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Twilio: From API to IPO

I enjoy honoring the founders of companies who “go long” on this blog by conducting breakdowns of their IPOs. Unfortunately in 2016 so far, there haven’t been many opportunities to do so given the record-low number of IPOs. This paucityRead More…

Highlights from GGV CEO Dinner on NextGen Sales & Marketing

This past week, we hosted a GGV CEO dinner on next generation sales & marketing. In addition to 40 great founders and execs in attendance, we held a very informative chat with Bill Macaitis, CMO of Slack (and former CMORead More…

Momentum — Builds Slowly, Evaporates Quickly

I spent an excellent two days in LA this past week at The Upfront Summit.  Mark Suster and his partners did a great job putting together a strong group of speakers and attendees. During a panel conversation, I mentioned aRead More…

Talking Square on CNBC

I had a fun conversation yesterday with Carl Quintanilla, Kayla Tausche and John Fortt on CNBC’s Squawk Alley regarding Square.  (See below for video interview) In particular, they were interested in whether Jack Dorsey can run two companies effectively. BelowRead More…

The IPO Sweet Spot

I noticed some very interesting research this weekend on the optimal IPO timing sweetspot done by Chris Lochhead and his group at Play Bigger via a tweet from Bill Gurley. Chris is a very talented marketing exec turned coach. IRead More…

Top Ten Books – 2015

Last December, I experimented with a list of my top 10 books of 2014. Many of you told me you found the list useful, so I’ve decided to share my top 10 reads of 2015 (actually top 12 books sinceRead More…

Highlights from GGV Cyber-security Dinner with Marc Goodman

We held a fascinating cyber-security dinner earlier this week with Marc Goodman, the author of the best selling book, “Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable & What We Can Do About It.” We had about 40 cyber-security foundersRead More…

The Mutual Fund Mark Down

For months now, a debate has raged on Twitter about the health of the late-stage, pre-IPO market for investing in startups. Many believe its overheated. Fueling this view, Fidelity, an active pre-IPO investor, recently marked down investments in several pre-IPO high-flyers.Read More…

The Pure Storage IPO In Context

Pure Storage has been one of the hottest Silicon Valley enterprise startups for the past several years, sporting a world class team and having raised capital from some of the top enterprise investors on the planet.  When the company filedRead More…

Entrepreneurial Lessons From Former US Open Champ Pete Sampras

As the sun sets on the last weekend of the US Open tennis tournament just outside Manhattan, it marks the bitter end of summer. As a kid growing up around New York and playing my fair share of tennis, theRead More…