Fundraising Intermediaries? Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Do It, And Where It Still Makes Sense
When it comes to startup fundraising, using intermediaries is looked disfavorably in many if not most ecosystems. Three key reasons for this trend -- more investors around, technology has made coordination and communication increasingly...
Crowdfunding? 3 Principles For Entrepreneurs
Oculus. Glowforge. Flow. Exploding Kittens. Veronica Mars. Tile. The Coolest Cooler. BauBax. Fidget Cube. What do all of these companies have in common? They are all successful and started with crowdfunding -- the list...
Why Founders Should (Mostly) Stay CEOs
Amazon. Apple. Google. Facebook. Microsoft. Oracle. What all these companies have in common is one of the founders was / is the CEO that presided over the company for much of its existence, especially...
Be a Better Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs always look for the right recipe to increase the odds of success. Steve Blank was probably one of the “recipe” pioneers as he started the lean startup movement. Before the lean movement, I would...
Pre-emptive round? 4 Ways To Decide How Startups Should Approach It
Someone wants to give you money before you start fundraising? When you still have cash in the bank? And you are getting a great valuation? Hurray! But while it’s almost always a good thing, there...
Second Mover Advantage — 3 Key Principles To Succeed As A Fast Follower
Ask the general public and they will tell you being the first into a market is the key to winning. But building a company is rarely a linear race. In fact, as many have...
Should I Take This Money? 5 Major Ways VCs Invest In You — And...
VCs come in many different shapes: investment thesis, fund size, geographic focus, profit-motivated versus strategic returns, and how they invest. Indeed, VCs use a variety of investment vehicles including opportunity fund, special-purpose vehicle (SPV,...
Why Diagnostics Is Hard: Three Extra Challenges And How Startups Can Still Succeed
Diagnostics shares the same two key challenges as most of digital health. One, long sales cycles of 9-18 months into providers, often even longer for payors and pharma. Two, FDA approval that necessitates clinical...
Virtual Fundraising For Startups — A Q&A
Q&A with Eileen Wu Raise Partners CEO and Sand Hill Network Co-Founder, Former CNN and CNBC Reporter/Producer Has virtual fundraising leveled the playing field for international founders? Is it easier now for international founders to...
Venture Capital is for the Elite only
Our economy has changed. I see three significant trends. A significant number of youngsters, freshly out of school, want to become entrepreneurs. Corporate is not attractive, and the best talents no longer dream of...
Why We Invested In Labelbox aka “The Pickaxe” Of The AI Revolution
We just invested in Labelbox as part of their $40M series C led by B Capital, here is some of the coverage: Business Insider, VentureBeat, company's blog post. Tau Ventures is an AI-first fund...
Plato, tech giants, and start-ups have a secret recipe in common
If I asked you, what you think, ancient Greek philosophy and modern innovation practice have in common, you would probably answer not a lot, if anything. But you would be surprised. The most successful methodologies applied...
Why We Invested In Decoded Health aka “A Medical Resident In Your Pocket”
In January we invested in Decoded Health as part of their $4.5M seed led by Sierra Ventures. Tau Ventures is an AI-first fund in Silicon Valley investing primarily in seed but we occasionally take...
Synthetic Biology — Golden Land Of Startups?
Synthetic biology is the branch of biotech that is about creating new biological parts from scratch or from templates in nature. It is often about genes or proteins that can be used in research...
Optimism is a double edge sword
Let’s agree, there is a thin line between reality and hallucination. To be an entrepreneur, you need to be delusional, and small lies are essential to progress in an environment that lacks hard evidence. Sometimes...
Synthetic Equity — Pros > Cons For Startups?
In the US, limited liability corporations (LLCs) are a recent phenomenon -- Wyoming pioneered them in 1977, the IRS issued comprehensive rules around their taxation in 1988, and by 1996 all 50 states had...
Is Silicon Valley Dying? No And Why It Still Makes Sense For Entrepreneurs
There are these headlines: Aug 26, 2020: Palantir’s Bay Area move makes Denver the city to watch amid Silicon Valley’s exodus Dec 1, 2020: Hewlett Packard Enterprise moving headquarters from Silicon Valley Dec 12, 2020: Oracle to...
Disaggregation of the Hospital – A Counterintuitive Opportunity for Startups?
Tau Ventures is a seed-focused fund investing in applied AI in digital health, enterprise and automation (cars, robots). We think a lot about where healthcare is going and one of the biggest trends we...
To PR Or Not To PR? 5 Key Questions For Startups
Wired published a thought-provoking opinion article in 2015 comparing the news cycle around startups to a 12-hr clock. Indeed, tech in general and Silicon Valley in particular has received significant criticism over the years...
Early-stage is not about speed
I’ve long been wanting to write about speed. I am developing my 4th startup in solo mode, and I cannot go fast :-). Is it an issue? A common perception is that speed is what...