Startup incubation
Startup acceleration
Next-generation Venture Capital
Economic impact models
Startup culture
Venture Capital (VC) as it exists today is Private Equity with a marginally higher appetite for risk: It means to identify high-performing businesses and look for opportunities to inject growth capital in exchange for large shares of equity.
While this is a necessary step in the innovation funnel, it is a very late step, and much more "Capital" than "Venture". Conventional VC ignores the economically more decisive stages in that new startups are created: the incubation and acceleration stage. To call this investment logic "Venture Capital" is a little bit like calling strawberry picking strawberry farming. The picking is a necessary step in strawberry processing; but it is only the final step of farming that capitalizes on a much more complex process in that the strawberries are actually generated.
The point is not to say conventional VC is unimportant. It is to say there exists something much more important and complex that is required before - the actual creation of startups - and that this something requires investment infrastructures that don't exist today. We call these infrastructures "Next-generation Venture Capital". It takes a broader perspective on the financing of startup innovation and focuses on the stage in that the largest share of startup value is being created.
The biggest difference between Next-generation VC and Conventional VC is that the former has a much lesser resemblence with Private Equity than the latter. In seed stage investing, aspects of individual deal making like term-negotiation, extensive due diligence and company valuation become much less important. On the other hand, understanding portfolio risk and innovation ecosystems on a more scientific level become more important.
Startup acceleration
Next-generation Venture Capital
Economic impact models
Startup culture
Venture Capital (VC) as it exists today is Private Equity with a marginally higher appetite for risk: It means to identify high-performing businesses and look for opportunities to inject growth capital in exchange for large shares of equity.
While this is a necessary step in the innovation funnel, it is a very late step, and much more "Capital" than "Venture". Conventional VC ignores the economically more decisive stages in that new startups are created: the incubation and acceleration stage. To call this investment logic "Venture Capital" is a little bit like calling strawberry picking strawberry farming. The picking is a necessary step in strawberry processing; but it is only the final step of farming that capitalizes on a much more complex process in that the strawberries are actually generated.
The point is not to say conventional VC is unimportant. It is to say there exists something much more important and complex that is required before - the actual creation of startups - and that this something requires investment infrastructures that don't exist today. We call these infrastructures "Next-generation Venture Capital". It takes a broader perspective on the financing of startup innovation and focuses on the stage in that the largest share of startup value is being created.
The biggest difference between Next-generation VC and Conventional VC is that the former has a much lesser resemblence with Private Equity than the latter. In seed stage investing, aspects of individual deal making like term-negotiation, extensive due diligence and company valuation become much less important. On the other hand, understanding portfolio risk and innovation ecosystems on a more scientific level become more important.
