It’s not new, but venture capitalists have to compete harder to work with the best companies. “The power, over the last several years, has shifted to entrepreneurs,” says Chase Garbarino, co-founder and CEO of VentureApp, a marketplace for startups and service providers. “As capital has become more of a commodity, there’s more transparency” in the deal process. (Garbarino spoke with me last fall, but his comments still ring true.)
For his part, Goldstein believes profits will take care of themselves—if Pillar can invest in the most ambitious startups. “Let’s try to build some pillar companies that have a shot at being around for decades,” he says. “We want to go after ideas that have the potential to be big.”
At North Bridge, Goldstein backed companies such as Actifio, Plexxi, and Layer3 TV—big technology bets that are all still in the game. He has been a staunch supporter of companies that shun incremental advances and try to build bigger things. His background is mainly in tech infrastructure and business-to-business applications, but he’s also looking at consumer-focused businesses (see his partners from TripAdvisor, Wayfair, and DraftKings).
Pillar’s goal is to make about 12 to 15 investments in the first year, including smaller seed rounds. Goldstein says that over the life cycle of a startup, “we can put $8 million into a company, no problem.” Sector-wise, he says he’s covering a broad range of tech: artificial intelligence and machine learning, Internet of Things, hardware and robotics, sensors, security, and healthtech (pretty much everything except life sciences or “intensive” materials science). Goldstein says he’s been spending a lot of time at MIT and Harvard University, in particular.
What Pillar isn’t saying yet is which companies it’s involved with already. But Goldstein was an early investor in Desktop Metal—the 3D-printing company run by his former North Bridge colleague Ric Fulop—and he says that startup will be part of Pillar’s portfolio.
The new fund will face plenty of local competition for deals. While bigger, traditional VC powers like General Catalyst, Spark Capital, and CRV are still active in Boston, a newer wave of seed- and early-stage tech investors has also emerged on the scene. They include Project 11 Ventures, Assemble.VC (co-led by Michael Skok, another ex-North Bridge), Hyperplane Venture Capital, Boston Seed Capital, and Romulus Capital. Meanwhile, funds like Founder Collective, NextView Ventures, and Techstars Boston remain very active (and already feel like institutions).
Goldstein and team are excited to dive in and start competing to build the next great Boston tech company. They’re also hoping to help unify the innovation community and create a rallying point, much like what Techstars, MassChallenge, and other programs have done in recent years. “We’re trying to create more big-top events here, and bring more VCs to town,” Goldstein says. “We see an opportunity as a convener.”
But the greater opportunity is to cash in on Boston’s technology scene—and quit bemoaning the loss of Facebooks and Dropboxes to the West Coast. “For the next 10 years, we’ll be a net exporter of innovation. There’s just not enough capital to capture it,” Goldstein says. “We don’t need to be ashamed of that, if we could just capture another 5 or 10 percent of it.”
