Tuesday, January 24, 2006

A Web 2.0 VC Please

Death Taxes and Series A is a good read for people new to fund raising. Lot's of rules, which I like as benchmarks from informed sources. However, I felt it was a difficult fit for Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 needs a new type of Series A investor.
  • Web 2.0 needs smaller investments. This doens't fit with the current large funds because of the amount of money they need to put to work and the time constraints on partners.
  • Web 2.0 needs more investments. Compounding on the problem of the amount of money a VC wants to put to work and limitations of partners time, the Web 2.0 community needs to have many more companies getting funded to keep innovation racing.
  • Web 2.0 deals need to move faster. Getting funded as a 1 man demo machine is a long shot. While making quick progress on building a product with a small team is absolutely doable. Hubpages is doing it. However, 3-6 months without pay is skin in the game to make the beta. An additional several months of raising money will squash many viable startups that fly under the radar of VCs and not well enough connected to Angels.
Help me create a list of investors that want to invest $500K - $1.5M in Web 2.0 companies. Send me a message through the Hubpages message box.

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