The View From Silicon Valley: Venture capital and the net

When first I glimpsed the net, I didn't see spam or open source coming. Most of us didn't. That's because the net's chaos is a veritable breeding ground for surprises, both good and bad. Good surprise: hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of high-paying jobs worldwide. Bad surprise: the dot.com bust.

But the net and all its potential wouldn't exist, if it weren't for a decidedly non-modern-non-networked factor. It's actually an Industrial Revolution phenomenon that raised its head in the UK before anyone in the US had heard of it. It's a good surprise.

It's venture capital ­ which, if you and your buddy Rip have been asleep the past 200 years or so, is money that is offered to start-up companies who have little more than a (presumably good) idea in the way of assets. British venture capitalists were investing in seed drills, canals and steam engines centuries before the first dot.com raised its streaming-video head.

This quarter marked the worst in US venture capital since 1998: venture capital has fallen by half and then by half again in just two years. Not since the Great Depression of the Thirties has a business process fallen so sharply so quickly.

Yet, in this, the (so far) darkest months of the technological nuclear winter, US venture capital firms raised $1.7bn in new funds while simultaneously investing their cash in 139 start-up companies.

Unlike the internet, venture capital did not start as a tool of the people; anything but. Venture capital has traditionally been favoured by the wealthiest among the obscenely rich, as a way of earning returns on investment that no working-class Joe or Josephine could ever dream of. You put the capital into a company; many fail but a few pay off hugely. Apple and Compaq, for example, were venture-funded in their early years. The best US venture funds have historical returns of around 25 per cent per year, jumping to 100 per cent in boom times. Not exactly what the bank offers for your $1.98 in savings.

The availability of venture capital has fuelled the economic transformation of the US from an industrial economy to an information economy. Legions of factory workers' sons and daughters, those who were willing to learn the ever-shifting lingua franca of the new economy, are living in ways unglimpsed since the rise of the late-19th-century bourgeoisie.

Yet venture capitalists (VCs) are in a bind of their own. Once the domain of rich, larger-than-life, hip-shooting characters, it's now dominated by, well, by chickens. VCs are sitting on the sidelines with something like $100bn in uncommitted capital afraid to invest.

And the most learned observers of this market are suggesting that venture capital is too important to the American, and, indeed to the world economy, to be in the hands of a few rich guys.

True, the best VCs, the old-time value-oriented guys, continue to invest in good deals and promising technologies. But judging by the shape of the US economy, this is too important to leave in the hands of a few.

So will you invest your $1.98 at 25 per cent one day soon? I hope so. How? Oh, come on. Through the internet, of course.

cg@gulker.com