More On Prizes
NYT – Looks like the VC’s are struggling with this –
Prizes may be of limited value to venture capitalists, who ultimately are less interested in groundbreaking science than they are in concrete and market-ready technologies, according to some technology investors and academics.
“There’s no market merit to any of this,” said Paul S. Kedrosky, executive director of the William J. von Liebig Center, which studies venture capital trends. He argues that the prizes might be good for generating press, or buttressing the egos of donors and winners, but not particularly valuable at leading to profit-capable companies.
Particularly when trying to create the next massive payoff –
Yet Mr. Raffel, echoing concerns of other venture capitalists, has some concerns about whether more ambitious and costlier prizes make sense. His wariness is that if prizes rise into the millions, venture capitalists are going to want some guarantee that they will have an option to invest in the winner. And if a lot of venture capitalists wind up donating prize money to the same pot, that could create conflicts over who has the right to sign up the winner.
-Shlok
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