COVID-19 will Kill a Ton of Startups (or So it Will Seem)

Yes, I’m still predicting-away, though the pandemic is having some impact on the direction in which this narrative is going. Today’s column on startups and venture capital, for example, wasn’t even on my original list of predictions. Just as the financial markets will use this catastrophe for a reset, so, too, will Sand Hill Road, which has pretty much stopped investing and is now deciding, instead, who to kill?

The psychology of venture capital doesn’t work the way most people think. That’s because it is an industry based on failure: most startups — the vast majority — fail. That means most VC investment decisions are wrong. There is simply no way of […]

The Next White Whale

A week from now I’ll announce in this space an important project involving technology startup companies, which I feel are key to continued economic prosperity for the United States. This will be my major project for 2010 with the Moon shot following in 2011. But first I want to conduct a little experiment involving venture capitalists. How interested are they, really, in your ideas or mine? We’ll see.

This is a tough time to be a VC. Investment returns have been poor for several years. Some of this can be blamed on bad investment decisions, some on a horrific economy, and some of it comes down to what are essentially deferred returns because […]

By |December 29th, 2009|2009|56 Comments