VC Roundtables #SmartMoneySV

We had some great investors speak on vc roundtables @SmartMoney Silicon Valley.  Here is the first one ‘Silicon Valley Venture Trends Roundtable’ which featured Cathy Lego, Lego Ventures; Eurie Kim, Principal Forerunner Ventures; Gamiel Gran, Partner Sierra Ventures; Saad Khan, Partner CMEA IT; Sarah Cone, Associate Illuminate Ventures; Christine Tsai, Partner 500Startups with moderator Christina Farr, Venturebeat.

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Steve Blank: Do Dysfunctional Families Breed Entrepreneurs?

Steve Blank spoke about his theory that dysfunctional families breed entrepreneurs @Smart$Money in Silicon Valley.  I find this is a fascinating subject & had shared his original article many years ago with many folks.  He also spoke about how Founders often need to move on when a startup grows.  As long as everyone is clear about this fact that Founders’ skills are more about research & that building a company requires other skills, then there is nothing wrong.  His original article which is brilliant is on VentureBeat  You can find Steve @his blog & on Twitter @sgblank

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Jalak Jobanputra: It Can Still Be Challenging for Women to be Heard

Jalak Jobanputra gave me a few minutes interview @SmartMoney Silicon Valley last week.  I asked her to comment on how the ecosystem looks now for women raising funding.  She also gave her perspective on how things are shaping up for European entrepreneurs.  You can check out my interviews with Jalak a couple of years ago Women Startups & Venture Capitalists & European Startups & Venture

Jalak is a venture capitalist with 20 years experience in digital media, enterprise software, communications, broadband infrastructure, healthcare IT, ed tech, mobile and Internet in NYC, Silicon Valley, Boston, India, Africa, Europe. Investments include Outside.in (sold to AOL), TxVia (prepaid card processing platform, sold to Google), Thumbplay (mobile music subscription service), Imagespan (digital media monetization platform), Datasynapse (enterprise grid and cloud computing, sold to Tibco), Viacore (enterprise partner integration, sold to IBM), Demantra (demand chain management, sold to Oracle), Yodlee (online banking), Zinio (magazine ereader). She spearheaded formation of NYCSeed in 2008, seed fund for early stage startups in NYC. Served on its Investment Committee and Venture Advisory Board. Portfolio includes Enterproid, Seatgeek, Magnetic,Ticketfly. Selection committee, mentor and speaker for 2010 Seedstart, NYC’s first accelator bootcamp.  You can follow Jalak on Twitter @jalak

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