What ever happened to profits?

At last week’s NVCA Annual Meeting, there was a lot of talk about getting the exit market revved up again. The NVCA unveiled their Four Pillar strategy for getting the IPO markets back in action. I agree that regulatory relief would be helpful and it would be really great if we cultivated (once again) relationships with bankers, accountants and advisers whose livelihood is inextricably linked with our business. What was missing at the meeting, however, was a critical discussion of the underlying changes in the industry that are undermining our ability to create a viable crop of IPO candidates.

Venture Capital at the Crossroads – Again

One recent bit of event advertising for the NVCA Annual Meeting managed to catch my eye.  It was an email circulating under the tagline, “Venture Capital at the Crossroads,” an invocation, whether intentional or not, of Bygrave and Timmons’ 1992 book by the same name. 

Written during an early Nineties tech downturn so bad that leading analysts of the day declared it “game over” for venture capital, the book has a special resonance today, because it reminds readers that, by its very nature, venture capital is an investment activity marked by – arguably even defined by – cyclic booms and busts.

A Show of Leadership at the NVCA Annual Meeting

With the NVCA Annual Meeting upon us, you can bet that the hallways and banquet rooms of Boston’s Westin Waterfront Hotel will be backdrop to some pretty interesting conversations. Market volatility, difficult fundraising conditions, failing lenders, challenging prospects for portfolio companies and, despite a couple recent fragile-seeming IPOs, an all but shut window for exits should make for a couple good cathartic days of behind-the-scenes venting among colleagues.

Thankfully, the NVCA has avoided the temptation to use apocalyptic exhortations to market the Annual Meeting, which is pretty much already a must-attend event for VCs at old school firms like mine.