Trouble In Venture Capital Land?

from the from-above,-below-and-on-the-side dept

There's been a lot of talk lately about how venture capitalists need to adjust to a changing market for startups. After all, it's much easier for many kinds of startups to get going with very little money. However, it's always seemed that the fear of startups not needing venture money was overblown. As some have noticed, part of the reason things were so cheap was that there was less competition for attention -- and that's now changed. And, of course, there are always certain types of startups that require tremendous capital outlays to get going (witness Joost getting $45 million). The real challenge for venture capitalists may actually be coming from elsewhere. There has been a lot of talk lately about how the hedge funds have been increasingly creeping into the venture capital space, in some cases offering a lot more money with a lot fewer strings (though, that can also mean a lot less knowledge). At the same time, the NY Times is reporting how many of the big limited partners (the folks who actually put the money into venture capital funds) are making a lot of noise about their displeasure with recent returns from the VC world. While the complaints also seem to be a bit overstated (and are part of an always ongoing negotiation) it is interesting to see the arguments go public. After the dot com bubble burst, a few people were surprised that the same VCs were still able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for new funds -- and the common response was that the limited partners had nothing else to do with that money. That's actually changing these days, and it may be why we're now seeing limited partners start pushing a little harder on the general partners at VC funds. It's unlikely this will impact how much money goes into startups -- but it could change how it's invested and who's doing the investments. For traditional VCs, it may mean they need to start adapting to a changing marketplace.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2007 @ 10:53am

    Firts

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2007 @ 10:59am

    wtf is firts?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anon, 11 May 2007 @ 11:03am

    Re:

    It's definitely just as relevant to Tech as this article is.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Chris Maresca, 11 May 2007 @ 11:28am

    Re: Re:

    Well, VC firms fund a lot of tech startups in Silicon Valley. Something like $9 billion last year alone and $33 billion in the last five years (http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id112.html) in SV, which gets something like 50% of all tech investments world wide, so I'd say that this is very relevant to tech.

    Chris.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anon, 11 May 2007 @ 12:02pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Chris, VC firms invest billions and billions of US Dollars all over the world and in every possible fragment of every possible market. Your Silicon Valley example is moot.

    Just because Technology is involved on some level (a small one here), doesn't mean it needs to be covered by a technology driven blog.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    andy, 11 May 2007 @ 2:59pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    it's kind of like how, just because you think you should be able to tell techdirt how to do their job, it doesn't mean you have any authority irl?

    i see your point.

    all this to say, you aren't the arbiter of what is techdirt-worthy.

    i found the article useful and will likely use it as fodder for my own article.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    |333173|3|_||3, 12 May 2007 @ 3:07am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Techdirt is for stories relevant to tech businesses, not just tech in general.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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