How to get venture funding: sacrifice a goat
Alana Semuels over that the Los Angeles Times: how many goats do you need to sacrifice to get venture funding?
All kidding aside (umm, pun not intended), having been chatting with a lot of the folks who have raised funding this year, it’s clear that the bar has been raised for companies seeking venture funding. There are a lot — and I mean a lot — of companies which might have found funding easy in 2007 and early 2008, who might find goat sacrifice may be easier than financing in2009.
Of the folks I’ve talked to this year who have successfully found funding, risk management is big — companies with products, customers, and revenues are again far more attractive than companies with just Internet traffic, “buzz”, and big hopes (but no revenue). Plus, firms with long-term plays (i.e., technology investments which won’t appear on the market for some time) seem not to be quite as badly impacted as consumer focused startups–who clearly are going to be facing some issues until the economy picks up.
