5 - Financing innovation: Venture capital

Summary

In the morning sow your seed and in the evening do not be idle, for you cannot know which will succeed.

(Ecclesiastes 9.6)

Just when global competition forced the big vertically-integrated US corporations to focus their R&D on near-term products, a new support system for innovation emerged: venture capital.

In the early 1980s, the venture capital industry became a major catalyst in bringing to market digital technologies that had been incubated in the corporate laboratories. In the mid-1990s came the rush of venture investments in start-up Internet companies.

Much as we might deplore the excesses of the Internet bubble, the many billions of dollars invested there left a permanent legacy of achievement. It is doubtful that the Internet would have developed as rapidly as it did, bringing with it the benefits that we enjoy today, without venture capital. About $200 billion of funding was provided between 1984 and 2005 to build thousands of new companies.

Having entered the venture capital business in 1983, I had a ringside seat as these events unfolded. I participated in the successes as well as the heartbreaks that come with revolutionary periods in history.

In hindsight it looks obvious that the new digital technologies would find willing investors. That was not the case. In fact, many promising companies struggled in their early years because the markets were so ill-defined.

But trailblazers in every era have a hard time finding investors to fund their exploits. The difficulties Columbus faced in financing his journeys are well known.