all the more important during these challenging economic times.

The enterprise software landscape is undergoing dramatic change, with customers looking for lower cost alternatives and more openly accepting SaaS and open source as part of their core business practices. Capital efficient software companies can show significant early traction at far lower operating costs, which spawns a new level of innovation across the industry. LoopFuse is at the forefront of this exciting revolution.

At True our top priority are the people, and LoopFuse founders Roy and Tom really impressed us with their resourcefulness, creativity, and drive. In addition to the founders, Sean Dwyer recently joined LoopFuse as CEO. Sean is well known to True and knows this market extremely well as he was a former LoopFuse customer.

LoopFuse represents exactly the kind of combination we get excited about at True – talented and determined entrepreneurs and a beautiful, highly valued product operating in a large, rapidly changing marketplace.

Congratulations to Roy, Tom, and Sean!

Thank you for your confidence in True, and welcome to the family.

Will the Downturn Reinvent Venture Capital?

February 10, 2009

Excellent post by our friend Alan Patricof in the NY Times DealBook about the changing paradigm of venture capital. There has been a lot of discussion lately about the reinvention of the venture industry, and it is a subject near and dear to our hearts at True. We think about it, and act on it, every day. As Alan details in his post, the paradigm for VC has changed due the disappearance of the IPO exit option and the structural change that fund size growth has wrought upon the venture capital model. In our opinion, the emergence of extreme capital efficiency from new web infrastructures and evolving software architectures has also been critical to this shift. The bottom line is that the venture industry is out of alignment with the needs of early stage entrepreneurs, and it is early stage entrepreneurs who are vital to pulling the US (and rest of world) out of the current economic situation.
more…

Video: More about Innovation

February 9, 2009

Quick video intro to our Innovation/Ideas post.

Your Ideas to Help Us Avert the Innovation Crisis

February 9, 2009

We’re having a quarterly strategy meeting tomorrow in SF (not really offsite but we still call it that). Our team will be meeting to cover topics that revolve around events and activities in the coming year, and what True needs to do to provide better products and services to our customer, the entrepreneur.

Our customers include existing portfolio CEOs and Founders, new prospective Founders, but importantly, our customers extend beyond our family to include all entrepreneurs contemplating starting or in the early stages of starting their own company. We’ve got a full agenda and lots of stuff working, but we’d like your ideas and feedback.

Now more than ever, the early stage needs to be robust. Let’s face it: this is a dark and dangerous time for innovation. The macro-economic meltdown is bad, and even worse, it has the potential to start a devastating innovation crisis. Microsoft, Yahoo, Ebay, Google have RIF’d incredibly talented people. Pfizer recently laid off researchers and startups are prioritizing survival. Mainstream VC has grown large over the past decade, and now mostly emphasizes risk mitigation and bigger deals, exactly at a time when startups are capital efficient and money needs to back very risky endeavors.

We need lots of startups funded today because these are the companies will fuel our recovery and growth over the next 5-10 years. When the meltdown of 2007-2010 begins to ease, IT companies of all shapes and sizes will be on the lookout for promising young companies to fill gaps in product lines of fuel growth. We need to foster a climate where the most talented are encouraged to take the leap and start a project today, or are emboldened to innovate in their garage.

All of us can help in our own way, but at True we feel like we have a particularly powerful platform to address this issue, create more opportunity for entrepreneurs everywhere, and build a stronger set of resources along the way.

Let us know what’s missing in the environment that could help entrepreneurs. What products and services can we provide? What elements of the early stage ecosystem aren’t functioning well?

Please comment below or send your ideas to ideas at trueventures dot com and we’ll incorporate them into our discussion tomorrow.

Thank you.

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