Fireside with a VC

E109 Pre-Seed venture capital on Fireside with a VC speaking with David Lambert, Cofounder, Right Side Capital Management (RSCM) one of the most active pre-seed or pre-VC investors in Silicon Valley and across the US and Canada.   Links and Resources:   Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cspNXaMmorI. Find all episodes of Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform: https:...

E108 Fireside with a VC speaking with Alice Vilma, Managing Director and Co-Head of The Next Level Fund at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Alice explains how the Next Level Fund looks to promote financial inclusion and provide founders of tech and tech-enabled startups with much-needed access to investors—along with the tools, resources and connections they need to grow and thrive. We discus...

E107 In this episode of Fireside with a VC , we discuss scenario planning for China & Asia and the relationship with Silicon Valley. We explore future opportunities with Francis Bassolino, Managing Director of Alaris Consulting, who has been helping companies of all sizes enter, succeed, and exit China over a span of 30+ years. Francis is also an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago...

E106 Fireside with a VC speaking with Ken Goldman, former President of Eric & Wendy Schmidt’s family office, former CFO of Yahoo!, Fortinet, Siebel Systems (acquired by Oracle), Excite@Home, Sybase, and Cypress Semiconductor. Discussed the changes in VC, going public and the reasons companies should go public again, the problems secondaries for founders create, how to leave a company ethically...

E105 Fireside with a VC speaking with Venktesh (Venk) Shukla founder of Monta Vista Capital and former President of TiE Silicon Valley, Chair of TiE Global. Venk explains the core values and magic of TiE. We discuss what Venk learned from making his first 20 investments and how he developed his framework for his Monta Vista Capital seed stage VC fund and how he invests in pre-revenue and very earl...

E104 Fireside with a VC speaking with Bruce Barton, founder of Parkworth, Wealth Management for Tech Professionals in Silicon Valley and the author of Author of Personal Finance for Tech Professionals In Silicon Valley and Beyond. Discussing tax and personal finance issues specific to employees and founders of publicly traded and privately held tech startups and how equity compensation can get rat...

#103 Every CANADIAN startup or investor should listen to this episode! Fireside with a VC speaking with Kevin Kliman CEO of Humi discussing getting healthy lowering costs, maintaining growth, the tradeoffs to consider raising a growth VC funding round or not, and when to raise. Discussing Humi’s business which is processing $4.5bn CAD of payroll every 4.5 months. Humi is the payroll, benefits, &am...

Episode #102 Fireside with a VC speaking with Tige Savage who cofounded Revolution with Steve Case, founder of AOL – America Online, one of the biggest internet companies in history reaching a peak market cap of $200bn dominating email, internet connectivity, online news, and chat. Tige discusses all things venture capital with a wealth of multi-decade experience covering a wide area of topics on...

Fireside with a VC episode #101, Andrew Romans on The American Dreams Show with Alan Olsen discussing the future of venture capital covering Seed to Late Seed & Series A and Late Stage Growth VC and what has changed over the past few decades. Alan Olsen is a fixture in Silicon Valley and cofounder of GROCO Family Office Advisors, Advisors to the Ultra Affluent and organizer of Legacy Builders....

Fireside with a VC episode #100 speaking with Vibhor Rastogi, Global Head of AI investments at Citi Ventures, discussing how to determine startup valuations and how much capital a startup should raise. How much to raise should be driven by enough time runway to achieve the next key milestone to unlock the next funding round - be that product, revenue, users or other measurable business milestone K...

Fireside with a VC episode #99 speaking with Matthew Calhoun, director at Equity Trust, formerly Midland Trust Company, discussing the benefits of investing into alternative assets such as venture capital funds using your self-directed IRA dollars. What is a Self-Directed IRA and what is different from other retirement accounts? What are the requirements, terms, and cost for this, and how long doe...

Fireside with a VC episode #98 speaking with Eric Ver Ploeg, Founding Partner of Tunitas Ventures about key data and trends in the US tech Series A fundraising environment as well as specifics about how much cash funding a startup should raise at pre-Seed, Late-Stage Seed and Series A as well as the many other considerations with regards to terms and legal structures do’s and don’ts.   Eric Ver Pl...

Fireside with a VC episode #97 speaking with Igor Jablokov, CEO of Pryon $159m VC funding and founder and CEO of Yap, which Igor sold to Amazon which became the nucleus of Amazon’s Alexa & Fire TV. Pryon was the code name for Alexa. Discussing the evolution of humanity with AI, risks of AI, what we need or should expect with regulations, where innovation is happening, what are the OSI layers o...

Fireside with a VC episode #96 speaking with Kristine Di Bacco, Partner at law firm Fenwick, discussing tough terms for startups in the context of flat and down rounds as well as more punishing terms for startups. What is common and expected in today’s market for up, flat, down rounds as well as convertible notes and SAFEs? Planning today’s current round in a way to set a precedent for the next fu...

Episode #95, Peter Berg, one of two Managing Directors leading M12 Microsoft’s Venture Fund, discusses with Andrew Romans on Fireside with a VC how Microsoft is investing in early-stage startups in B2B SaaS, AI, web3/crypto, and gaming. How the $2.776 trillion dollar conglomerate can add value to startups in a way no other VC can match.   Find this and all full episodes for Fireside with a VC on y...

Episode #94, Why is China the way it is, what’s happened, and how is China interacting with the rest of the world from a startup & VC perspective? Jonathan Bench, a China expert, practicing lawyer in the region, and active for over 20 years in the market, discusses with Andrew Romans on Fireside with a VC: • What led up to the decoupling with China and how North American, European and Japanese...

Episode #93, VC Panel Part Questions from Audience @7BC San Francisco Event Nov. 14, 2023 VC Panel *Benjamin D. Black, Co-founder and Managing Director, Akkadian Ventures *Victoria Cheng, Partner, PruVen Capital *Carolin Funk, Partner, Blue Bear Capital *Vibhor Rastogi, Global Head of AI/ML/Data Investments, Citi Ventures *Ben Levy, Cofounder, BootstrapLabs *Andrew Romans, General Partner, 7BC Ven...

Episode #92, Part I of the VC Panel at the 7BC Venture Capital San Francisco event Nov 14, 2023 *Benjamin D. Black, Co-founder and Managing Director, Akkadian Ventures *Victoria Cheng, Partner, PruVen Capital *Carolin Funk, Partner, Blue Bear Capital *Vibhor Rastogi, Global Head of AI/ML/Data Investments, Citi Ventures *Ben Levy, Cofounder, BootstrapLabs *Andrew Romans, General Partner, 7BC Ventur...

Episode #91, Part II of the VC Panel at the 7BC Venture Capital San Francisco event Nov 14, 2023 *Benjamin D. Black, Co-founder and Managing Director, Akkadian Ventures *Victoria Cheng, Partner, PruVen Capital *Carolin Funk, Partner, Blue Bear Capital *Vibhor Rastogi, Global Head of AI/ML/Data Investments, Citi Ventures *Ben Levy, Cofounder, BootstrapLabs *Andrew Romans, General Partner, 7BC Ventu...

Episode #90, Down rounds & pay-to-pay provisions, raising at a lower valuation on Fireside with a VC   Ben Kern, Partner at Winston & Strawn LLP, corporate securities veteran, discusses the details of how startups raise funding in down rounds at lower valuations than the last funding round as well as more punitive financings that cram down or wipe out existing investors that do not Pay-to-...

Episode #89, Jarred Kessler, CEO, EasyKnock fintech, real-estate tech, 15th largest home owner in the US Discussing the dynamics of inflation, interest rates and the volatile US residential real-estate market; Running a New York fintech / real-estate startup before, during, and after Covid; Raising over $120m of equity funding and $600m of debt financing; How they became the 15th largest owner of...

Episode #88, Everything you need to know about Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS), the exemption that allows investors in startups or investors in VC funds that invest in startups to NOT pay capital gains tax on the greater of the first $10m of capital gains or 10x the cost basis (what you paid for the stock). A discussion of what qualifies and what does not, how this plays with the amount of f...

Episode #87 Discussion with Catalina Daniels and James Sherman, authors of Smart Startups: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know-Advice from 18 Harvard Business School Founders published today by Harper Business. This book has 18 interviews with a compelling list of founders that all raised VC funding and managed to get to an exit via M&A or IPO. The authors and interviewees can be forgiven fo...

Episode #86 Flint Capital investing in Israeli startups coming to the USA Fireside with a VC speaking with Andrew Gershfeld at Flint Capital based in Boston and Tel Aviv talking about funding and supporting Israeli startups and helping them grow into large US companies. Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3sEIYeIri_E.   Find this and all episodes for Fireside with a VC here: https://pod...

Episode #85 Building startups on SalesForce – Place RevOps automation and connectivity   Fireside with a VC talking to Brandon Metcal, CEO of Place, about RevOps (revenue operations) to solve financial forecasting and cash management with sales starting in 2020. Also discussing automating and synchronizing sales to finance, to human resources and other components to streamline SaaS companies that...