
Dell Takes Venture Arm Out of Stealth, Aims to Spend $100M Annually - artsandsci
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-08/dell-takes-venture-arm-out-of-stealth-aims-to-spend-100-million-annually
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Nanite
The lingering question with corporate venture arms: How do they perform
compared to "regular" vc's? as corporate managers will have relative limited
upside and zero skin in the game.

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lend000
I believe Intel's VC arm has been very successful, and there's the added
benefit that Intel gets a better preview into technologies it may want to
acquire outright -- however, I'd like to see the numbers, too.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Capital)

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Nanite
Haven't look at their portfolio extensively, but their Basis acquisition, one
of the earlier fitness tracker watches with optical heart rate sensor, comes
to mind, which was just south of $100M, and was basically shuttered with their
flagship product pulled of the market after serious issues. Like most
corporate VC's Intel pursues synergy deals, For intel these are categorized as
"more Moore" and "more than Moore" i.e. as long as it contains silicon it
could expand their markets

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spullara
I think they mean invest rather than spend?

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MR4D
SPEND in this case means essentially what their budget is for the group, while
INVEST would be a smaller portion (essentially, the budgeted spend minus
overhead).

Merely asking and answering the question "Who should we invest in?" takes a
considerable amount of money by itself.

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aardvark291
That $100M clearly is dominated by the capital that is to be invested. The use
of the verb "spend" is perhaps a slip indicating an opinion on the chance of
positive ROI...

"The company is spending about $100 million annually on the funding of
startups, he said."

"All told, Dell Technologies Capital has invested in more than 70 startups. It
puts in around $3 million to $10 million initially and usually in the A or B
rounds, Darling said. The company provides more money in later rounds."

If your investment team that answers the question "Who should we invest in?"
is consuming $100M itself... I need to change jobs.

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Entangled
Start with an Apple-TV-like device that we can plug to our TVs and allow us to
browse the web from our couches. Compete with Google and Apple in that arena
and let us developers build tools for the world to enjoy the computer ten feet
away, any mobile phone can be used as remote and keyboard but you are welcome
to build one for less than $50, it's just an IR remote with a keyboard, not a
mobile phone.

From mainframes, to desktops, to the web, to mobile. The next revolution will
be televised. Be prepared.

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rgbrenner
So like webtv 2.0?

I think that'll end the same as the first version

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ryandrake
Ahhh, WebTV. Brings me back to the glorious late nineties. So much $$$ was
wasted trying to get people to use a computer on their TV screen and trying to
get people to watch TV on their computer screens. Reminds me of that classic
Onion article: [1]

1: [http://www.theonion.com/article/new-5000-multimedia-
computer...](http://www.theonion.com/article/new-5000-multimedia-computer-
system-downloads-real-1618)

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whiddershins
Except pretty much everybody under a certain cutoff age watches tv on their
computer, exclusively. So the entire media revolutions the cable companies
feared, happened.

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themark
I read title and thought that they were withdrawing funds from Stealth
Technology. That would have been more interesting.

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nakedgremlin
So... similar to Hewlett Packard Pathfinder for Hewlett Packard Enterprise?

