VCs? We Still Need Those?

from the so-they-say dept

I'm at the DEMO conference in Scottsdale today and tomorrow and since there's plenty of good coverage out there in the press and in blogs, it doesn't seem worth rehashing what everyone's been talking about. The one thing that seems the most interesting to me, however, is the fact that, even while VCs are handing out ridiculous sums of money to certain companies, a good number of the companies presenting at the conference are all bootstrapped to this stage. While it's likely that some of them will score large buckets of cash from the VCs who seem to be hiding under every other table here (seriously, you can't swing your name badge around without clocking a VC in the head -- I tried), it's good to see at least some startups realize that starting up a company doesn't mean "get VC first." Of course, this may have been out of necessity. Many of these companies were born during the past few years when trying to raise money from VCs was a complete waste of time. The question, though, is whether or not things remain this way, or if the VCs are starting to turn their attention back to earlier stage companies again?