I presented a few weeks ago to the American Marketing Association Executive Forum on how their members can work with and earn money from private equity and venture capital funds. I discussed all of the major engagement models: Expert Networks, Consulting, Interim Executives, Advisors, Board Members, Deal Executives, and Executives in Residence/Entrepreneurs in Residence. I’ve...
[Continue Reading]First-ever survey of VC tech stacks
We think one of the industries with the greatest room for improved use of technology is venture capital itself. Blue Future Partners, a fund of funds, and PEVCTech.com are now running what we believe is the first-ever large-scale survey of VC firms’ technology stacks. Filling out this survey should take you no more than 7...
[Continue Reading]How to get world class experts to support your company
As the former CEO of a professional expert network, I’m a firm believer in the value of speedy access to relevant experts. I was excited to see that GLG (formerly Gerson Lehrman Group), the industry leader, is now offering a professional network service geared to the needs of the startup community: GLG Share. When you’re...
[Continue Reading]Recruiting Hacks: How to Woo, Win and Recruit the High Performers
I finally got around to posting the video from a Founder Institute class I taught earlier this year onRecruiting Hacks: How to Woo, Win and Recruit the High Performers . Although I focused on recruiting technical talent, my points are applicable to recruiting in general. Feedback always welcome! I’ve also attached below the extended slide deck....
[Continue Reading]How Private Equity Funds Are and Should Be Using Social Media
Can professional investors use social media? Or, is social media strictly for teenagers and staying in touch with your friends? Historically, institutional investors kept their investing strategy and their activities very discreet. Today, however, some are aggressively employing social media tools to discuss their strategies, deals in the pipeline, and even their political views...
[Continue Reading]How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Companies
Drew Hansen just posted a very interesting piece on Forbes on, “How VCs Deploy Operating Talent To Build Better Startups”. He draws on the research study my coauthors and I are about to publish on best practices in how venture capitalists increase the odds of company success through operational assistance. We are using just about...
[Continue Reading]Lessons from Facebook on Recruiting Elite Engineers
Following is a guest post from ff Venture Capital winter intern Max Segan, a Colgate senior majoring in computer science, who is starting at Facebook this summer as a software engineer. From our perspective, Facebook is both our friend (training hundreds of talented future entrepreneurs) and enemy (competing with our portfolio companies for top talent...
[Continue Reading]Best Job Boards for Recruiting Startup Engineers
One of our portfolio companies asked me this week, “Do you all have a list of job boards your portfolio companies have had great success with in recruiting high quality engineers?” The unemployment rate for quality computer scientists/engineers in the major cities right now is zero; everyone who’s not pursuing his/her own startup can easily...
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