 W20: Venture Capital 2.0
 Session: Venture Capital 2.0 - Bright Future or Broken Forever?
Speakers:
Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, Jeff Clavier, SoftTech, David Horneck,
August Capital, Josh Kopleman, 1st Stage Capital, Chris Moore, Redpoint
Ventures
To frame these conversations, these companies invest
anywhere between $250K-100M in startup companies. The average
investment that most of these companies make is $4-5M (and usually with
additional capital partners).
To provide some credibility, these
guys have invested in the likes of: 2nd Life, Yelp, Six Apart,
Technorati, del.icio.us, Ask Jeeves, Tivo and Netflix (many in their
early rounds).
These Five key take aways from this session:
- The first five employees at any startup are the most important. Getting to twenty employees is a major milestone.
- The
trend of startup costs getting less and less expensive over time is
starting to change. Google (and other large technology companies) are
making the price of Web 2.0 labor more and more expensive.
- Geni.com looks to be one of the next Web 2.0 "VC darlings" -- possibility of $100M pre-valuation with $1oM raised.
- Private
equity companies are looking for companies with leaders that have the
right reputation, background and can put together a top-notch staff.
- Competition is increasing for good Web 2.0 companies among VCs and private equity companies
I have more detailed notes on this session if anyone would like them.
Mon, Apr 16 2007 |
