We invited some local tech founders over to our office Wednesday night to meet Scott Kupor Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. We have been close with Scott since before he joined Andreessen Horowitz. We thought this would be a good chance for folks to have an informal conversation with him in a small group setting while he was in town.
One entreprenuer asked Scott what North Carolina needed to do to improve. Another founder immediately responded that the region needs more capital. It was not a very popular comment but I challenged that. Do we need more capital here? Or do we need more passionate founders. More risk takers. My take is that is what we need.
But duh, if you have more entrepreneurs, don't you need more capital to fund them? Yes! And here is my answer to that.
1. There is more angel capital in this market than any point I have seen of being a VC. This comes in the form of angel groups and a lot of individuals.
2. Once a company gets some decent (doesn't have to be revenue) traction, there are out of state VCs really interested in writing checks here. In fact, I count five venture investors that have written a check to a NC-based company for their first time in the last 6 months alone! So capital is very mobile.
So, what's your take on this? Do we need more capital? More entrepreneurs? Or what else is missing?
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