Yoick - Hightechwire

Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary makes Sense and Cents - the name of his new blog. I’m sure he is making more than cents over at CRV and he reportedly even made a return when Evan Williams split with former portfolio company Odeo (now Obvious).

Seriously though, his comments on his blog regarding the split do make sense –

Evan wanted a structure with maximum flexibility without the overhead of additional investors other than himself.

 In other words, Evan is looking for the freedom to be a hyper-entrepreneur, the freedom to experiment with a raft of apps and see what sticks. This can fly in the face of the VC model of focus, focus, focus and sometimes one simply has to find another way of doing things. George is quoted in the Mercury article about hyper-entrepreneurs as saying he would prefer to see entrepreneurs focusing 100% on one company.

When I was on the venture side of the table I would’ve agreed with George, but not anymore. Not in the hyper-age we are going through right now, it’s all about portfolio play, for both venture guys and entrepreneurs!

One caveat: I’m in favor of porfolio plays for Attention Economy, Web 2.0 type plays, but for deep technology I believe one company, one focus is still the best model.

The topic for Thursday evening’s Dinner 2.o in Sydney was the question of whether the traditional venture capital model is broken. Marty Wells covers the discussion here, and there are photos up here and here.

My view on the topic:

   Venture Ain’t Broke: It’s Evolving

It’s evolving to the point where different ventures get treated differently. A WIMAX company that has deep technology, a raft of patents and years of fundamental research behind it warrants a different valuation and level of funding than a Web 2.0 consumer play that consists of a two Ajaxians pumping out a beta in a matter of months.

In the Web 2.0 venture space: less is more. Akin to the entertainment industry, venture guys and entrepreneurs need to invest/build in a portfolio play — some of the apps you take to market will succeed, others won’t, but if you have all your efforts tied to only one play the odds are stacked against you.