A really good friend of mine from my days at Bentley College got married last Saturday out in San Francisco. Congratulations Eric! I decided to go out a few days early to spend with friends, several VC-backed companies including one we funded, Art.com and some fellow VCs. Here are 3 key takeaways from the trip:
1) There are a ton of networking events going on everyday and the number of new events created is growing fast. One VC commented that he could eat for free every night! But I enjoyed the two events that I went to:
- First, a big thanks to the folks at Highland Capital Partners for including me in their grand opening for their west coast office - especially since this wasn't really for VCs. But the event was packed! It was mostly made up of HCP - both east and west coast, a lot of execs from companies they funded, other local execs from companies like Yahoo! and LPs. Met a lot of great people. It was clear those guys have a great network.
- Second, thanks to Todd for passing along info on Lunch 2.0 which I went to along with maybe 75 others over at oDesk's office. oDesk was recently funded by Benchmark. I was really impressed with Gary, their CEO. One of the guys from Plaxo helped start Lunch 2.0 and I think it is a really good way for the company that hosts it to recruit and build their brand.
2) Some west coast firms are starting to get a lot more interested in investing in NC.
I spent time with a ton of VCs. I won't list all their names here, but they were all the bigger names. As a firm, we spend a lot of time educating VCs out of state on the benefits on investing in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, but especially in NC. That's really important as we continue to build the region. The feedback I got from the firms on the west coast varied wildly and I thought I'd share some of it here:
* "We're early stage guys, there are lots of opportunities locally here for us and we don't invest beyond a 60 minute drive." (that's hard to do with all the traffic out there)
* "We're interested in Southeast/Mid-Atlantic deals, haven't invested there before, but would really like to learn more." (I already have some of these guys reviewing deals they haven't seen before)
* "We're VERY interested in SE/Mid-Atlantic companies. We invested there before." (This response was actually the most common. These guys understand the cost of building a company is cheaper than CA, talent to scale is already here, there is less VC competition and valuations are A LOT lower, etc. etc...)
3) There are lots of scrappy, hungry entrepreneurs looking for huge upside.
Just one example, but where else is it common that you can meet 2 young guys (late 20's, early 30's), one of them teaches himself Ruby on Rails and they're staying up all hours of the night, heads down banging out the product? They're planning on hiring 2 other guys, have a great idea and think they can make the $120k they raised last 9 months! And I can see the passion in their eyes - I know they will make it. They do too. We could use some of this hard core competitive nature. These guys look at it as a race, as a war. I walked away impressed, make that blown away - but hope those guys aren't reading this. :-)
There are lots of other examples like this out there.
Anyway, had a great time meeting lots of really smart people. Napa was fun too. :)
