

Ex-Googlers have invested in 200 startups since '05 & are just getting started - adamhowell
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_10/b4169039637367.htm

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adamhowell
Good quote from pg (last paragraph):

"When people write the history of Silicon Valley 20 years from now," says
Graham, "the true impact of Google could come more from all the things that
Google people go on to do after they leave Google."

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dnsworks
This is certainly true of older, failed companies like Netscape.

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quickpost
It's also true of Paypal, which has spun off tons of companies (Youtube,
Facebook(angels), RockYou, etc.).

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nickpp
These people definitely have the money, and probably the brains. The question
is: is that enough?

Because I doubt many of them are entrepreneurs by vocation. Otherwise they
wouldn't have been G. employees in the first place, working in their own
startups instead. So I guess many of them are angels because "that's what you
do if you have money in the Valley".

So, how important is being an entrepreneur for the success of the company you
are funding? Maybe they should've stayed employees? Or as long as you have the
money and the brains, you're a good angel?

I guess we'll find out. If nothing else, it will be a great experiment - I
would love to see the final statistics.

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mattew
I suspect that a great many of these individuals share the following traits:

\- extreme intelligence

\- experience riding an extremely succesful company to the top

\- conifdence from that ride

Many of these folks were in the right place at the right time however, and do
not neccesarily have the experience as investors and business advisors.

Should be interesting though. It doesn't matter how they got the money, they
are putting it to work, and the relative efficiencies that startups have today
vs 5 or 10 years ago will make these investments even more effective.

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gwern
And think, just a month or two ago a hot link on Hacker News was how Google
was killing innovation & startups by buying so many.

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mrduncan
_Ron Conway, one of the Valley's most active angel investors, who has backed
190 companies_

Anyone happen to know if that number accurate? It seems like, given the length
of time he has been investing, that number would be higher.

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jfarmer
They're using the numbers from YouNoodle's report, which only goes back 5-6
years.

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bkudria
Specifically, for Ron Conway, we look at 2004 and onwards.

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NEPatriot
Not really sure why Google doesn't setup their own version of YC, and fund
their own people's startups... Take 5-10% for 20k-30k and let their people
have a go at it.

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auston
Close...

<http://www.google.com/ventures/>

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yanilkr
All of this sounds like an elaborate plan to motivate google employees to quit
and start their own ventures.

