This was a really great interview with David Lee of Ron Conway's firm, SV Angel. They're making 40-50 investments in real time internet in the next 18 months.
Nice interview, Russell. David and Ron, thanks for making the US world trendsetters in technology innovation with your "high touch" support to entrepreneurs. We're on your team, just on the other side of the country.
great to hear David's attention to the "motivation" & "aptitude" of the founders during the diligence process compared with other firms that tend to focus on the numbers. i'll take passion in a startup any day of the week..
All this helpful information from Valley insiders on how absolutely vital it is to be in Silicon Valley is starting to sound quite a bit like too much propaganda. I don't buy it. But then again, I'm not running a startup in the Valley or elsewhere, so how would I know. It seems reasonable to point out that this has all the hallmarks of self-serving propaganda, whether there is some truth to it or not.
He did bring up one valid point during the interview to that point. The engineers/etc they know are based in the Valley, so if you want someone who you can have face to face time with on a semi-regular basis, so they can't help you if you don't deal in the area with their pool of people.
There's definitely some chamber of commerce talk in there when valley advocates describe the valley, but there's still value in it because... I for one had no idea what it was really like, and I'd been acting in ways designed for the valley, that don't work outside the valley.
This is David Lee here. Feel free to send them to me, Brian Pokorny and Kevin Carter directly at david.lee@gmail.com, brianp@gmail.com and carterkev@gmail.com. Thanks!
