Mark Suster, General Partner at Upfront Ventures, talks about how he transitioned from being an entrepreneur to investing in startups. Mark elaborates his Lines and Dots technique for evaluating founders. He also points out some fundraising mistakes to avoid, especially when the capital market is undergoing correction.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

6:27 Entrepreneurs need different kinds of help at different stages of their company.

10:47 Cadence, ability to hire talent, and ability to ship code are tell-tale signs of a successful founder.

15:03 Taking fundraising as part of your day job, and allocating time for it, is critical to building a strong company.

23:03 Don’t optimize for short-term valuation. Inevitably, everybody ends up raising capital downstream even if they thought they were not going to.

Non-profit organization that Mark is passionate about: Defy Ventures

About Guest Speaker

Mark Suster is a General Partner at Upfront Ventures. Previously, Mark was the founder & CEO of Koral (Acquired by Salesforce.com in 2007) and BuildOnline (acquired by The Sword Group). Upfront Ventures backed both startups. Mark became VP, Products at Salesforce.com after the acquisition of his company. He had been working with Upfront partners for 8 years prior to joining as a General Partner, to help fund like-minded entrepreneurs. Mark writes a blog, Both Sides of the Table, in which he shares his views on tech trends and offers advice to start-up founders.

Fun fact: Ask Mark about triathlons

About Upfront Ventures

Upfront Ventures is an LA-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies. Founded in 1996 in Los Angeles with investing professionals based in LA, San Francisco, and Paris, Upfront has backed standout teams across all technology sectors, including Ring (acq. by Amazon), TrueCar (NASDAQ: TRUE), Bird, MakerStudios (acq by Disney), GOAT, Apeel Sciences, thredUP, Invoca and Kyriba (acq by Bridgepoint). Upfront invests about half of its capital in the fast-growing Southern California ecosystem, with the balance across the country as well as investments in Europe and Israel.

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Form Relationships with Investors Before Raising Capital 30:09 Share

The Sure Shot Entrepreneur

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Form Relationships with Investors Before Raising Capital