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What Entrepreneurs Should Know About Raising Money From Google Ventures
- adrianwaj 16y agoGoogle Ventures wants to find promising companies that Google can help, rather than companies that will “wholly” help Google, said Maris. An irony is that one area where Google can help is with scaling, but as soon as Google Ventures opens up any portfolio companies up to its IT infrastructure (after months of learning and confidentiality agreements) such companies become locked in, and much less acquirable to anyone but Google due to their proprietary nature. So too integrating with internal systems and middleware. Besides for an investment, I think the underlying philosophy of GV as being the notion of what can Google take from the portfolio company rather than the other way round could well apply (if Google's going to be a first customer, they may as well own a bit!). GV would be a good way to capture the ingenuity of Googlers who leave (or want to leave) to start up: Google is better positioned to access and capitalize on such companies without them having to be acquired first. In any case, one area where GV could help is marketing of its portfolio companies on the main site, say alongside Google Labs. One idea that'd be interesting is if VigLink, a GV portfolio company, used Chrome so that users could claim affiliate revenue for any affiliate links coming through the browser. At the moment VigLink only works for webmasters, but why not users through a plugin? This has been an idea of mine called backscam. Good way for Chrome (or other browsers) to pickup more users by using VigLink's business model.