VC Non Admissions | A VC

Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. His wife is Gotham Gal and his daughter Jessica Wilson blogs too.

Special Note - Even though I'm re-designing a new ReadingMaterialforEntrpreneurs in WordPress that won't be ready for awhile, I thought this presentation by Fred Wilson was too much fun to ignore.

Reading Material for Entrepreneurs Back Soon

Reading Material for Entrepreneurs is suspended temporarily while it is redesigned and reconstituted in a new Wordpress format. Check back for news about the relaunch.

Milton Glaser 10 Life Lessons

In 2001 Milton Glaser revealed the following "Ten Things" to an AIGA audience in London . Must reading for all entrepreneurs.

1. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.
2. IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.
3. SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.
4. PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.
5. LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
6. STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
7. HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
8. DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.
9. ON AGING.
10. TELL THE TRUTH.

Milton Glaser a famed graphic designer "had a major impact on contemporary illustration and design. His work has won numerous awards from Art Directors Clubs, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Illustrators and the Type Directors Club. In 1979 he was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and his work is included in the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum and the Musee de l'affiche in Paris. Glaser has taught at both the School of Visual Arts and at Cooper Union in New York City. He is a member of Alliance Graphique International (AGI)."

Looking for Failed Entrepreneurs!

In Technology Review Brad Feld wants "the experienced entrepreneur whose last company was a failure 100% of the time. The cliche “you learn more from failure than success holds true”, but more importantly the dude that just came off a failure and is ready to go again is super-extraordinary-amazingly hungry for a success."

Feld shows and reviews the video of Zynga's Mark Pincus about his lessons from Tribe – fail fast. Watch it to learn what the best entrepreneurs learn from both failure that they don't learn from success.

See this video on Vator.tv »

Brad Feld has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years. He is co-founder of Foundry Group and currently serves on the board of directors of Gnip, Oblong, and Zynga Game Network for Foundry Group. The posts published here originally appeared on www.feld.com.

Best career advice in 6 words?

Pete Johnson, Portals and Applications Chief Architect at Hewlett-Packard posed this question on Nerd Guru via his LinkedIn page.

Great fun to read and you should add your own contributions.

Two Venture Capitalists Help Entrepreneurs

Here are two "must view" videos for all early-in-their-entrepreneur-career entrepreneurs!

Venture Capital Crash Course with Jason Mendelson from Andrew on Vimeo.

Jason Mendolson opens the door for any entrepreneur to see the inner workings of a real live venture capitalist in the extended presentation.

Jason Mendelson and his partner Brad Feld and are the co-authors of AsktheVC. Brad and Jason have been working together since 2000 when Jason joined Mobius Venture Capital, a venture capital firm that Brad co-founded. They started writing together on Brad's Feld Thoughts blog in 2005 with their Term Sheet series. After several other series about issues facing venture capital backed companies, Jason and Brad decided to start AsktheVC. Brad and Jason, along with three other partners have recently founded a new venture firm, the Foundry Group located in Boulder, Colorado.

In nine videos which are all on YouTube Fred Wilson describes his history and development as a Venture Capitalist to a group of students from InSITE (Investments from Student Interaction with Technology and Entrepreneurs).

Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures and publisher of A VC, Musings of a VC in NYC

Venture Capital "Walking Dead" Lists

Alert to entrepreneurs: Do your own due diligence! Here is a good question to ask the VC you are pitching. Ask them whether they are actually capable of funding your venture?

In March Dan Primack of PE Hub blogged a list of venture capital firms he termed the “VC Walking Dead” — firms that by all indication appear to be still in business but lack the cash to bring new investments on board. Camille Ricketts of VentureBeat just published The VC walking dead: Extended edition a fresh look at the Venture Capital industry that tries to sort those that merely appear dead from those that are in fact "among the walking dead".

And this just in from the National Venture Capital Association as reported by Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch - Venture Capital Fundraising Is Down Nearly 40 Percent In First Quarter of 2009. Schonfeld had recently reported on poor Venture Capital results across the board in Q1.

Are you working for a startup and don’t know when to quit?

By devbloke | CodeLathe Blog

"If it has been more than 5 years and the company has not become profitable, quit. Take your losses. Invest your experience and time in another company. Even better, start your own company."

Google Ventures Launches with “We May Steal Your Idea” Caveat

Andy Beal of MarketPilgrim warns of a dark lining behind Google's new $100m venture fund.

"If you’re a start-up that’s making moves despite the recession, Google wants to hear from you. Specifically, Google Ventures–the newly launched venture capital arm of the search giant–wants to hear from you."

He notes the disclaimer language on the site with his own emphasis added

"We welcome new ideas. However, please do not send us information that you consider to be confidential or proprietary. Because of what we do, we receive a high volume of business plans, presentations, pitches, memos - you get the picture - and because these materials are often similar, because they come to us in a variety of forms, and because we read a ton of stuff, we cannot and do not accept responsibility for protecting against the misuse or disclosure of any information unless we have expressly agreed (in writing) to do so."

Beal says, "In other words, send us your business plan but if we don’t invest and instead launch a competing service, you’re, er, SOL buddy."

Entrepreneurship Less Risky Than Jobs?

Entrepreneurship Less Risky Than Jobs? - For more amazing video clips, click here