Author Archives: Kevin

VC Spotlight of the Week – Bilal Zuberi

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Bilal Zuberi is our VC spotlight this week.  He is a co-founder, a VC, a Ph.D, and an avid blogger.  Get to know him below!

Name: Bilal ZuberiBilal Zuberi

Company: Lux Capital

Blog: www.bilalzuberi.com

Bio: Bilal has a Ph.D from MIT and has had experience in strategy consulting, early stage VC, and was a co-founder of GEO2 technologies.  More about him here!

Miscellaneous/Interesting Facts: In addition to his work at Lux, Bilal is also a co-founder of Boston-based student-run VC fund, Roughdraft.vc.  We are big fans of Roughdraft’s model and really like the idea of students partnering with students.

Round of the Week – SAVO

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savo1

Sales productivity powerhouse SAVO has won our Round of the Week with their $35M Series C raise. Proceeds from the round will be used to further develop their product suite and fuel global expansion.  We are intrigued by all the CRM-inspired tools available to Sales teams today (SFDC, Yesware, InsideSales, etc.) and think SAVO can make a serious dent in the $20B/yr CRM industry.

Name: SAVO Group

Website: www.savogroup.com

Funding to Date: $84M ($10M A, $10M B, $10M Debt, $35M C, ~$19M Unknown)

Deal Notables: While the CRM industry has only really taken off with the proliferation of ubiquitous internet access for all corporations (re: Salesforce.com), SAVO has actually been providing sales enablement tools since 1999.  Given its atypical funding to date and long tenure since inception/initial funding (2005 according to our research), we wonder if/how the original investors have exited their investment (secondary capital?) or if they have had to let it ride…

Event Review – Fort Point Tech Night @ WeWork

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WEWORK

*Editor’s Note: Short post due to the informal nature of event, but we hope to start covering more of these in the future!

Tonight we attended the Fort Point Tech Night hosted by WeWork. Altisource Labs and Friends of Fort Point Channel sponsored the informal networking night for Boston area entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts.  We really enjoy attending events like these because it allows us to step out of our daily work life and meet up-and-coming entrepreneurs and enthusiasts!

The Fort Point WeWork is a really cool space, filled with Foosball, Ping Pong, kegerators, flat screen TV’s, and a lot of working space as well.  We highly recommend checking out the space if you get a chance!

VC Spotlight of the Week – Bijan Sabet

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*Editor’s Note: Published a day later than expected due to travel issues here at C:V. HQ but here it is!

Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet is our VC Spotlight for this week and while he is probably most well-known for leading Spark’s investment in Twitter, he has an even stronger history of successful investments and operating roles at startups.

Name: Bijan Sabet

Company: Spark CapitalBijan_Sabet-b

Blog: www.bijansabet.com

Bio: Bijan has a B.S. from Boston College (Fulton Hall represent!) and had roles in product and business development at a string of successful startups before joining Spark Capital at its inception in 2005.  Sabet has led many successful investments while at Spark, some of which can be found here!

Miscellaneous/Interesting Facts: Bijan came under some media scrutiny during the release of the Twitter book, Hatching Twitter, due to his alleged involvement in the ousting of then current CEO Jack Dorsey in favor of co-founder Ev Williams. We read the book and feel that Sabet got a bad rap for nothing. Bilton (the author) seemed to over-dramatize the firing of Dorsey to almost Hollywoodesque levels, when in reality management changes like these happen all the time in the startup world.  But, at the end of the day, Bijan helped guide the company along to an extremely impressive return for Spark (and their LPs) which we hope quelled any of the negative media coverage.

Round of the Week – Fundrise

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Fundrise_Logo

Today we feature property crowdfunding company Fundrise and their $31M Series A round.  The crowdfunding real estate arena is pretty full with lots of competing offerings/niches (re: Collaperty, Realty Mogul, CrowdStreet, etc.), but we like how Fundrise has committed in part to local investors in local areas because we also believe that consumers should be able to invest in their communities.

Name: Fundrise

Website: www.fundrise.com

Funding to Date: $33M ($2M Seed, $31 Series A)

Deal Notables: Chinese Social Media company Renren led this round and at first glance that may seem a bit odd, but they also contributed to SoFi’s recent round so they are clearly making a play for the crowdfunding platform space.  Who is SoFi you may ask?  Check out our feature on them in our ROTW here!

Monday Morning Memo – Tuesday Evening Edition

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Don’t worry dear readers, we haven’t forgotten about you!  With the holiday weekend and getting back into the week our MMM has now become a MMM-TEE. Practical and informative, but not nearly as nice sounding as the original…

Recap of Last Week: Last week we had two VC spotlights, one on Paul Graham and the other on Chris Dixon, and we featured MeetEarnest as our ROTW!

What Lies Ahead: We will keep up with our VC spotlight and ROTW cadence and are working on a few new ideas in the coming weeks that we think you will enjoy!  (Hint: think Term Sheet Madness meets the World Cup…)

VC Spotlight of the Week – Chris Dixon

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Bonus post! (well technically we are making up for last week’s omission, but hey we live in the here and now right?)

Our spotlight is Chris Dixon, current investor at A16Z, co-founder of Founder Collective, and our newest “liked blog” inductee.

Name: Chris Dixonchris_dixon1

Company: A16Z

Blog: http://cdixon.org/ (One of our liked blogs!)

Bio: Chris has a BA/MA from Columbia and an MBA from Harvard.  He also founded and exited two companies (SiteAdvisor and Hunch) as well as having two stints at VC firms (Bessemer and A16Z).  Not a bad resume if you ask us!  More info here!

Miscellaneous/Interesting Facts: In addition to his daily role, he is an active angel investor and co-founder of Founder Collective, a seed stage VC fund that is run by former founders.  We are big fans of Founder Collective and their mission of founders helping founders!

Round of the Week – Earnest

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SOFI : Student Loans :: Earnest : Personal Lending?

SOFI : Student Loans :: Earnest : Personal Lending?

If you have been following our prior Rounds of the Week, you know we here at C:V. are big fans of the disruption in the student loan space that SOFI is causing. Well, this week we are featuring a company that is armed with $15M to wreak havoc on the personal lending market in the same way SOFI is the student loan market!  It’s time for you to meet Earnest.

Name: Earnest

Website: https://www.meetearnest.com/

Funding to Date: $15M ($15M Series A)

Deal Notables: We really like this business model of low-cost loans to qualified applicants via future expectations and less on prior history.  That, and the market potential is staggering so we think Earnest has some serious upside. Another interesting note is that the company is based in San Francisco but chose Boston as their pilot city.  Earnest claims it is due to the “high population of young working professionals” but we personally think Boston’s general awesomeness was the deciding factor.  But hey, we aren’t biased or anything…

 

VC Spotlight of the Week – Paul Graham

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*Editor’s Note: This video is a bit old, but you get the idea…

Not a VC in the traditional sense, but we consider him to be a thought leader in the space as well as having quite the successful incubator (Y Combinator) that has garnered millions in VC dollars so we think it is more than fair to include him here.

Name: Paul Grahampaul graham

Company: Y Combinator

Blog:  http://paulgraham.com/ (One of our liked blogs!)

Bio: Paul is a founder, a visionary, and a powerful voice in the industry.  He founded Viaweb which sold to Yahoo in the late ’90s and has been an active mentor and investor ever since.  He co-founded Y Combinator in 2005 and it has become the preeminent startup accelerator in the world.  More about him here!

Miscellaneous/Interesting Facts: In addition to his role at YC, his essays have been instrumental in many startups’ early lives. They cover many topics from getting funding, to generating ideas, and even how to grow.  We are big fans of YC and his impact on the ecosystem here at C:V.!