MIT Venture Capital Forum
I’m attending the MIT Venture Capital Forum this week-end in Cambridge, MA. Unlike other VC fests, this one is organized by the grad students at the MIT Sloan School of Management (http://mitsloan.mit.edu/). It’s not an opportunity for companies to pitch potential investors, but rather a chance for the regional venture capitalists to get together and chat about the state of their industry. Two observations are noteworthy:
The East Cost VCs seem to suffer from a bit of envy regarding their Left Coast brethren. Many comments and even a few discussion points focused on the lack of Left Coast funds making investments in East Coast companies. You would think the regional VCs would want a deeper pool from which to drink instead of having California interlopers come in and drive up the price (and therefore lower the returns) of the deals, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. This is example number 724 of the “grass is always greener” theorem espoused by Erma Bombeck.
The community around MIT has spawned some 10,000 firms, and the immediate area is ripe with biotech firms, but MIT and the Sloan School in particular still continue to look for ways to get more complete technology in the market place, to train entrepreneurs in business skills and knowledge, and to reinforce these facts with the investment community. Sloan has a small entrepreneurship program office that coordinates student and faculty activities, in many cases focusing on the large body of Sloan alumni…which they continue to educate and, more importantly, network with in order to place Sloan and MIT grads. None of this is original, but MIT does have enormous momentum.
Russell Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (http://www.kpcb.com/) spoke at dinner Friday night about Kleiner reaching out to Asia for investment opportunities and about globalization/the “flat earth” in general. Russ made the point that they are two reasons to look overseas for business opportunities: 1. the quality of tech talent (and their associated one-third cost); 2. the emerging and potentially enormous market opportunities. While I can find as many examples of bad labor output from India, China, and Asia as good, I was struck by Russ’ optimism that the Asian workforce is getting better at producing engineered products and IP with higher and higher quality. (I’ll save my diatribe concerning whether earth really has, or is about to become, economically “flat” for another time.)
Russ said that venture funds can reach out to Asia in three ways: 1. spend a lot of time flying there (not sustainable), 2. hire someone on the ground and in country to help recruit and manage portfolio firms (risky, and of minimal use in extending the fund’s brand), 3. move someone from the firm to the country or region in question. Russ’ overall point is that he would “rather increase the firm’s awareness of emerging hot labor and market opportunities than not.”
The East Cost VCs seem to suffer from a bit of envy regarding their Left Coast brethren. Many comments and even a few discussion points focused on the lack of Left Coast funds making investments in East Coast companies. You would think the regional VCs would want a deeper pool from which to drink instead of having California interlopers come in and drive up the price (and therefore lower the returns) of the deals, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. This is example number 724 of the “grass is always greener” theorem espoused by Erma Bombeck.
The community around MIT has spawned some 10,000 firms, and the immediate area is ripe with biotech firms, but MIT and the Sloan School in particular still continue to look for ways to get more complete technology in the market place, to train entrepreneurs in business skills and knowledge, and to reinforce these facts with the investment community. Sloan has a small entrepreneurship program office that coordinates student and faculty activities, in many cases focusing on the large body of Sloan alumni…which they continue to educate and, more importantly, network with in order to place Sloan and MIT grads. None of this is original, but MIT does have enormous momentum.
Russell Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (http://www.kpcb.com/) spoke at dinner Friday night about Kleiner reaching out to Asia for investment opportunities and about globalization/the “flat earth” in general. Russ made the point that they are two reasons to look overseas for business opportunities: 1. the quality of tech talent (and their associated one-third cost); 2. the emerging and potentially enormous market opportunities. While I can find as many examples of bad labor output from India, China, and Asia as good, I was struck by Russ’ optimism that the Asian workforce is getting better at producing engineered products and IP with higher and higher quality. (I’ll save my diatribe concerning whether earth really has, or is about to become, economically “flat” for another time.)
Russ said that venture funds can reach out to Asia in three ways: 1. spend a lot of time flying there (not sustainable), 2. hire someone on the ground and in country to help recruit and manage portfolio firms (risky, and of minimal use in extending the fund’s brand), 3. move someone from the firm to the country or region in question. Russ’ overall point is that he would “rather increase the firm’s awareness of emerging hot labor and market opportunities than not.”
posted by Grizz at 03:16
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