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."

Comments

This seems like an interesting idea...

[Zugot]

But I don't know if I would want to submit my idea out in the public before I had a chance to gather some financing to protect it. I also don't want my competitors to get an early leg up on my business before I have a chance to become competitive.

All in all, this is interesting idea. I'm glad to see people using technology in all forms of business. This one idea may help four more just like it come to fruition. This can only be good for folks searching for venture capital.

Oh, the irony...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.alwayson-network.com/...

Heh, heh, heh.

Well, that's how it used to work.

[stoneymonster]

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

Re:I never got the word "blog."

[Anonymous Coward]

its short for weblog. But they took the we out because it's usually for "me me me".

Intellectual Property Theft

[Sean80]

The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was: "What about IP theft?" I, like many people who think they've had their "big idea," am not too keen on putting it out on the web, where I have no patents or copyright to protect the idea, and where anybody and everybody can come along and put my idea into practice without paying me a dime.

Maybe this is just the paranoia of one inventory, but I wonder how many people would be comfortable doing this sort of thing, and whether this would select any particular sub-population of entrepreneurs by its very nature.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Intellectual Property Theft

[prostoalex]

Most of the successful businesses are not ideas, they are execution. Look at successful Internet companies right now: online marketplace, online bookseller that's not selling electronics and a lot more, large-scale information archival and retrieval system. Every once in a while you have Edison-like geniuses coming up with brilliant ideas that turn the world around and occasionally make their inventors rich, but more often than not, it's the execution, not the idea that matters.

And don't forget that Draper is not the only one, as NYT article states, he's one of the few people that would invest in half-baked startups, but nevertheless in the venture world he's still one of many. And there's $70 billion dollars out there ready to be invested into the next venture. VCs got a bit tough lately with dot bomb and everything, but the money is still out there, and there are fewer ideas, than there are brains.

My Great Idea...

[bfg9000]

... a website where nerds can get together and read about stuff that matters to them, and people can comment and then others can moderate those--- nah... that'd never work. Who'd actually pay for that? Duh.

Therefore, my new great idea is the Sex Helmet.