The VCs’ upper hand

Cameron Lester, a partner at a VC firm, on A Golden Age for Venture Capital:

For 14 months, we at Azure Capital tried to invest in companies but could not reach an agreement with entrepreneurs and existing investors on valuation and terms — the gap was too great. Despite meeting with hundreds of companies and reaching the point of discussing terms with a few, we did not make a single new investment.

That gap no longer exists. We recently invested in a company called BlogHer in May. It is an exciting company, whose team and investors were wise enough to realize that taking money now would give them a competitive advantage. And last week we invested in SlideRocket, our second new investment in less than two months.

It is as if the venture-funding environment has finally hit the reset button.

Translation: Now that money is tight, venture capital firms are able to fully dictate the terms of their investments. Entrepreneurs, prepare to part with more of your companies than you wanted to and receive less for the pleasure. Lester goes on to hand-wavingly assert that this is a good thing for entrepreneurs.

• business
• economics
• venture capital