$450 million DC-based and East Coast focused Venture Fund
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The fundamental core competencies are quite different. In DC, the primary startup mode is to 1. Suck money out of a gov't agency, by 2. Having a contact willing to sign the checks.
Gov't funding has made that area quite fat. (5 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the US are in greater DC.)
Want to know why the federal government hasn't made much of a dent in the recession? Visit the DC exurbs and then visit the exurbs of any other city in the US. If you never left fifty miles of DC you would be forced to assume there was an economic boom going on.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N...
I think it's best summed up as: The federal workforce is disproportionately comprised of scientists and high-end professionals and these workers earn less than their counterparts in the private sector. with the not so minor caviot that rank and file workers are over paid. What's less obvious is output from federal workers; it seems like a few people get the majority of the work done, but you tend to see that in large private companies as well.
Another thing the USA today article over looks is living expenses. Almost all professional government jobs are in big cities with high cost of living.
It is commonly known that at equal skill level you will make less pay for the government.
As much as the politicos would like to claim otherwise, I have never heard of anyone taking a govt job so they can make more money.
Also, within many (but not all, obviously) occupations, the government tends to hire more qualified people than average because they deal with complex work. Federal accountants aren't handling the work of some 50-person small business, they're auditing the tax returns of multi-billion dollar international corporations. Federal lawyers aren't handling some old guy's will, they're overseeing multi-billion dollar transactions.
DC/Baltimore has a number of companies that target nongovernment markets which started there i.e. Living Social, Under Armour, Opower (office in SF too I think), etc.
The biggest difference in DC and SF is the style of funding. SF VCs have the perception of funding bigger addressable market size companies with excellent engineers and lower probability of success whereas DC VCs and angels tend to focus on companies with traction and maybe a lower possible addressable market and do not seem to be as web engineering focused.
The result is lower level of headlines for DC companies in places like hacker news which are focused on the type of company that is born in SF.
There are a number of great ways to get funding in DC and for companies which are starting to prove themselves it is a great market to be in.
Made In DC (a bunch of startups in DC) University of Maryland’s "Dingman Angels" (Although it is university affiliated, their focus is on community startups rather than student startups) The list goes on.
Also, the guys from AOL are in a bunch of Angel/VC investments in DC according to CapIQ.