<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, venture capitalists]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, venture capitalists]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/venturecapitalists http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/venturecapitalists <![CDATA[Big sharks, little pond]]> "We made the angels blink and understand the real money had arrived." So said some nasty venture capitalists, quoted by a saner one, rejoicing over swinging their dicks at a startup. One of the reasons everyone else in the startup ecosystem hates VCs is that these guys think they're the "real money." Clearly they've never come up against a hedge fund manager: While the VC industry may invest nearly $30 billion in 2007, the hedge fund industry is currently handling nearly $2 trillion.Compared to the big-time deals that biotech and other high-cost firms are making, the average VC deal is piddling. If these hundred-million-dollar startups put out biotech and clean-tech solutions to the world's biggest problems, wresting attention away from the Internet scene, those high-flying VCs could end up feeling like the hundred-thousand-dollar angel investors they stepped on.]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=278658&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Five secrets of Silicon Valley]]> There's a new wag in town. And I'm feeling good. This sleepy little burg has a thousand secrets, and I can't wait to start telling them. But for the curious, I'll start, briefly, with the real story of how I got this job. Nick Denton has his version, of course, but I think mine's better, because it involves tormenting Denton.The short version: Much as I wangled a gig at Suck.com by being a complete pest, I got this job by bothering Denton. Nonstop. For two years. The torment, of course, mostly consisted of repeatedly turning down the job of running Valleywag — and then turning around and IMing Denton daily — no, hourly — no, minutely — to tell him how, precisely, I thought he ought to do it. My passive-aggressive campaign for the job culminated in drinks in San Francisco's Mission District a couple of months ago, when he finally confronted me:
So, Owen, you mean to tell me that you've just been playing hard to get for two years?
And with that, he called my bluff. "Duh," I replied. And that was it. So that's my no-longer secret tale of how I became the Valleywag. Now that you know how I got the job, you may be wondering why. Here's why — because, unlike most reporters in these parts, I'm not afraid to come out and say things. For example:
  1. Venture capitalists wouldn't know an original idea if it hit them in the bank account. A wise source advised me to go easier on entrepreneurs and harder on the Sand Hill Road crowd. Fair enough: They're slavish imitators with little to contribute besides money.
  2. Entrepreneurs are absolutely in it for the money. I said "easier," not "easy." Sure, they want to change the world: They want to change it from a world in which they are poor to a world in which they are millions of dollars richer.
  3. Bloggers are actually rather dull. People with something to say are interesting. But actual ideas, knowledge, and journalistic ethics, alas, don't come as part of the standard WordPress install. No wonder people are getting bored.
  4. Google is increasingly evil. Insiders like to talk about how Google, now that it's a big company, is getting "complicated." I don't think it's that complicated: If Larry Page and Sergey Brin ever really solved the search problem, as they've been promising to do for a decade, they wouldn't have a multibillion-dollar advertising business.
  5. I'm actually a complete bastard. I'm keeping Nick Douglas and Megan McCarthy around, but mostly because they amuse me. From hanging out with me at parties, they somehow concluded I was a "nice guy" and hence would be a total softy as a boss. Hah! At this very moment, I have Douglas out fetching me a quad frap and McCarthy holed away in a cubicle cross-indexing S-1 filings. I'm also hiring a set of newbies to abuse. With that warning, still care to apply? No resumes, please; just send me the URL for your blog.
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=275195&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[The suck-up effect]]> In his latest guide to startups, Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen unwittingly offers a rational explanation for Silicon Valley's Facebook frenzy: Sucking up. First, venture capitalists, in their endless neophilia, started using the social networking site. Then entrepreneurs joined in, too, in hopes of impressing those VCs — brazen attempts, in short at brown-nosing their way to getting funded. The same dynamic applies to Twitter, which is an even better medium for elevator-pitching the Valley's short-attention-span financiers. After the jump, Andreessen's analysis.
... some VCs are aggressive early adopters of new forms of communication and interaction — current examples being Facebook and Twitter. Observationally, when a VC is exploring a new communiation medium like Facebook or Twitter, she can be more interested in interacting with various people over that new medium than she might otherwise be. So, when such a new thing comes out — like, hint hint, Facebook or Twitter — jump all over it, see which VCs are using it, and interact with them that way — sensibly, of course.
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=271921&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[A Venture Capitalist's Paradise]]> Spotted at this week's South by Southwest (SXSW) conference: Bloggers, vloggers, engineers, the team from up-and-coming startup Twitter, star Apple developer Buzz Andersen, Podtech host Robert Scoble, Digg founder Kevin Rose, vloggers Ze Frank and Amanda Congdon...but no investors. Forget the Web 2.0 expo; this is the place to meet the techies with some truly clever ideas. Not only are there a good number of startups from outside Silicon Valley, but everyone's in a good mood thanks to the constant libations at several open-bar parties each night. Granted, most folks worth meeting here would rather not see SXSW filled with besuited venture capitalists. An angel investor, especially one who made a fortune in their own startup, would have better luck finding willing investees. If a VC firm insists on coming, they'd best curry favor by holding their own open-bar party. Geeks will thank their drink-buyers. (photo by Scott Beale)]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=243646&view=rss&microfeed=true