« OSBC West call for papers | Main | 3 times 10 years »
November 19, 2005
What's in a VC?
John Battelle has a piece up about how companies like Google or Yahoo may soon be competing with "tradtional" VCs to fund startups. Actually, John doesn't say that they are already - but even so, you go "of course" when reading the observation. It makes absolute sense for companies like that to use their funds to get in on startup funding. Especially in the area of seed or bootstrap funding, as VCs typically are less interested in going for that.
Often, companies in an early stage will have a good idea of what technological feat they want to achieve but will be less savvy on how they will go to market, find initial customers, grow their business and achieve the exit position VCs are looking for after say five years.
At that stage startups are more able to talk to their peers about the sexy idea they have and the bits they'll tweak. VCs often don't have the deep technological background or time to educate themselves and be able to envision how the seed may be brought to life over time.
Now, Google or Yahoo come with that sort of background, can talk to startups at that peer level and have the cash to boot. Strap.
Posted by Matthew at November 19, 2005 08:01 AM