It’s way too early to know if MG Siegler will be a good venture capitalist. But he certainly is reflective of its future.
TechCrunch blogger MG Siegler yesterday announced that he was trading in his keyboard for his calculator, agreeing to join former boss Michael Arrington as a partner in CrunchFund. I did a quick Q&A with MG about the move, which you can read here.
Upon first hearing the news, I tweeted that 29 year-old MG “may really represent next gen of tech VCs: Young & connected. Currently matters more than biz/finance experience.”
A lot of people agreed with my sentiment, but I also got some major pushback. Specifically, there is a sense that this sort of hire — and the fact that MG was pursued by other VC firms — is an indication that the Valley’s tech bubble is about to burst. Thing is, I’m not so sure the two are mutually exclusive.
First: Today’s tech entrepreneurs are getting younger by the day, with Mark Zuckerberg beginning to look like an elder statesman. And they often want venture capitalists who dress like they do, listen to the same music they do and have the same cultural/tech frame of references they do. Sure that sounds more like picking a friend than picking an investor, but that’s just the way it is.
In fact, many new entrepreneurs don’t think VCs add much value at all. Just look at these comments from ex-Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya to Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, from an email leaked to AllThingsD:
“I’m all for getting the best valuation you can, minimizing dilution and maximizing control. We did this brilliantly at Facebook — all of our financings (except our first $$$ from Peter Thiel) were done not out of necessity but opportunity. As such, our investors had virtually no control and it resulted in a much better outcome. As we’ve discussed, I generally don’t believe investors add much to a success story and so minimizing their impact is a great strategy when you are onto something that is working.”
So if all the money is green, you might as well bring on a VC you like personally.
Moreover, let’s assume that the tech bubble is, indeed, about to burst: When that happens, a number of older VCs are going to bail. It happened in 2002, and will happen again. Remember Crosspoint? After all, who wants to spend 5 years in portfolio management mode and then another year or two begging LPs for more cash.
When that happens, a new generation of VCs will bubble up. And, chances are, they’ll be the younger and hungrier folks who don’t have a corroded legacy portfolio to deal with. This isn’t to say that MG will or won’t become a successful investor — or that the remaining “adults” won’t both outperform and regain their popularity — but it is to say that the conditions are right…
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