
Crowd Sourced Venture Capitalism - messel
http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/07/29/crowd-sourced-venture-capitalism/
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newy
I'm a little puzzled by this piece. From the title I was expecting to read a
proposal for a crowdsourced venture firm - a firm that made collective
investment decisions and was funded my a large pool of people. There are big
legal and practical hurdles, of course, to such an arrangement.

Upon a second read it sounds like the author is actually suggesting a large
pool of people getting together and being some sort of LP at a VC. That's even
more far fetched.

Anyone think of a way something along these lines could work?

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messel
If you're not familiar with covestor I can see the confusion (in addition I'm
never quite good enough at communicating my ideas).

The idea is to pool resources from a large body, and to have several existing,
experienced and effective venture firms do the actual investing. The results
of the venture firms are public and trackable, and the crowd can vote up or
down, or comment on the firms while tracking all the startups that are
invested in.

I realize that the legal and practical hurdles exist, but I'd be willing to
pool 5-10k and invest in a solid VC with a few hundred thousand other folks.
Right now all I can do is look to mutual funds (blech!) or stocks (long term
not a bad way to go).

I believe there's some measurable boost to having a few hundred thousand folks
pulling for your startup.

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joshu
There ought to be a word for when a proposed solution has suggestions on how
to fix everything but the actual hard part. And then handwaves the actual hard
part away.

~~~
messel
delusion (I prefer the term rose colored glasses).

