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"Net, Silicon Valley venture capital just absolutely, positively, flatly doesn't have even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about how to do o

"Net, Silicon Valley venture capital just absolutely, positively, flatly doesn't have even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about how to do or evaluate original, exceptional, powerful, valuable information technology projects. Sorry 'bout that." - Your use of hyperbole is amazing. The original point of venture capital was to "aid in the development of new or existing businesses into companies of stature and importance". Venture capital arose after world war 2 when banks wouldn't bankroll some of the businesses and new ideas that were coming out. Since then it could be argued that VCs direction has changed to investing the 3rd party pooled money into businesses that are employing some novel technology or processes. VCs typically have employees who are familiar with industries, business, and / or technologies to help identify candidate investments as well as to help said investments to flourish. Finally to brush the successes of venture capital over the years in IT projects is just disingenuous. VCs had quite a bit to do with DEC, Fairchild, the whole damned semi conductor business, and the expansion of the computer industry. Was a lot of it on the backs of other projects and companies? Of course. DARPA, Xerox, etc. played HUGE roles in the advancement of technology.

graycat 13y ago
> Since then it could be argued that VCs direction has changed to investing the 3rd party pooled money into businesses that are employing some novel technology or processes. The information technology (IT) VCs are essentially hopeless at the crucial work of evaluating the "novel technology". The US DoD, NSF, NIH, and DARPA are quite good at such evaluations. > VCs typically have employees who are familiar with industries, business, and / or technologies to help identify candidate investments as well as to help said investments to flourish. For good exploitation of technology, what you are describing is not nearly good enough. The IT VCs need very much to up their game to whole new levels. They need, say, to be able to do or at least direct evaluations of anything that arrives in their e-mail in IT that might make a big pot of money, and they can't and won't do that.

graycat 13y ago

> Since then it could be argued that VCs direction has changed to investing the 3rd party pooled money into businesses that are employing some novel technology or processes. The information technology (IT) VCs are essentially hopeless at the crucial work of evaluating the "novel technology". The US DoD, NSF, NIH, and DARPA are quite good at such evaluations. > VCs typically have employees who are familiar with industries, business, and / or technologies to help identify candidate investments as well as to help said investments to flourish. For good exploitation of technology, what you are describing is not nearly good enough. The IT VCs need very much to up their game to whole new levels. They need, say, to be able to do or at least direct evaluations of anything that arrives in their e-mail in IT that might make a big pot of money, and they can't and won't do that.