I interviewed Robert Coneybeer, Managing Director Shasta Ventures @GLAZED. Shasta Ventures invest in early stage technology companies. About half the investments they make are enterprise focused & the other half are consumer focused. Robert is most interested in the intersection between the real world that we all live in everyday that we know & the Internet. There’s a very clear separation between the internet & services that we are familiar with. Hes fascinated by wearables that connect to & interact with the internet & are completely outside the old paradigm of how we communicate with the Cloud & use those services. Example Google Glasses, Nest who they have invested in, where the internet is connected directly into the thermostat itself – automatically upgrades the thermostat & learns from your behavior & improves itself. Shasta were early investors in Nest Labs & the founders came from Apple & working out of a garage in Palo Alto. He spoke about his views on the changes in the venture industry. He has been in the venture industry for almost 10 years & he finds it strange that many vcs say that entrepreneurs should embrace disruption. It is interesting to see how many either embrace disruption in their own industry or dismiss it & think its not happening. Rob’s view is that anything that creates better opportunities for entrepreneurs to start businesses people in the venture industry should embrace. So wherever those entrepreneurs are in the world & whatever services they have that can help? Shasta is a boutique firm, they are not intending to be a full service firm but in certain areas like enterprise software & consumer hardware & the areas that they focus on, they dive very deeply into that area. They get to where they find they can connect the entrepreneurs to the right people. Its a very different strategy! They help people understand about crowdfunding, international expansion & promote their businesses. it’s a very partnering expertise focus as opposed to a full service model. Shasta is open to international startups as they believe that great businesses can be built anywhere in the world. But as part of their boutique strategy they are particularly focused on the US. He goes on international trips every year for Business Tourism. He goes to parts of the world where he hasn’t had a lot of exposure like India, Ireland, Turkey. He went to the Dublin Web Summit. He has visited Dublin & feels that it is very suitable for startup culture. The pub culture is positive. There is curiosity, inquisitiveness & friendliness that leads in his view to a strong entrepreneurial culture.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Trae Vassallo, Partner Kleiner Perkins #smartmoneysv
I interviewed Trae Vassallo, Partner Kleiner Perkins @GLAZED. (Apologies for the bad sound – it got quite noisy in the room.) Trae is really passionate about the emerging world of digital devices “The Natural Evolution of Mobile: We can now take the power of the internet & not just deliver it to a mobile device but we can deliver it to a customized hardware package that might be our door lock? It might be our thermostat or the glasses I’m wearing on my head? That paradigm shift from to the things in our life that we interact with is really exciting!” Trae is a parent with 3 children, she has a busy career & she’s a technology geek. So what she is doing is taking all the technology that is now coming & is deployable in the home & really try & live it & experience it! “We are in a unique period of time where there is no IT service for the home so if you’re going to deploy technology in the home it’s got to be great.” Anywhere that it makes her life easier as regards technology she uses it. A great example is one of the apps that she is using allows her to track & know where her kids are. She also spoke about the changes in the venture industry. Certain infrastructure & tools are so readily available to anyone. One of the ways she is differentiating herself as a venture capitalist is by offering her expertise & experience to startups. “Every industry has to adjust & change with the times. If you think about how the industry operated even 4 years ago – it was who knew who & telephone calls but now everything is out there on the internet. Yes venture capital has to change & grow. That doesn’t mean it is any less valuable. I think it just means that how people operate is very different.”
Mari Baker: Engage or Not with Your Investment?
Mari Baker former Kleiner Perkins EIR/now an angel investor. Mari Baker brings a deep background in consumer technology, small and large company management, and executive leadership roles. She is currently Director at John Wiley and Sons, a $1.7 billion global publisher of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, professional/trade books and educational materials. Mari is also Director at Velti plc, a $250 million leading global provider of mobile marketing and advertising solutions. Baker was recently president and chief executive officer of PlayFirst, Inc., a leading San Francisco-based publisher of mobile and casual games. Prior to PlayFirst, Baker was an executive-in-residence at the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers where she incubated and launched Navigenics, Inc., and served as founding President, CEO and a director. Baker led the growth of BabyCenter, Inc. from 1999 to 2006, including the sale to Johnson and Johnson where she continued to serve as a company president for five years. She was a key player in the growth of Intuit, Inc. from under $10 million in sales in 1989 to over $800 million in 1999, and held a number of executive positions including general manager and senior vice president. Baker served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University from 1996-2003, and continues to serve as an emerita trustee. Baker is currently an advisor to the Clayman Institute at Stanford as well as several private early-stage companies, and is an officer in the Golden Gate Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization. She has been recognized in the San Mateo County Women’s Hall of Fame, Fortune’s list of Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Women, Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Women of Influence, and Advertising Age’s Top 100, been interviewed by a variety of media including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Fortune Magazine and NPR’s TechNation, and spoken at a number of conferences including Fortune Tech, Milken Global and Health 2.0. You can find Mari on Twitter @maribaker