“The rest of the economy is now dealing with the uncertainty that we deal with every day in a good economy. We do that by choice, they’re doing it now out of necessity.”
The scene was XSITE, the Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, held on June 24 at Boston University. The speaker was Noubar Afeyan, managing partner and CEO of Flagship Ventures. The question he was answering dealt generally with how the economy has affected the venture capital business. He continued the statement with the glass-half-full conclusion that because VCs are so used to dealing with uncertainty and risk, “Our world has gotten the least worst.”
It was a beautiful close—to audience laughter and applause—to a keynote panel on Innovating Early Stage Venture. To me, it’s also a nice opening to this week’s column, which is focused on the uptake from the session. The panel didn’t do as good a job as it could have with the core topic—i.e., how is venture capital reinventing its own models in these tough times (more on this below). But panelists did provide some interesting insights on issues ranging from how to cope with the current economic malaise (that’s an upgrade from outright disaster) to their thoughts on Greylock Partners moving its headquarters to Silicon Valley to how and whether to seek federal stimulus money.
Before we dive into the details, though, here is the lineup of who appeared that day (thanks to you all!):
—the aforementioned Noubar Afeyan
—Joel Cutler, co-founder and managing director, General Catalyst Partners
—Bob Higgins, co-founder and general partner, Highland Capital Partners
—Eric Paley, co-founder and general partner, Founder Collective
—Jo Tango, founder and partner, Kepha Partners
Their moderator was Michael Greeley of Flybridge Capital Partners, chairman of the New England Venture Capital Association. He did a great job keeping his squad team of panelists on its toes by asking pointed questions and bringing out the insights below.
‘Cut, Cut, Cut’ is only part of the story for entrepreneurs coping with the current economic climate
Afeyan took issue with the hoopla raised by West Coast VCs (i.e. Sequoia Capital Partners) last fall when they publicly advised startups to cut expenses hard and fast in the face of the recession. Cutting is only part of the challenge, Afeyan warned, saying you can’t cut expenses without a commensurate cut in goals.
Connections are more important than ever in this economy, someone pointed out (sorry, I missed who). That’s presumably because everyone is so busy trying to cope with the downturn that any edge a good connection can provide—in solving a problem or getting something done faster or more efficiently, etc.—is magnified. I took this to mean: make leveraging connections a bigger part of your mindset, whether that means reevaluating connections you already have, or by looking at the connection potential partners or investors bring to the table.
Is the recovery already here for VCs?
A series of snippets on this topic:
—Higgins: “Things really were, I think, back to normal in the spring of ’09.”
—Tango: Deal flow is up 25 percent for Kepha. That’s when looking at the last three quarters on an annualized basis, versus annual figures from past years. (“We wanted to see how were doing since the September 08 stock market crash,” he explained to me in a follow-up e-mail.)
—“We’ve been really busy,” Cutler agreed, adding, “There’ll be plenty of money for good firms.” Then he seemed to catch himself just a bit, saying, “There’ll be enough money.”
—Afeyan: “The exit environment seems to be turning.”
On innovating in venture—early stage or otherwise
I think the panel came up short on addressing this issue. Greeley did his part by putting the question to his guests in several different ways, one of which was: “How do you react to the question that we don’t take enough risk?”
That led to a long silence that drew laughter from the crowd. Higgins then pointed out that Highland has done 60 seed deals the last four years, of which just 15 went on to a Series A round. “You’ll never hear of the other 45,” he said, illustrating his point that Highland, at least, takes risk. Higgins said that in his view, “The decline in venture capital is not the headline.” It’s the decline in angel groups, corporate venture arms, and hedge funds.
Afeyan also said his company is very active in early stage investing. Overall, he said, “I don’t sense a dramatic change in the amount of early stage risk capital, certainly not in Boston.”
Paley, though, had a slightly different take, at least on the surface. “There is a lot of room for some smaller funds” under $100 million, he said. He also said there was room to find new models for venture funding, or revisit old models with a new eye.
General Catalyst’s two-for-one sale
Following up on the previous question, Cutler put forth
