Scoble riffs on Dave Winer’s wishes for the venture capital industry with The “ventures” we need…. It’s a top 10 (OK, 11) list, but #7 reaches too far.
7) Venture ideas. I’ve hung around the industry now to realize that there are a few people who generate far better and far more ideas than anyone else. Microsoft has one of those guys. His name is Eric Horvitz. He owns the most patents at Microsoft and I believe he has about twice the number of the person who is in the #2 spot. Now, you probably couldn’t afford him full time (I’m sure that other multi-billion-dollar companies even regularly bid against us for his time) but you might be able to, say, rent Dave Winer or Steve Wozniak or, even, Matt Mullenweg, to come out and give you some ideas for a day. So, “venture IG’s” (Idea Generators) will be sought after.
Ideas are not what’s lacking. Execution, talent, stubbornness, focus, and leadership are the currency, in combination, which convert into excellent businesses. Ideas are sprinkled, for free, throughout the industry. Yes, having an idea first counts for something… a slim head start. Not much more.
The rest of the list is a reasonable extrapolation of where things might go. But let’s remember that people (and their organizations) don’t change as fast as the technologies which make this type of “venture” possible.
7 responses so far ↓
1 CrunchNotes » On Venture Capital // Jan 29, 2006 at 1:02 am
[...] Dave Winer wrote a post today called “How to Reform the VC Industry” Robert Scoble and John Roberts of Cnet follow up with his their thoughts. [...]
2 mathewingram.com/work // Jan 29, 2006 at 6:27 am
Venture capital didn’t create the bubble
Dave Winer is a smart guy, and when it comes to Web 2.0 he’s been smart a lot longer than I have — but when it comes to investing and the stock market and venture capital, I think he might be a little out of his depth. I wouldn’t tel…
3 Innovation Wings ‘Times’ » Blog Archive » VC: Ideas are not hte hard part // Jan 29, 2006 at 11:12 am
[...] John B. Roberts picks out point # 7: Ideas are not what’s lacking. Execution, talent, stubbornness, focus, and leadership are the currency, in combination, which convert into excellent businesses. Ideas are sprinkled, for free, throughout the industry. Yes, having an idea first counts for something… a slim head start. Not much more. [...]
4 Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » Conferences, VC’ing, hot topics this morning // Jan 29, 2006 at 12:21 pm
[...] Another criticism I saw of my post yesterday? That ideas aren’t what’s needed. I hear this all the time “ideas are cheap, implementation is expensive.” [...]
5 The Post Money Value // Jan 29, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Currency
One of the items passed on over to me was written by John Roberts of CNET fame. John said in a post of his� “Ideas are not the hard part� I’m not sure I’d agree or disagree with how hard ideas are to come up
6 Junto Boyz // Jan 31, 2006 at 10:54 am
REFORM VENTURE CAPITAL? WINER STYLE?… UM, I’LL PASS
I came across Dave Winer’s post, “How to reform the VC industry,” and found it to be interesting enough to respond.
7 clock — watching time, the only true currency » A weekend not spent online // Feb 5, 2006 at 9:54 pm
[...] So I stayed away from blogging on Saturday night, and I didn’t surface on Memeorandum, as I did with last Saturday’s post. I truly think the combination of Saturday evening + linking to one of the A-listers almost guarantees you a spot on Memeorandum, as long as you post some original writing. [...]
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