Venture Capital

All businesses must labor, to one degree or another, under a certain amount of mythology. Some are general myths, such as “We’re good friends and work well together, so let’s form a partnership!” Some are more specific, such as “I’m a great cook. I should start...

Venture capital is booming again. VCs invested a total of $48 billion last year — the highest amount in a decade. The lion’s share went to software, which attracted $19.8 billion, versus just $6 billion for biotech. There are many reasons why this is the...

Notable local employer Citrix System (CTXS: Nasdaq) is looking to sell itself whole before an activist investor forces the company into the scrapyard, wire news service Reuters is reporting. Citing unidentified sources, a Reuters article said the cloud computing firm has reached out to computer giant...

It is common wisdom nowadays that a founding team consisting of 2–3 founders is ideal. Doing it solo is simply too hard. Founder burnout is an imminent possibility, and statistics are simply not on your side. Many early stage investors will tell you outright that...

Angel and venture investors are paying much closer attention to young companies in Wisconsin. That observation is supported by the latest edition of the “Wisconsin Portfolio,” which showed a 31 percent jump in the number of early stage deals in Wisconsin in 2014 compared with...

Imagine if the founder of a very successful consumer technology company knocked on your door and offered to get you in on the ground floor of their new enterprise. Almost any VC would jump at the chance, as would most engineers and designers. But I...

Okta, the cloud identity management company, announced a $75 million round. Okta was valued at $1.2 billion in this deal, meaning it has entered the hallowed halls of the Unicorn club, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal....

Nearly 20 years ago, the launch of online payments giant PayPal shook the financial services industry. Now, a new generation of financial technology or “fintech” companies is once again breaking down the oversized doors of the conservative banking business. From facilitating loans to wealth...