Slashdot Mirror
Using Blogs To Dispense Venture Capital
prostoalex writes "The New York Times describes how Tim Draper, a founder of Draper Fisher Juvetson venture capital firm, is trying out a new approach to finding the next entrepreneurial superstars. In his Web log (which NYTimes mysteriously never links to, but it's on AlwaysOn-Network), Draper asks the readers to leave the comments with their billion-dollar ideas. The winners of this pitch were selected recently, and just reading the comments with innovative ideas is quite interesting."
What is its etymology?
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
When skimming the headline, I first thought it read, "Using Blogs to Dispose of Venture Captial"...
:)
Doesn't sound like much of a challenge, but hey, it's a slow news day
Someone should give him a few suggestions to keep his site reasonably reachable when mentionned on Slashdot -- maybe he'll make you CEO of something!
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
I personally witnessed $300 million of VC money come to naught. And our product worked. Even a good idea which is completely implemented is no guarantee of success. If giving money out based on slideware alone is alive and well, then the bubble never really burst. -C
This is a classic scam pulled by venture capitalists. They have been known to take great ideas from presentations by companies that are courting their financing and give the ideas to companies already in the stable. I personally wouldn't trust this blog idea further than I could drop kick it.
I don't mean to flame, but it's people like you ("My idea is worth money!") that are the fundimental problem with copyright and patents. It's a freakin' idea. It's not worth a damn thing. What's more, it's not your idea, it come from the public environment in which you live.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think this blog approach - despite the fact that it's horribly risky for people with good concepts - is closer to the ideal. Find the talent out there, get them to give their baby a kickstart, and then (likely) buy it away from them to make it really successful. People need to see where they fit into the bigger picture, and not try and be in every shot.
I should update that article sometime... hmm...
The world's only surviving livewriter.
With the state of things and what CPU cycles, open source software, and co-location costs these days, who needs venture capital if you are starting an online business. If you are sharp and have decent sysadmin and coding skills you can do it yourself.. Find yourself a partner that's got complementary sales and marketing skills and you're set. I've done this with my own startup KnowTraffic and am doing rather nicely without selling my virtual soul to the the VC's.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Why can't I just browse through all those ideas, and act quicker than these people. Head to the patent office, use my own capital, etc. Publicly viewable ideas are dangerous.
Garage.com has been doing this for years. They have some modest successes.. Guy Kawasaki ran Garage.com for a while, after he quit Apple.
Hey, what kind of schmuck would post their idea to the public like this? The same schmuck that will give away 99% of his company for Draper to have them fund it for $1M.
On the other hand, DFJ have funded some pretty gutsy ventures in the past, so I gotta give them props for trying something different.
In defense of Tim Draper, I have presented a proposal to DFJ (Draper Fisher Jurvetson) without a non-disclosure statement or any other form of IP protection. He merely gave us his word of honor. Maybe I was stupid, but our idea was technical enough that he could not have reproduced our work without a few years of his own work. I was under the impression that discussing ideas without a form of IP protection is standard operating procedure at DFJ. They basically use their reputation as backing.
Of course, we got funded, so YMMV.
I would be interested to see any verifiable stories of DFJ backstabbing someone in such a way. I worked with Tim for 5+ years and I just don't see him doing that.
I'm not too surprised to see Tim doing something like this. He has a lot of energy and is always trying some new idea. Supposedly he is the one who came up with the idea of putting the little blurb at the bottom of free email (Hotmail) in order to get more people to try it. That got buzzworded as "viral marketing".
a former CEO of a DFJ startup (Fiat Lux Research)