ANSWERS: 1
  • Response from Roger MnNamme, Co-founder and General partner of Integral Capital Partners, Silver Lake Partners, and Elevation Partners: If you take 5 million and you need less a million to launch a business you end up making mistakes. It’s a problem of too much money. I’d rather see startups be scrappy, frugal, nimble, on a lean diet. So I think it’s important to have that kind of laser-like focus. Even if it’s a feature, it can expand to something that can become a project. The funds I work with are pretty big and they usually want to put in 10 million over the life of the investment, and a lot of the money ends up going to places that can really use that kind of capital because some of the really attractive ideas only need less a million dollars. What they need is Rob (Shiram), they don’t need a VC, they need someone with an ethos. It is a different skill set. In the angel market, it’s really about skillsets. First thing to keep in mind in any endeavor, you don’t want to be doing the same thing as 25 other people. So with traditional venture if you’re undifferentiated in venture, you have the same problem as if you’re undifferentiated on the web. So Forbes is not going to spend 250 million to do something new at Forbes. Real capital available to do what they need to do, but it’s a web business. The thing that I would encourage you to think about is Rob’s (Rob Shiram) talking about how you get people to your site and keep them there. I believe there’s a whole untapped market for the person who doesn’t have the time to go to your site. There’s two really compelling things going on right now. The first is user-generated content. To me user-generated is about self expression, this is an alternative to passive entertainment. I think it's going to gain for at least the time being, the current generation is driving through the pipeline. And the amount of really cool stuff going on to service that market is really low.

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