The venture capital industry as we know it is going the way of the Dodo.There are 3 key reasons for this:1. As startups, technologies and innovation become more global the ‘Silicon Valley’ ecosystem is sidelined. And VC’s outside the Valley have poor track records and weak managers. Startups abroad happily build businesses without VC’s.2. Each year startups cost less and less to build or market, so the larger investment sums which come from VC’s are no longer attractive or necessary.3. The Internet is disintermediating the venture investors ‘hold’ on the access to capital so giving entrepreneurs new and alternative routes to money.The larger venture capital outfits will survive by morphing into private equity houses focusing on re-financing or re-structuring later stage plays or arranging buy-outs. Meanwhile power is finally shifting to the entrepreneur. Cool ventures will not need venture capital investors going forwards. Their leaders can regain control of strategy, resources and key decision making.Given the bad name and reputation most venture outfits have given themselves through endless poorly structured deals and broken relationships with entrepreneurs, founders and portfolio management teams it is not surprising that it is time for something different. Time for clouds of financiers to offer themselves to pools of talented entrepreneurs over the Web.Time for a new set of trusted parties to step up and innovate. Time for Web based intermediaries to give the entrepreneurs the choice that they deserve, whether that means introducing them to private money, angel investors, banks, micro-financiers, investment bankers, government schemes or institutions. Even, where appropriate, going direct to pension schemes – cutting through the venture layer.The future is bright. The future belongs to the entrepreneur. The dodo is dying.
2/11/09
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devans1964
Interesting article – essentially VC's are there to bridge the finance gap between product development and product revenue. As that gap shortens due to shorter product lifecycles – early beta's and lower product development costs due to cloud computing and reuse of open source software kick starts entrepeneurs – then the allure of the VC check book reduces – and their other softer attributes become stronger – routes to market, strategic advice, partnerships – and entrepeneurs will start so assess how much their equity is worthdancryer
I'm puzzled… How can Venture Capital be said to be dead, when realistically, they fund most of the web 2.0 bubble that allows startups to promote themselves cheaply?If Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. didn't exist, costs for self-promotion would increase, and VCs would be required again… and without VCs, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. would not exist.
I'd say they are in a pretty strong position, personally.
philipletts
Agreed on the last generation and maybe even the current generation – but, bar a very few mass audience players I think entrepreneurs have and will use alternatives to current VC structures going forwards. And remember we are not just talking about tech startups here.dancryer
I'm puzzled… How can Venture Capital be said to be dead, when realistically, they fund most of the web 2.0 bubble that allows startups to promote themselves cheaply?If Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. didn't exist, costs for self-promotion would increase, and VCs would be required again… and without VCs, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. would not exist.
I'd say they are in a pretty strong position, personally.
philipletts
Agreed on the last generation and maybe even the current generation – but, bar a very few mass audience players I think entrepreneurs have and will use alternatives to current VC structures going forwards. And remember we are not just talking about tech startups here.