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 对中国人友善的VC Firms (China-Friendly VC firms) (请置顶) |
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对中国人友善的VC Firms (China-Friendly VC firms) (请置顶) -- svcef - (2978 Byte) 2005-11-18 周五, 15:09 (1876 reads) |
svcef
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作者：svcef 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
comments:
Just in case that you are working on web 2.0, your chance of getting
funding is pretty good now.
(from
https://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/13157227.htm )
A new wave of user-friendly and interactive Internet technologies is
turning the heads of venture capitalists
By Matt Marshall
Mercury News
When the three-person San Jose company Meebo launched in September,
venture capitalists smothered it with requests to make an investment.
The company was hot －－ or at least venture capitalists thought so.
Its technology lets people access their instant messaging programs
from America Online, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google from the Meebo Web
site without having to download each service's software to their
computers. Thousands of people were flocking to use it.
Meebo had become a ``Web 2.0'' company －－ a buzz-filled, admittedly
vague moniker that many in Silicon Valley are using to describe
companies that embody a second era of Web innovation －－ the first
era being during the 1990s.
The buzz surrounding Web 2.0 has investors eager to invest, but has
others labeling it the new Internet bubble －－ ``Bubble 2.0'' as it's
called by David Hornik of August Capital.
In the third quarter, venture capitalists poured $394 million into
51 Internet companies that cater to individuals online, up from just
$116 million in 17 companies during the same quarter two years ago,
according to VentureOne.
``When we started, we didn't know what Web 2.0 was,'' said Meebo
founder Seth Sternberg, 26. ``But people said, you're a Web 2.0
company.''
The Web 2.0 affiliation continues to draw big-name venture capital
firms to his door, encouraging him to take even more money, he says.
He started with $100,000 from three investors, but is holding off on
taking more for now. The torrent of inquiries from VCs is partly
what forced him to ｄｒｏｐ out of Stanford this year to work full time
with Meebo.
These days, some entrepreneurs insist that unlike the flighty dot-
com bubble of the 1990s, they are now under more pressure to have
solid business plans and good ideas.
But increasingly, both venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are
hoping their company can be sold quickly for a profit, ideally to
deep-pocketed companies like Google or Yahoo. In other words,
companies today look very similar to the opportunistic start-ups
launched during the bubble of the '90s.
On his popular Venture Blog, Hornik says he has ``this nagging
feeling that we've been here before.''
``Sadly, only one thing follows Bubble 2.0, and that is Bust 2.0,''
Hornik said.
Among the most telling signals of a possible bubble are investments
by venture capitalists into numerous companies doing almost exactly
the same things: podcasting services, online classified sites, video
sharing, blog search engines and all sorts of social networking
sites. Hornik has invested in Technorati, a blog search engine.
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 was coined by Dale Dougherty, a conference
organizer for O'Reilly Media, while brainstorming the idea for a
conference last year to profile the latest Web companies.
Most Web 2.0 companies use technologies that showed promise in
earlier years but have evolved into more sophisticated uses. Web
applications like Meebo don't need to be downloaded to a computer's
hard drive. They take advantage of a technology called Ajax, or
Asynchronous Javascript and XML, which allows more information to be
stored on a browser, making it quicker to use because it doesn't
need to refresh or tap a server as often for information. It's a
technology that is linked with the buzz of Web 2.0.
Whereas in 2000 you could check e-mail through a Web browser but
needed to constantly refresh your screen, now you can roll over
addresses in your e-mail with your mouse and get maps to instantly
pop up.
Web 2.0 companies use technology to also allow people to network,
share and be more mobile than they were during the first wave of
innovation.
The flood of capital is giving some entrepreneurs the upper hand in
negotiations.
When a venture capitalist sits down with a company, the two
negotiate the company's overall worth. The average worth for
companies rose to $15.6 million in the second quarter, up from $13.5
million in the same quarter a year ago, according to VentureOne, a
San Francisco venture research group.
As the value of a company goes up, a venture capitalist's investment
doesn't represent as great a percentage of the company's agreed-upon
value －－ known as a VC's ownership stake. A lower ownership stake
means an entrepreneur retains more ownership of the company, and
thus will enjoy more profit if the company gets sold or goes public.
But even with the excitement, entrepreneurs say they still need to
offer a promising idea to get attention －－ and investment cash －－
from VCs.
``For us, it was solving a real problem,'' said Elaine Wherry, co-
founder of Meebo. She said her favorite example is of a U.S. soldier
in Iraq who e-mailed the company saying Meebo's site allowed him to
instant message with relatives back in the United States. He hadn't
been able to before because the military hadn't allowed him to
download instant messaging software on his computer, he said.
Scott Epstein, one of the three initial investors in Meebo, said VCs
are more interested in Web 2.0 companies because cheap Internet
tools make it easy to start a company with less money. Some
entrepreneurs even seek to get by without venture capitalists.
Others, though, still unite with VCs to try to build a company
quickly to a value of $5 million to $20 million, with the goal of
selling to a Google or Microsoft, which can buy companies to absorb
their technology. ``Their rationale for starting is to think about
what the future holds －－ and it holds a very quick acquisition,''
Epstein said.
Signs of a frenzy
Other Internet entrepreneurs see the hype, too.
Ken Leeder lived through the Web 1.0 hype, having raised money in
2000 from venture capitalists for his previous company, Full Degree.
He currently is chief executive of RealTravel, which lets users
write about their travels, upload photos and share travel tips.
VCs are more sane now than they were in the '90s, he believes, but
are still showing signs of a frenzy. He raised a small amount of
money from investors, but there was enough interest that he had to
turn people down. ``Whenever you surround things with hype, people
rush into things, even if they don't make any sense,'' he said.
Joe Chen, chief executive of Geospot, sees more interest now from
VCs than he ever has before. A veteran entrepreneur, he's raised
money for several start-ups, including during the Web 1.0 boom, such
as Internet companies Xyphius and SeeUthere.com
Two weeks ago, he started looking for venture capital for Geospot, a
Fremont company that helps provide location services for mobile
phones, car computers and other devices.
He got about 10 solicitations immediately.
``The response has been overwhelming,'' he said. ``It might have
something to do with the fact that I'm more established, but it
definitely has something to do with the market as well.''
Ethan Stock, chief executive of Zvents, a Web site for events that
uses Ajax, said he'd just started thinking about raising venture
capital in January. After mentioning the idea to a few friends, more
than five venture capitalists expressed interest. ``That's something
I haven't experienced before,'' he said. ``I'm thinking it's going
to be a pretty easy process to raise money next year.''
Many sites, Zvents included, rely on advertisements listed beside
search results, a model proven by the success of Google and Yahoo.
That's one reason venture capitalists are eager to invest, but
another one is Ajax magic, Stock says.
``People are noticing that we're a wizzy new thing,'' he said.
And so for now, Web 2.0 companies like Zvents and Meebo will enjoy
the upper hand while they have it. Gone －－ for now －－ are the days
when young companies begged for money from VCs. Meebo's Sternberg
says there's so much interest from VCs that he has almost ruled out
visiting any of them more than 10 miles away from his home base in
Palo Alto.
``We're trying to find out who are the four or five VCs we want to
work with,'' he says.
作者：svcef 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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