Entrepreneurial

– Mark Suster is a former serial entrepreneur and a partner at Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners. This article originally appeared on Suster’s blog “Both Sides of the Table”. The views expressed are his own. –

This is the final part of a three-part series on the major changes in the structure of the software and the venture capital industries. Read Part One and Part Two.

Or the Cliff Note’s version:

Open source and cloud computing (led by Amazon) drove down tech startup costs by 90 percent The result was a massive increase in startups and a whole group of new funding sources: both angels and “micro VCs” With more competition in early-stage many VCs are investing smaller amounts at earlier stages. Some are going later stage to not miss out on hot deals. I call this “stage drift.” The opportunities for tech startups today are more immense than they’ve ever been with billions of people now connected to the Internet nearly all the time.

But …

Downsizing Venture Capital

The venture capital business itself is going through an even more fundamental change than just the entry of a new category at the earliest stage. The industry is shrinking back to a mid-90′s level in terms of both dollars and numbers of firms.

The doubling of the industry size was caused by the euphoria of the dot-com bubble and since funds take 10 years or more to dissolve the bursting of the funding bubble has taken its time. We all know the result of the over-funding of the asset class – poor returns in aggregate for the industry. The best firms have still delivered results, though.

– Mark Suster is a former serial entrepreneur and a partner at Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners. This article originally appeared on Suster’s blog “Both Sides of the Table”. The views expressed are his own. –

This is the second in a three-part series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. Read Part 1 here.

If you don’t want to read that post, the summary is:

Open source computing drove computing costs down 90 percent, which spurred innovation in technology Open cloud led by Amazon with their AWS services drove total operating costs down by 90 percent. This led to an explosion in startups. Amazon in turn led to the formation of an earlier stage of venture capital now led by what I call “micro VCs” who typically invest $250,000 to 500,000 in companies rather than the $5 to $7 million that VCs used to invest.

These trends have put pressure on traditional VCs. Some have done earlier-stage deals and done well. Others have chased earlier-stage but lack the skills or relationships to do this effectively. Some have moved into later stage investments in an effort to “put logos on their websites.”

– Mark Suster is a former serial entrepreneur and a partner at Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners. This article originally appeared on Suster’s blog “Both Sides of the Table”. The views expressed are his own. –

In this three-part series I will explore the ways that the venture capital industry has changed over the past five years that I would argue are a direct result of changes in the software industry, not the other way around. Specifically, Amazon has changed our entire industry in profound ways often not attributed strongly enough to them.

I believe the changes to the industry will be lasting rather than temporal change. Venture capital is in the process of its own creative destruction with new market entrants and new models of innovation at the precise moment that our industry itself is contracting.