Venture Capital Brazil - Latest Comments

Re: Should Brazilian Startups Move to Silicon Valley?

Karim K — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:02:11 -0000

whaooo, that's a fantastic post. I could be said of any market. A 19 yr old softmore student could write such crap. Please don't waste any more of precious web space to write useless texts.

Re: Incorporating in the US: LLC or C-Corp?

Ronaldo Duarte — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:34:33 -0000

Brazil has technology enough to support external investment, the future is now !

Re: The Death of Distance in Venture Capital

vcbrazil — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:52:48 -0000

Great stuff - thank you!

Re: The Death of Distance in Venture Capital

Roberto Riccio — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:30:17 -0000

Ted, in case you don't have time to read it all, I've put up on SlideShare a quick presentation I had made about this paper for academic purposes. http://www.slideshare.net/RRic...

Re: The Death of Distance in Venture Capital

vcbrazil — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:25:52 -0000

That's great Roberto - thank you !

Re: The Death of Distance in Venture Capital

Roberto Riccio — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:09:05 -0000

There's a cool Harvard study about this subject, Ted.

"Buy Local? The Geography of Successful and Unsuccessful Venture Capital Expansion" - http://www.hbs.edu/research/pd...

Re: The Death of Distance in Venture Capital

vcbrazil — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:53:15 -0000

Great points -- for a long time people have pushed the idea of "the death of distance" but even people who believe it (me included) cannot argue that it is as good as face to face interaction.
I believe the feasibility of distributed teams is situation dependent -- in some businesses it can be done effectively and the positives outweigh the negatives, in others businesses it can't and they don't.
For VC -- so far the model you mentioned is the one preferred by most VCs, with some notable exceptions like DST, 500 Startups and a few others.

Re: The Death of Distance in Venture Capital

André Luis — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:27:36 -0000

I used to believe that with the increasing of the conferencing technologies we could work in distributed teams effectively. But after long working with this kind of technology I've learned that it is not true. The interaction face-to-face is much richer than any communication technology.

In any serious business you need to be close, you need to know in depth you partner. Otherwise the risk arises significantly. But with all the opportunities available the risks are not in communication as you said.

The "logistic" problem is what concerns more. The Facebook, Twitter, Google and Skype all have problems with local legislation. The Google in Brazil had a lot of problems concerning data privacy. Skype can't have some of your services here. Paypal still don't work well in Germany.

I believe that local partners, something like local VCs hubs or branches, with cultural knowledge are the key to create trust to be possible to make the bridge between internationals VCs and local entrepreneurs.

Re: Five Myths About Venture Capital

Tiago Sommacal — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:55:46 -0000

Awesome post, Ted! Congratulations!

Re: Resources for Entrepreneurs in Rio de Janeiro

vcbrazil — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:02:06 -0000

Desculpe Kadu -- NascenTI e um recurso importante para emprendedores no Rio -- e Confrapar ha sido ajudando emprendedores no Brazil por muitos anos. Um abraço,
T

2012/2/19 Disqus <>

Re: Resources for Entrepreneurs in Rio de Janeiro

Guilherme — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:13:30 -0000

A Confrapar possui um fundo que só investe em startups do estado do Rio de Janeiro o NascenTI é um fundo de 35 milhões, já investiu em 2 empresas, e quer investir em mais 6 empresas nos próximos 2 anos

Re: Five Myths About Venture Capital

Tristan Kromer — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:38:09 -0000

While I like the first point and agree with the conclusion of others, the proof points here are sketchy.
Myth #2 - The % of firms that go bankrupt says nothing about the salaries of individuals or their net wealth before, after, and during their VC years. (The conclusion would not surprise me at all, but it's not proven by your facts.) Also depends on what you mean by rich. I have yet to meet a VC living in a one room studio apartment. A low VC salary would be considered quite wealthy by some.

Myth #3 - I agree with this point, but picking a few high profile companies and showing their location says nothing about whether it's better to be based in the valley or not. There is some good information backing your point if you look around a bit for stats of the likelihood of being funded depending on location.

Myth #4 - This surprises me. I have never heard anyone say this where I live (Silicon Valley). The similar and often repeated statement here is that it costs less to start a company and bring it to a point of discernable traction. Not scale it to massive sizes. Perhaps this myth is only in Brazil.

Myth #5 - This is true from my perspective, but has less to do with Venture Capital and more to do with whether or not entrepreneurs should get over themselves and their "great" ideas.

Re: Five Myths About Venture Capital

Gringo! — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:01:16 -0000

Also, maybe the stage affects the end result - late stage vs early stage. Or maybe there's a stage sweet spot - series A/B, after the business has aged a little bit and hit a few key milestones. Finally, related to the below, maybe you can make your fortune a little bit but using roll-up strategies or synergistic portfolio approaches where the portfolio companies help each other out.

Re: Five Myths About Venture Capital

Gringo! — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:36:19 -0000

Scary.... Some do seem to make a business of picking winners though. Meaning between years, those in the top 10 pct seem to stay in the top 10 pct even as the portfolio turns over.

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

M2M MARKETPLACE — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:16:55 -0000

M2M MARKETPLACE: Desde España está funcionando una publicación que recoge las opiniones de empresas e inversores en el ámbito de los Business Angels, se han producido interesantes operaciones en el sector tecnológico, aquí os dejo el enlace: www.emprenred.es

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

vcbrazil — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:25:17 -0000

Good question! I will post about that, as well but I don't think there are very many to choose from...

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

Eloi Dechery — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:36:12 -0000

Great compendium Ted.
What are, according to you, the best blogs/site about Tech/VC focusing on Brazil? (besides yours :))

Re: It’s Not Different This Time, It Never Is

stacey — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:55:57 -0000

Yes! That it wasn't at all different this time. Investors have been making the same basic mistake over and over again ever since the first stock market opened for business. I believe that the answer is the rejection of the Passive Investing model of understanding how stock investing works.

Re: Urgency

Gringo! — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:13:20 -0000

Ted,

If you're not familiar with the marshmallow experiment on kids, take a look at this: http://sivers.org/time.

Maybe what you're calling inner focus, as the balance/complement to urgency, is, at times, future orientation (which is also associated with delayed gratification). Being able to visualize achieving the goal in the future and then reasoning back all the steps that will be required to achieve the goal, and then taking those steps... proactively/promptly/urgently even when it means delaying some present gratification. In short, it's the desire for the better thing in the future that drives the urgency today to take action.

In the case of the marshmallow experiment, it was a child being able to visualize that not eating the marshmallow now would result in receiving 100% more marshmallows in the future (2 instead of 1) and then taking the steps to wait (including distracting themselves, talking about other things, not looking at the marshmallow - it's actually a very cute experiment) to achieve the goal of receiving two marshmallows in the future.

Perhaps in technology, Steve Jobs would be an example of being super future oriented (as well as urgent in effecting the intermediate steps). He saw what was achievable technologically super early and then took all the necessary steps to effect the goal, ever pushing the organization to keep making progress to the goal. As each goal was achieved, rather than rest on that success, he picked a more daring, further out, seemingly insurmountable goal and worked toward it again.

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

davidblerner — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:47:41 -0000

thanks for the mention Ted, much appreciated
-dave

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

vcbrazil — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:09:58 -0000

Very well said - wish I had written it myself...

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

vcbrazil — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:09:13 -0000

Ricardo - awesome - I was hoping for some recommendations. Good stuff.
Ted

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

Ricardo Taveira — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:15:50 -0000

Ted, coincidentally I have just now (as in 20 minutes ago) finished a book which may be considered a good "middle-ground" choice:

http://www.amazon.com/Business...

Don't let the "Wiley Finance" marquee fool you--It's highly readable (unlike Gompers/Lerner) and, to its credit, yields the majority of its insights from interviews with practitioners. It was published very recently (October 2011). Now, as you said, it may prove to be comically outdated four years from now, but on the other hand that's the nature of the business.

Abraço

Re: The Best Venture Capital Blogs

Gringo! — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:07:35 -0000

Books are dead. RSS, twitter, social distribution, pdf, scribd and Amazon have all combined to strangle the publishing industry. Writings will be shorter, more focused, frequently updated, and either be a freemium model or a form of pay-per-use/as-needed (either subscription or single low payment for a non-refreshed snapshot).

Re: Brazilian Startups: Turbulence Ahead?

Pedro Sorrentino — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:48:02 -0000

Great post Ted. I couldn't agree more.