Category Archives: Startups

May 19
Fred Destin

Zoopla at seven – how focus and speed drive exceptional outcomes

 I first invested in Zoopla in July 2007.  At the time, a mere £500,000 to get the company going and back Simon Kain and Alex Chesterman in improving the real estate experience. Last week, almost exactly 7 years after this …

2 Comments
Mar 31
Fred Destin

Why Series B is usually the hardest

 Tom Tunguz and Danielle Morrill both came out with data suggesting Series B are hard.  Tom calls it the “hardest round to raise”, based on his numbers.  Let me try to address why that is.   Let’s assume we’re in …

3 Comments
Feb 4
Fred Destin

Backing PillPack : a pharmacy you might actually love

Pharmacies are like banks.  When you have to go to one, it’s usually an unpleasant experience delivered in often indifferent fashion by overworked people.  TJ Parker and Elliott Cohen, the founders of Pillpack, together with the rest of the team, …

4 Comments
Jan 3
Fred Destin

Seed to Scale: towards a $30M round for Integral Ad Science

 I hate high capital intensity, yet here I am celebrating a $30 million (thirty) for Integral Ad Science led by the excellent August Capital with my beloved CEO telling Techcrunch “we did not have to raise”.   So what gives ? The wedge: …

2 Comments
Dec 10
Fred Destin

CAD Venture Chef : The Recipe for a $5M Series A with Lagoa

Since this is festive season I thought I would share with you the recipe of a successful series A fundraising and tell you the story of Lagoa: Start with a devilishly smart entrepreneur who’s able to code a multi-physics engine …

8 Comments
Nov 25
Fred Destin

Snapchat and that old no revenues debate

Like many others in the field I was left scratching my head about Snapchat recently.  Not because of the reported $4 billion offer but because of the explosion of age-old arguments about how scandalous it is for a company with …

22 Comments
Oct 12
Fred Destin

A (reconstituted) interview with Marc Andreessen

 Thanks to a slightly unfortunate messaging glitch (which of you entrepreneurs would like his labor of love to be compared to “fruit fly experiments” in the Wall Street Journal), pmarca a.k.a Marc Andreessen has been drawn into in-depth conversation on HackerNews.   …

5 Comments
Oct 9
Fred Destin

The Glorious Post Seed Startup Financing Chaos

The other day I got a call from Scott Kirstner at the Boston Globe answering: “what happens to all these incubators entrepreneurs after Demo Day”.   The short answer: chaos.  Full of opportunity, but chaos nonetheless.  Cue fractals on this …

19 Comments
Jul 11
Fred Destin

Dave McClure on growth hacking your way through the Series A crunch

Dave McClure’s new talk at Startup Festival in Montreal (#startupfest) slaps entrepreneurs across the face with the dire need for doing more marketing early to survive the funding drought … a.k.a. growth hack your way through the Series A crunch. …

5 Comments
Jun 27
Fred Destin

There are no shortcuts to intelligent Founder – CEO transitions

 Founder transition is one of those tense topics that holds limited upside for the writer, especially when said individual is a venture capitalist. However it’s also very often one of the defining moments in a startup’s life; a moment that, …

5 Comments