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Monthly Archive for July 2009

Twitter Transformation

July 29, 2009

Transform your Twitter experience with TuneIn! Check out the video of TuneIn’s debut at the RealTime CrunchUp.

Couldn’t agree more with you K…

July 20, 2009

Couldn’t agree more with you Kevin, ” one particular element that remains paramount: the team” http://bit.ly/gzuYH

TuneIn Launches

July 11, 2009

Adam Hertz and his team launched TuneIn today, a highly visual media dashboard for Twitter. True seed funded Adam and his experienced team just a few short months ago, and we’ve been impressed with his energy and agility. Congrats Adam on such a great launch. The product looks fantastic and is incredibly innovative.

One of the best indicators of entrepreneurial success is the ability to launch. Getting a product out the door is hard. It takes an entire team of people to push product quality and experience to new heights and (as always) leave a few precious things on the table. These decisions are painful, and they pit a team’s experiences and agendas against one another. Good teams get through this and become stronger. Weaker teams sometimes don’t get through this process at all. Many teams fail to ever get that product out the door. Launch is usually full of risk and pain, but it is one of the first crucibles that a team goes through on a path to building a company.

In addition to the team, there is the customer, and great entrepreneurs realize the importance of customer data. Before launch you’re an idea, maybe even a good one. After launch, you’re live, in market. You’ve jumped into the raging river (or quiet tributary) of a market. No excuses, you’re out there. Thousands are hammering away at the product, using it in unforeseen ways and never stopping.

When you’re live, the customer controls the product, and this is a good thing. Once launch occurs, you get feedback, usage data, and opinions. Things break, fail, and fail to impress. You react. Re-build. Re-group. Sometimes even accelerate. Post-launch, the best teams are in a conversation with their customers. They listen, think, respond.

Launch is cathartic because you go from being an idea to being a business. The conversation is alive and you’re engaged. It’s transformational because it means you don’t have time to do what you think is important, you need to do what the customers tell you is important. Good teams coalesce around this mission and build great businesses.

We’re incredibly impressed with Adam Hertz and his team for very quickly launching TuneIn. In the time that many companies take to find office space, Adam and his talented group built and released a product to the world. Kudos to you Adam, for you clearly recognize that how your customers use your product is what counts. Congrats on transitioning today from an idea to an actual company.

Another sign of a great entrepreneur is building value from day one. Adam quickly amassed superb talent through an incredibly valuable syndicate.

We’re excited to be part of the TuneIn team, and thank you Adam for your faith and confidence in True.

Congrats Adam on launching Tun…

July 11, 2009

Congrats Adam on launching TuneIn! http://bit.ly/J3u5O

RT @tonysphere: @howardlindzon…

July 9, 2009

RT @tonysphere: @howardlindzon & @stocktits getting love on CNBC – that’s a new phenomenon! (minute 4): http://bit.ly/1vWT83

RT @tonysphere: #13 is a Lucky…

July 9, 2009

RT @tonysphere: #13 is a Lucky Number – kinda cool seeing @peterrojas @gdgt on this glam list of powerful media types: http://bit.ly/1HSqK1

Welcoming Andreessen Horowitz

July 9, 2009

This week Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced their new $300 million venture fund. This is really good news for the very early stage venture market. It’s yet another visible indicator of the ongoing reinvention occurring in venture capital, and it represents a significant step in the re-emergence of institutionally-backed early stage venture capital. We’re excited to have Marc and Ben working in this segment, and the addition of more talent and resources in the early stage market is great news for entrepreneurs.

Our mission at True is to help entrepreneurs realize their dreams. In 2005, we spotted an opportunity to build a firm that was more adaptable to the needs of today’s entrepreneurs. We innovated by re-defining the relationship between investor and entrepreneur in a fundamental way, simplifying previously complicated structures, and amassing talent and resources to ease the specific process of starting and building a new company.

We did all of this as former entrepreneurs ourselves, and our overarching goal was to re-align capital with creativity. At True, we firmly believe that the entrepreneur is the center of all power, creativity, and wealth creation in the venture capital model. Our firm and our deals are designed with the entrepreneur as customer.

When we launched in 2005, there were only a handful of super-angel investors in the very-early market: Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, Ram Shriram, Josh Kopelman (then with his evergreen funds) – to name a few. Institutional capital was scarce, and this was a problem because entrepreneurs had fewer resources in the beginning, and less choice

The great news for entrepreneurs is that this is changing rapidly. Since 2005, we at True have raised 2 institutional funds totaling approximately $375 million, Josh and the team at First Round closed on an institutional fund, as did Stewart and Gilman at Alsop-Louie, and Brad Feld at Foundry. Back East, Spark and Union Square Ventures have each raised two institutional funds, and Alan Patricoff started Greycroft. In addition, many very talented angels such as Mike Maples, Jeff Clavier, Ron Conway (Baseline and Ron’s other angel investments), and Paul Graham at YCombinator have raised institutional dollars.

We estimate that there is now well over $1 billion of institutional capital available to startup entrepreneurs. Make no mistake, there are many talented groups willing to write checks as small as $50K to get a good team and a good idea off the ground.

This could not have happened at a better time. The combination of great entrepreneurial talent, high capital efficiency, widespread broadband infrastructure, and the maturity of mobile and social computing platforms has resulted in tremendous product innovation and massive market opportunities. True witnessed this dynamic first in our consumer investments like Meebo, Automattic, and Sphere, but, since 2005, we have also seen Moore’s law blast away cost in enterprise 2.0, infrastructure, and hardware. We have steadily expanded our investment focus and products into these markets, and we are about to close on our second hardware investment this month.

We are fortunate to live in an incredibly disruptive time.

Which brings us back to reinventing venture capital. The best entrepreneurs want less from VCs today: less capital and fewer constraints in order to take more risk earlier. But the the best are demanding more in terms of new products, services, alignment, attitudes, and business practices from their investors. This means new expectations around board roles and responsibilities, more flexible deal structures, aligned efforts to add value, broader syndicates that amass the resources and participation of multiple groups and multiple angels. This means innovation in venture capital.

We’re excited about the arrival of Andreessen Horowitz to this segment because it means more choice and power available to the early stage entrepreneur. More talent, dynamism, and focus on these challenges will help us all to better serve our customers (entrepreneurs), more quickly modernize the early stage capital markets, and foster fundamental innovation. In removing barriers to entrepreneurial creativity, we will reinvigorate the US economy.

If you are an entrepreneur today, this is an historic time to chase your dreams. With over $1 billion in fresh seed capital in the very early stage market, what are you waiting for?

RT @howardlindzon: 83,000 subs…

July 1, 2009

RT @howardlindzon: 83,000 subscribers today at stocktwits…thank-you community.

RT @gdgt: Okay, we’re back up!…

July 1, 2009

RT @gdgt: Okay, we’re back up! Until you guys crush us again, anyway.

Congrats Peter and Ryan on the…

July 1, 2009

Congrats Peter and Ryan on the GDGT launch!! We’re all honored to be a part of your team. Thank you. http://bit.ly/kkwbK

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