Google has finally officially launched their long rumored venture fund. Corporate venture funds have a somewhat spotty history and it will be interesting to see how the google team approaches this. My partner Brad started in Venture Capital with AT&T ventures, which was set up like a real independent fund with a GP/LP structure. That is clearly the way to do it if you want to optimize for returns. The description of Google Ventures given by the principals and on the Google Ventures site makes it appear that they too are focusing on backing innovative startups and de-emphasizing any strategic value for google. It will be interesting to see what entrepreneurs think of that and how it plays out in practice. For someone like Intel Capital there have been a lot of things to fund (e.g. in software or web services) that have a low likelihood of a future conflict between the fund’s sponsor and the startup. Given the breadth of google’s activities (and ambition?) that may be a bit harder. In any case, I am happy to see another source of funding for startups, especially at a time when some other funds are retrenching, and look forward to meeting the Google Ventures team.

Google has finally officially launched their long rumored venture fund. Corporate venture funds have a somewhat spotty history and it will be interesting to see how the google team approaches this. My partner Brad started in Venture Capital with AT&T ventures, which was set up like a real independent fund with a GP/LP structure. That is clearly the way to do it if you want to optimize for returns. The description of Google Ventures given by the principals and on the Google Ventures site makes it appear that they too are focusing on backing innovative startups and de-emphasizing any strategic value for google. It will be interesting to see what entrepreneurs think of that and how it plays out in practice. For someone like Intel Capital there have been a lot of things to fund (e.g. in software or web services) that have a low likelihood of a future conflict between the fund’s sponsor and the startup. Given the breadth of google’s activities (and ambition?) that may be a bit harder. In any case, I am happy to see another source of funding for startups, especially at a time when some other funds are retrenching, and look forward to meeting the Google Ventures team.