Academic

Google's VC Fund

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

From today's W$J, Google is planning to launch a venture capital fund. I was especially interested in this paragraph from the story:

With an abundance of venture-capital money available today, Google will have to convince entrepreneurs that it has something to offer that other investors don't. It has several advantages, including a brand admired by start-ups and the ability to offer sizable technical resources.

When I first started studying venture capital in the mid-1990s, most of the research assumed that entrepreneurs had something close to zero bargaining power because VCs had the money. Of course, in the buildup of the Internet, many hot startup found themselves in the then-surprising position of being able to choose among VCs. And many of them made that choice based on factors other than price. Now, it has become conventional wisdom that the best valuations come from the VC firms with the shortest records of success, while the successful firms are able to attract entrepreneurs despite having lower valuations.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on July 31, 2008 (boomark / email).