Ex-Googlers have invested in 200 startups since '05 & are just getting started | Hacker News Reader

Ex-Googlers have invested in 200 startups since '05 & are just getting started

businessweek.com

46 pointsadamhowell13 comments

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."

So true.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Close...

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

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

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