Fund a PowerPoint – VC Trends Opportunities.pptVIP

To Fund a PowerPoint – VC Trends Opportunities Time has never been Better to Invest in very Young Technology Companies VCs must be Prepared to Fail Huge Exits are Rare, but the Attraction of early-stage investments is Obvious Investments of less than $1 million can now quickly Take a Product from an Idea to Launch Now a $2.5 million Series A round of funding Could be Brought Down to $250,000 Software is nearly Free, Bandwidth is Cheap, theres Outsourcing and Offshoring for Engineering Resources. Start Ups dont have to Spend $1.5 million for Sun and Oracle equipment and the Data Center as before Accel Partners Palo Alto, California based Accel has always included seed investing as part of its early-stage strategy and three years ago launched a concerted effort to do more of this in consumer Internet and online gaming. Partner Ranzetta says the increased focus on seed investments is a nod to the mileage a young company can get on $500,000 as well as the ability to get quick user data feedback from startups sites that are up and running. Bessemer Venture Partners Zopa Ltd., a sort of eBay for banking that operates an online community where individual lenders and borrowers can connect with each other and set their own rates. Bessemer missed out on many of the most successful exits, its 2003 gamble on the then little-known Skype Technologies SA paid off big when eBay Inc. acquired the Internet-based phone service for a staggering $4.1 billion in 2005. Charles River Ventures QuickStart provides startups with $250,000 in the form of a loan, meaning theres no equity dilution, and companies can more easily stay in stealth mode since they can avoid any public filings. Among the programs successes are BuddyTV, which builds online communities around popular television programs; Vlingo Corp., a mobile voice startup that just raised $20 million in a Series B round of funding led by Yahoo!; and Lookery Inc., an advertising network for social network application pr