... We probably funded a rate of something like one out of ten solo teams.
For a first-time entrepreneur, there's nothing better than being in Silicon Valley because there is so much going on, and there's such a large number of inventors, that even a B level idea or a C level idea could be nurtured and be given venture capital there.
My interest in space started early, but for many years, I could not find any space-related investments that really penciled-out for venture. That changed in 2009 when Elon Musk came to us with a big vision to explore Mars while producing rockets at a fraction of a price and making space accessible.
The thing about Y Combinator that's cool is that most companies won't happen if we don't fund them.
Having information that the other side doesn't have gives VCs an advantage... they take advantage of entrepreneurs who haven't been through this before... they were totally willing to take advantage of us.
There is a lack of female venture capitalists, and so there are fewer female-oriented businesses getting funded. Intel has done a good job of creating a message across Intel, and they are putting their money where their mouth is.
There's nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated.
Venture capital is unscalable. Production equals the time each partner has.
Google was a venture-funded company. Being part of that brings an energy to the company.
One thing I would like to see in Vancouver and Canada is something similar to the PayPal mafia. They were all early employees of PayPal. They all had monster exits with PayPal, and they were able to take their winnings and form a syndicate that co-invests.
The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money.
Techstars is truly global; you'll see us continue to expand all our programs worldwide, including accelerators, our venture capital, as well as the UP Global programs including Startup Weekend, Startup Next, Startup Digest, etc.
I'd been a great angel investor, but professional venture capital was clearly not the right thing for me.
I've been a customer of the top venture capital firms, so I know exactly what they do and don't do.
If I'm an entrepreneur, and I have a term sheet from Sequoia and Kleiner, that's the safe choice. Google Ventures is the brave choice.
I don't think a lot of people have been entrepreneurial about venture capital.
I like most of the venture capitalists I know; they're smart, well-intended guys who genuinely enjoy helping entrepreneurs succeed. And I love venture capital and investment capital of all categories - its economic impact is proven. The more of it the better.
In early 2011, I had the opportunity to meet and spend significant time with Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia Capital and co-founder of Zappos.
Venture capital today is clustered in just a few locations - Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and D.C. It's far from efficiently distributed and accessible.
When I started Biocon in 1978, the obstacles I needed to navigate were manifold - ranging from infrastructural hurdles to issues related to my credibility as a business woman. With no access to venture capital, money was scarce and high-cost, debt-based capital was all I had.
I think 'Shark Tank' is targeting companies that are really trying to raise their very first dollar. A lot of them aren't really tech focused. We're definitely going after companies that are building real technology, either software or hardware, they probably have raised a couple hundred thousand already.
Some big banks remain wary of venture capital.
If you go to a venture firm, what you're doing is you're buying money from them in exchange for equity. They have a commodity that they're selling and they have to differentiate themselves.
There is no country in the world where it's as easy to find venture capital in the stock market as the United States.
I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints.
