Corporate VC Funds - alternate financing route for security startups
June 19 2008 | 1 comment(s)
VCs come in all shapes and sizes; with different attitudes towards entrepreneurs and different investment strategies. But there is another group of VCs that might not jump to mind when you are looking for money. Several big industry players have funds--from Siemens Venture Capital who has been a partner of the GSC for a couple of years to non-sector corporates like Disney and Dow. Some of these firms look for startups that they aim to integrate into their company to fit technology strategies and some will be out only (or mostly) for the financial returns.
Intel and Microsoft run very successful venture capital arms. Intel Capital is arguably the largest VC investor, as they invested more than US$7.5 billion in approximately 1,000 companies in 45 countries since 1991. And corporate VCs, like traditional VCs, can be very different from each other. For example, according to John Cook's Venture Blog, Microsoft's VC arm prefers to partner with startups rather than invest directly. John also points out that some firms, who you might expect to be out looking for innovation, such as Google, do not...saying further that "the Internet search titan will certainly look to partner with venture firms in an effort to find innovative ideas."
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August 1 2008 02:55PM by GSC Team
An update...It looks like Google is going to have their own venture arm too. The Wall Street Journal (link below) has a good overview and mentions that the new group will be led by David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer and have hired a young former entrepreneur, William Maris, to get it up and running.
stay tuned for investment focus
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121747323523899779.html?mod=hpp_us_entrepreneur
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