The only solution to managing shareholders with different exit and return horizons, as well as the differing added value they can bring to a business at different points in its life, is to build trust and communicate - something the titans of the industry have always realised.
There is a nice statistic apparently showing that in the past three years no US-based venture capital (VC) firm has backed a silicon-focused start-up based around Palo Alto, while Asian groups have supported 38 in the region of California still called Silicon Valley.
In the week of social network Facebook’s $104bn flotation the statistic was a timely reminder of how far the Valley has moved from its hardware origins forty years earlier towards internet services, according to Timothy Barnes, director of UCL Enterprise Operations and UCL Advances at UK-based University College London, at a Start-Up Britain panel on corporate venturing.
What hasn’t changed over this time is the feeling that venture capital in the Valley is the only legitimate form of insider trading in the US. The original regular angel lunches saw "the group" based around Reid Dennis (who later founded Fireman’s Fund – now American Express’ – corporate venturing unit)…
