Mark Suster
Mark Suster
Los Angeles, CA, United States
Contact Mark
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Past articles by Mark:
Praying to the God of Valuation
Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. It wasn’t always like… → Read More
How I Lost 65 Pounds In 18 Months Without Any Fad Diets or Gimmicks
I’ve been reluctant to write this blog post because historically I don’t like talking about weight. But I’ve been promising to publish how I lost 65 pounds in the past 18 months without any fad diets… → Read More
Funding in the Time of Coronavirus
I am due to speak at the SaaStr conference next week: Wednesday, March 11th at 10:45 AM. I had originally signed up to talk about the “VC Market Trends” overall but it seemed inauthentic to speak… → Read More
What Did I Learn From the First VC Check I Ever Wrote?
I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. I had just left Salesforce.com where I was VP, Products, after they had acquired my second startup. As I was trying to… → Read More
Why You Can’t Get Serious About Productivity Unless You Optimize How Your People Use Your Space
I fund startups for a living and before that I ran two software startups that I founded. I’ve spent countless hours looking at historical finances, budgets, forecasts and future projections. With a standard tech startup I can tell you in my sleep that your two biggest cost items by a long shot are people (between 60–75% of total costs) and space (10–20% of total costs). The only other… → Read More
Managing Your Startup Board — A Short Presentation
I was invited to do a keynote presentation at the Khosla Ventures CEO Summit this week in Sausalito. It was an amazing gathering of some of the most ambitious early-stage CEO’s looking to make a dent… → Read More
My Commencement Speech — Life at Your Crossroads
Cal Poly Pomona! What’s up!?! I’m so grateful to be up here addressing you today. Today you’re either here to graduate or support somebody graduating. A graduate is at his or her first major… → Read More
My Commencement Speech — Life at Your Crossroads – Mark Suster –
Cal Poly Pomona! What’s up!?! I’m so grateful to be up here addressing you today. Today you’re either here to graduate or support somebody graduating. A graduate is at his or her first major… → Read More
The Truth About the Scooter Economy — An Insider’s Perspective
There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has quietly re-emerged as a powerful force of growth where few really… → Read More
One Simple Way to Eliminate Distractions in a Board Meeting
Several members of your executive taken hours to prepare board materials so that you can inform your board of how things have gone since you last met 3 months ago and you have 3 hours together to… → Read More
How to Run an Effective Networking Dinner
Networking is a critical part of relationship building and there is no event more valuable to building relationships than the proverbial “breaking of bread” with people. I personally run many group… → Read More
How to Prepare for a Board Meeting to Make Sure you Crush It
Most board meetings are administrative updates that accomplish very little other than inform board members about the performance of the company since the last board meeting. That’s certainly one… → Read More
Startup Boards – Both Sides of the Table
Startups that are backed by professional financial investors almost always have a Board of Directors that consists of some set of founders, investors and sometimes independent directors. While the… → Read More
This is the Dumbest Op Ed I’ve Read in a While – Both Sides of the Table
I understand that Adam Grant is a fairly popular professor at Wharton and has a book that some people loved called “Originals” (for me it interesting but not mind blowing, and I have some first-hand… → Read More
Why Has Seed Investing Declined? And What Does this Mean for the Future?
Over the past month a colleague (Chang Xu) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. We… → Read More
Want to See What all the Fuss was About? The Shocking Opening to the Upfront Summit?
As you may know we run an annual conference called The Upfront Summit in which we try to bring together the world of investors, entrepreneurs and interesting people from the world of sports… → Read More
A Deep Dive into What Has Really Changed in Venture Capital
I’ve heard a lot of people question whether there is too much money in venture capital chasing too few great deals. “We’re in a new tech bubble!” some have pronounced. “Valuations are out of control”… → Read More
Is vc still a thing final
Published on Feb 4, 2019 A look at the Venture Capital industry heading into 2020. Some have questioned whether the industry has a future. This deck does a detailed look at where the industry is and why the future of VC still looks bright. → Read More
Why It’s Time for Les Moonves to Go – Both Sides of the Table
I just returned from a week’s vacation in the mountains where I had almost no Internet access but was aware that Ronan Farrow had published a damning sexual misconduct article about Les Moonves, the… → Read More
Some Quick Things Every Founder Should Know – Both Sides of the Table
One thing that comes with being a venture capitalist is you see hundreds and hundreds of businesses. You get to have interesting conversations with founders and review business plans and then see how… → Read More