VentureBeat - Latest Comments in Recession: A good time to trade money for power?

Re: Recession: A good time to trade money for power?

Keller Williams Baltimore — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:41:37 -0000

I was struck most by your comment that "As a businessman myself, I believe there’s no better time to start a company than when the playing field has been leveled by broad macro-economic factors." Kind of a contrarian approach, as most people don't actually see opportunity in a market/economy like we have now. That's really all it is though...an opportunity (alas, the majority of folks are a bit too squeamish to see it that way).

Re: Recession: A good time to trade money for power?

mdangear — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:06:32 -0000

Great data, thank you. I agree with you that it is a good time to start a business, but I cannot agree with the last sentence: while you could hope that government and VC would help, they usually don't. I would certainly not expect VCs to be a factor in company creation and job creation.
VC investment typically are not in startups, they invested close to $20B in 2006 but only 700 seed stage deals, everything else going to follow up rounds. And if you look at the top 5000 fastest growing companies from latest Inc Magazine list, only 3% of these got VC money, so the bulk of the job creation goes to entrepreneurs that were not involved with VCs.
If government wants to help, they should not look at the VC community as the vehicle, this is the wrong audience because they do not help entrepreneurs, they help investors. Unless VCs are willing to change the rules, which I am not sure they can since they are contractually tied to the commitments they made to their LPs...
Entrepreneurs will bring us change, and the VCs are not in that picture.
I am sure VCs will have their role too, just something different from their own world.

Re: Recession: A good time to trade money for power?

jennifer jones — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:11:09 -0000

Interesting insight and positive news in this economy.