There’s a growing debate in Silicon Valley as to whether the rise in angel investors coupled with robust deal activity (from the likes of Google, Facebook, Zynga, etc.) is fostering an unhealthy environment for the industry.
It’s not that founders aren’t making money (indeed many are cashing out early) the real issue, as posited by our editor, Michael Arrington, is if this new dynamic is stifling the next Zuckerberg or Brin—- the entrepreneur that doesn’t just want to sell to Google, but wants to be Google. On Thursday, we explored this issue further, inviting David Hornik and Howard Hartenbaum of August Capital to sit down with Arrington on TechCrunch TV, to discuss the state of investing and why once-bold tech warriors seem to be giving up. See full video above (click on this link to jump to their discussion on angel investing).
The group also discussed the rise of Skype (Hartenbaum was an early investor), whether Foursquare has the legs to beat Facebook, where they are looking to invest today (Hornik is betting on Enterprise 2.0) and the best investments they passed on.
David joined August Capital in 2000. He invests broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on enterprise application and infrastructure software and consumer facing software and services. Prior to joining August Capital, David was an intellectual property and corporate attorney at Venture Law Group, Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Perkins Coie LLP. In his legal practice, David represented high tech startups in all aspects of their formation, financing and operations, including Yahoo, When.com (AOL), Sonique (Terra Lycos), Pure...
Howard Hartenbaum joined August Capital in 2008. Prior to joining, he served as a General Partner at Draper Richards LP where he was the founding investor in Skype and a former member of the board of directors where his achievement resulted in his joining the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists. Before entering the venture capital field, Howard was at Hughes Electronics, where he was responsible for supporting business development, marketing and sales of satellite, information security and automotive...
J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He...
August Capital is a venture capital firm that focuses on investing in early stage technology companies. You guessed it - it was founded in August (1995). The firm currently has just under $2 billion under management.
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