Comments on: Just Say No to a VC Bailout: A Green Government Venture Fund Is a Flawed Idea

By: любoвь

любoвь — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:35:03 +0000

Ого! Сенкс! Теперь на день есть работа!

By: Government Debt for Startups? Not Such a Great Idea « abovethecrowd.com

Government Debt for Startups? Not Such a Great Idea « abovethecrowd.com — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:51:14 +0000

[...] Venture Capital, government stimulus | I have made it clear in the past that I think it is a horrible idea for the government to enter the venture business on the funding side. As I pointed out in my previous post, providing excess funding has never led to success in a [...]

By: online travel guide

online travel guide — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:16:43 +0000

No company “NEEDS” a bailout. If a company is sound, investors will pay the market price. Its the world around the company that needs the bailout – autoworkers in Detroit, bank customers, and even eventually taxpayers.

No big damage is done if a start-up fails – so there is no need for VC bailout.

By: пaпa

пaпa — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:28:54 +0000

Ну и после такого, как говорится, хотелось бы услышать начальника транспортного цеха

By: александр.moskalyuk.name // Обо всем интересном из Кремниевой долины

александр.moskalyuk.name // Обо всем интересном из Кремниевой долины — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:22:42 +0000

[...] Benchmark Capital: Есть дефицит идей, нет дефицита венчурных денег. [...]

By: NickDG

NickDG — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:21:38 +0000

It’s naturally American to appeal to revolutionary innovation – it’s worked well in many situations in our history. But there are some situations where evolutionary re-invention is more appropriate. The VC model – fund startups/entrepreneurs and wait for the disruptive technologies – worked for the Internet/Web. But this is because another robust communications infrastructure (the public switched telephone network) existed that could support the population and serve as a base for the Internet.

But our present energy and transportation challenges are fundamentally different. They require more evolutionary systems thinking than revolutionary innovation. It’s naive (and dangerous) to think we can just throw out systems that serve 300M people – no matter how inefficient and creaky they are – and hope that brilliant entrepreneurs develop magical new energy sources and means of transportation that a) work and b) immediately scale. Otherwise said, do we plan our energy future around biofuels that don’t yet exist, or get down to the dirty work of making each piece of the system we have as efficient as it can be?

The John Doerrs of the world – no matter how attractive their stealth battery startups might sound – are the wrong people to dig us out of this mess. We need the Norm Augustines and Fred Smiths for this one.

http://blog.vanno.com/index.php/2008/11/23/tesla-gm-and-a-national-cto/

By: bailout 2.0 « ginsudo

bailout 2.0 « ginsudo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:48:32 +0000

[...] industry bailouts and was chastised. Thomas Friedman says VCs should get bailed out and VCs say No No No. Then I realized that No is not enough of an answer. You have to propose an alternative, [...]

By: Just Say No to a VC Bailout - Part 2 « abovethecrowd.com

Just Say No to a VC Bailout - Part 2 « abovethecrowd.com — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:23:14 +0000

[...] While I attempted to bury this issue last week, this Sunday, Thomas Friedman again used his pulpit in the New York Times Opinion section to beg for a VC Bailout. Last week he merely suggested that the government invest along side venture firms. This week, he went even further astray and suggested that the government “Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners — university endowments and pension funds — are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way.” As a practicing venture capitalist, I must say that this borders on silliness. [...]

By: fred wilson

fred wilson — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:58:50 +0000

bill, for some reason i had not seen this post when you wrote it

i wrote a similar post today and a commenter linked to this post

you nailed it and i agree completely

http://bit.ly/oEkyi

By: Why the Government Should Not Be A Green VC « Earth2Tech

Why the Government Should Not Be A Green VC « Earth2Tech — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:01:57 +0000

[...] Why the Government Should Not Be A Green VC Written by Katie Fehrenbacher No Comments Posted February 20th, 2009 at 4:00 pm in Policy The notion that the federal government should be creating a sort of venture capital fund to invest in green technologies was an idea that was floated during the Obama campaign. A report from New Energy Finance back in August 2008 LINK? noted that the Obama administration was considering allocating $50 billion for a government-controlled Clean Technology Venture Capital Fund to be dispersed over 5 years, and the report pointed out that that plan showed a “certain naivete” about the administration’s understanding of the VC clean tech sector. While the administration seems to have dropped that idea for now, we whole-heartedly agreed with NEF back then, and we also agree with an interesting article posted this week from Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley. [...]