VCs And Golf
Guy Kawasaki is Forbes' new columnist on start up issues and has penned his second column, a Q&A on early stage company building. It's mostly stuff You Already Know, but of note are his lies VCs tell:
The top four lies of VCs are currently: "We knew this was coming." "We have lots of dry powder to invest." "We're doing more deals this year than we ever have." "We think this is a time to build great companies." Meanwhile, golf handicaps are plummeting. (If you want to check out the handicap of your favorite VC, go to http://www.ghin.com/lookup/index.html.)
For those not in the know, GHIN is an online database of golf handicaps. Every time a golfer plays, the scores get recorded and the handicap gets calculated. Go to the site and enter various VCs names to check their current handicap and how often they play. Full disclosure: no one on the VentureBlog staff golfs.
I remember when someone first noted GHIN maybe 8 months ago in a board meeting: up on the projector went GHIN while everyone at the meeting shouted out names of VCs who they thought spent the most time on the course. I won't tell you who we found had golfed the most but his name wouldn't be a surprise to anyone in the VC community.
And in defense of the venture industry: I just did a totally unscientific study of 10 big-time VCs who I know are also golfers (including one from August Capital) and I didn't see a single one whose handicap is "plummeting." It looked to me like golf handicaps were far more affected by the long winter rainy season than bad economy.
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VentureBlog considers VCs and Golf. Included, the four biggest lies VCs tell:... Read More
Last year I know some guys that were thinking about building a database of all the venture partners' indexes and comparing to the markets.
What's also a fun game to play is to see all the fancy clubs people belong to... such as Clint Eastwood... as well as where everyone is playing based on the home and away marker as well as the course rating and slope which can ofeten be used to identify specific courses on Golfcourse.com.
Mostly VCs are looking for companies with three "provens": Proven teams, proven technology and proven sales. Ideally, they'd like a team that's sold a company to Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) for $7 billion, won a Nobel Prize with its technology, and is profitably selling $12 million worth of stuff a year. That's an early-stage deal.
Where is the "venture" in the VC business ?