LA Venture

Marcos Gonzalez is the managing partner at Vamos Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund investing in Hispanic and diverse founders.     Over half of LA county is Hispanic. Seems like a great time to be investing in this community!

Great discussion with Arjan Schutte about democratizing prosperity and running Core Innovation Capital, a finTech fund that measures its impact on society and has invested in Ripple, NerdWallet, Synapse, Fundera and more.

Mark Suster from Upfront explains why the best time to talk to founders about fundraising is 3-4 months after their last fundraise.     He was kind enough to share that framework and others this week on LAV.   #longla

One of my new favorite LA investors, Petra Griffith, joins to discuss Wedbush Ventures.  Petra talks about starting a new fund, how she's seen venture debt work well as non-dilutive funding, and lessons on the content business from Netflix and Yahoo.

Bruce's new $100M fund, Miramar Digital Ventures II, invests early in software and data.  He explains why many VCs have gone back to preferring notes over SAFEs, and other insights on deal preferences and construction.

Lots of insights on equity crowdfunding today from Buck Jordan.  He's raising $50-100k/day (mostly on SeedInvest) for the cool robotics and food companies coming out of WaveMaker Labs. He also has great insights on corporate innovation and how seed stage companies can take advantage of corporate partners.

This is a pre-election must listen.  Andrew Glazier is the CEO of Defy Ventures and runs an incredible entrepreneurship program for incarcerated entrepreneurs. We talk about developing an entrepreneurial mindset and the need for criminal justice reform.

We talk with Jim Andelman about Bonfire's new $100M Fund II, the great team additions (Jennifer Richard, Tyler Churchill, Brett Queener), what good traction looks like nowadays, and a couple great resources on tech.

Super interesting guest (and person), Z Holly talks about university innovation, LA manufacturing, gracious professionalism, the LA River, and a parachute malfunction while skydiving...!

Mark is a leading B2B investor and on the board of Scopely, Icertis and more.  He shares his current investment theses and explains how Greycroft operates as a seed to growth stage venture fund.