Combined, portfolio companies are valued over $219B, propelled by the valuations of the 20 unicorns we have funded.
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David Cohen
@davidcohen
Founder and Chairman at . First round investor in 20+ unicorns like Uber, Twilio, DigitalOcean +more. Geeky to the bone. Podcasting on Give First.
David Cohen’s Tweets
Want to learn more about ESG? 🌎 Listen in on some of our ESG takeovers and how to make it a priority going into 2023.
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Interested in connecting to startup communities or building one yourself? Creating a startup community or making the most of one that already exists can feel daunting. Leverage others past experience so you can make the most of your future 🤝
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New to being a leader or wondering how you can be a strong future leader? 🗣 Listen to some of our guests that explore what being a leader means and how to make your employees feel empowered.
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Interested to learn more about diversity and inclusion? Explore some of our go-to’s on the topic. 💡 These are some great discussions to keep DEIB top of mind going into 2023.
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Wondering about the real value of mentors? Check out how some of the most successful people leaned on mentors to help them grow their success. Always remember that you can lean on your mentors for support 🚀
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Interested in hearing about unicorn 🦄 startups? Learn from first hand experience what it was like building at a unicorn inside the Techstars network. Who knows, you might be inspired and start the next one 👀
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Check out some of our investor focused podcasts that can help you take a step back and reflect or dive right into the minds of these investors with some tips and tricks. 🧘
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Looking for some of our staffs top picks? 🥇 Explore some of our favorite discussions and topics ranging from mental health, turning ideas into reality and even a guest who discussed reshaping the criminal justice system.
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Thanks for the hang . Such great actionable tips that you shared for the community. Can't wait to release this episode of the GiveFirst podcast later this month!
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Just spent some time with @davidcohen as a guest on the @Techstars Give First podcast.
Techstars has been a HUGE presence in my life (especially early in the startup chapter of my career) so this was a very cool full-circle moment for me.
The internet rules.
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Saba asks the best questions. What's your answer?
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Where should we launch the next @Techstars accelerator? And in which vertical, or should it be industry-agnostic?
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Congratulations to , a 2017 alumni, for completing its $40.8 million funding round🎉This funding will help the Slingshot develop new products and also finance recent acquisitions 🚀
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Congratulations to , a 2021 alumni, for raising a $12M seed round from internal investors + entering into a multi-year compute partnership with to bring foundation AI models for video understanding to market 🚀⭐️
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We are so grateful to our community for how much they show up to help others. This is the #givefirst awards ceremony at FounderCon.
This year 6 people won give first awards at FounderCon.
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Wednesday at 12:30pm ET I will discuss how to accelerate startups and the best ways to provide founders support in the growing ecosystem with Bailey DeVries for the 2022 Innovation Ecosystem Summit!
Support entrepreneurs in your community.
Register: hopin.com/events/2022-in
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Success takes more than just an idea…
Recently in Oakland, the theme of #foundercon, with over 1000+ portfolio company founders present, was resilience.
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Looking for a new challenge with an innovative company?
There are currently 6691 jobs available in the portfolio.
Check it out 👇
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We've been amazed by the work that has done over the years. If you're looking for awesome organizations to support at the end of the year, consider this one.
I donated to support as they seek to empower dedicated students of color with an intensive STEM education, culturally-relevant coursework and access to resources and social capital! Donate today and have every dollar donated matched by Dec 15
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Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with @davidcohen at #websummit about how companies can use the #Pledge1 framework to create social impact through equity. Our talk is now available here: bit.ly/3tC4cKL @websummit
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It does seem nuts to me that artists don't benefit from ticket resales. Most tickets sales are ticket resales! That's where all the money is made. Seems like a taylor-made (dad pun intended) opportunity to use #web3 to track this.
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#Ticketmaster is only going to get worse and make seeing concerts an impossible luxury for most fans. There is no world where it makes sense for 80-90% of face value inventory to go to resellers first instead of fans. To make matters worse artists like @taylorswift13 … 
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Just make sure your asks are reasonable and appropriate for the ways in which your investors want to help.
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Then, it’s up to you to give them jobs. They’re busy too, and they have limited time. But those who ask are typically the ones to receive.
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The trick is to get their buy in that you’ll be giving them one job a quarter, or at whatever pace they want to be helpful.
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Or you could ask one of them who said they have a great network to make 3 introductions to potential customers.
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For example, you could ask one of your investors who said they want to help with their network and raising capital to think about the 5 best investors for your next round.
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Give them jobs. Once you know how they want to be helpful, give them one job a quarter. Present that job in the context of how they’ve said they want to be helpful.
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First, have a discussion with each of them about how they want to be helpful. Asking this question is powerful, because they probably don’t want the answer to be “not at all.”
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So, how do you tap into that value?
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Much has been said about how to find and land investors. And, most investors say that they want to be helpful beyond just the money. They are “value added investors”, right?
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I was recently asked by one of our portfolio companies how to best leverage other investors post investment. A thread 👇👇👇
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During I met two students from . They are the next generation of innovators, scientists, and entrepreneurs who want to solve the world's biggest problems. Pretty cool!
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So, don’t expect a VC to be able to personally invest if their fund could have or did invest.
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The restaurant is not in the same space as their fund. And they can be LPs in other funds because LPs don’t make any investment decisions, hence no conflict of interest.
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Of course, a tech VC can probably invest in a restaurant or other funds. Why?
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This is why most VCs can’t write personal checks. Their fund agreements with their LPs almost always restrict that sort of activity.
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So, LPs pretty much always restrict the VC they’re investing in from investing personally because they don’t want the VC to cherry-pick the best companies for personal investment.
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That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
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That’s a conflict of interest. After all, she’s supposed to be Investing for you, her LP. Why wasn’t that investment in the fund that the LP invested in? Why are you paying them if you’re not getting the benefit of their work?
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Let’s say that VC then make a personal investment in what turns out to be the next “Uber” or “Facebook.”
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