AllThingsD » Bill Maris http://allthingsd.com Sat, 26 May 2012 02:18:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 Google Ventures Sows Seed Funding With New Start-Up Lab (Video Tour) http://allthingsd.com/20110212/google-ventures-sows-seed-funding-with-new-startup-lab-video-tour/ http://allthingsd.com/20110212/google-ventures-sows-seed-funding-with-new-startup-lab-video-tour/#comments Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:00:02 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3508 As incoming CEO Larry Page seeks to recapture Google’s entrepreneurial spirit, Google Ventures thinks it’s in for a year of expansion and support from its corporate parent.

The VC arm, which gets $100 million from Google each year to invest as it sees fit, wants to give more early-stage companies seed funding, and to that end has taken over an enormous Google-owned building in Mountain View, Calif., and started filling it with companies. The space is mostly empty; there are just about 20 people working there now.

Google Ventures Partner David Krane took us on a tour of the Startup Lab, which opened in October and is currently occupied by start-ups like LawPivot (legal Q&A) and OpenCandy (software discovery), a product group from the vacation rental roll-up company HomeAway, and the yet-to-be-launched company of GrandCentral (now Google Voice) founder Craig Walker (which Google Ventures hasn’t invested in yet, though it’s made Walker an entrepreneur in residence).

The companies each pay $5 per month for as much space as they need, filled with recycled furniture from AdMob. They get a ping-pong table, free bikes and a microkitchen filled with snacks, courtesy of Google. They also added their own barbecue for the universal getting-to-know-you activity of grilling meat.

“This is not to be thought of as any sort of curated environment,” Krane said, anticipating the are-you-copying-Y-Combinator question. “This is merely work space.”

Krane said he mostly leaves the companies at the Startup Lab alone, stopping by about once a week. Google Ventures occupies its own floor of a building over on the other side of campus, right below Google’s autonomous car team, and also has offices in New York City, Cambridge, Mass., and Seattle.

Google Ventures has made about 30 total investments to date, with one exit: Ngmoco to DeNA. Just last week, it closed its first deal with a company led by former Google employees, the Web security provider Dasient.

It’s kind of crazy that a two-year-old venture firm with a staff of about 20 former Google employees wouldn’t have stumbled into investing in a former Googler’s company before now. And this is at a time when Google is fighting a talent war against its own employees’ entrepreneurial urges, which often lead them to join younger companies or start their own.

Krane said to expect more deals with former Googlers as Google Ventures “will do substantially more than 30 deals” this year.

“We don’t advocate or want people to leave Google,” Google Ventures Partner Bill Maris said, “but if someone has the entrepreneurial bug at that exit interview…”


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110212/google-ventures-sows-seed-funding-with-new-startup-lab-video-tour/feed/ 6 Silicon Valley Entrepreneur (and Google Exec) Joe Kraus Moves to Google Ventures http://allthingsd.com/20091103/silicon-valley-entrepreneur-and-google-exec-joe-kraus-moves-to-google-ventures/ http://allthingsd.com/20091103/silicon-valley-entrepreneur-and-google-exec-joe-kraus-moves-to-google-ventures/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:14:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20148 joe_kraus

Joe Kraus–the longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur who sold his most recent start-up, JotSpot, to Google in 2006 and has been a director of product management since–has moved to its Google Ventures unit as a partner, said several sources.

Sources added that Kraus (pictured above) is likely to be the first of several well-known appointments at the relatively new venture arm of the search giant.

Google (GOOG) announced its VC play in March and said the fund will invest $100 million in “exceptional” start-ups over the next year.

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post when Google Ventures debuted. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Well, that now apparently means Kraus, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded the Web 1.0-era Excite portal and, in Web 2.0, JotSpot, which made wiki-style software for online collaboration.

Currently, only Miner and Maris are listed on the bios page of Google Venture’s online site.

Since the acquisition, Kraus has been leading Google’s OpenSocial efforts to develop standards for social networking platforms.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091103/silicon-valley-entrepreneur-and-google-exec-joe-kraus-moves-to-google-ventures/feed/ 4 Google's Mission: To Organize the World's Start-Ups and Make Them Universally Acquirable http://allthingsd.com/20090331/googles-mission-to-organize-the-worlds-start-ups-and-make-them-universally-acquirable/ http://allthingsd.com/20090331/googles-mission-to-organize-the-worlds-start-ups-and-make-them-universally-acquirable/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:10:54 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15724 google_giant_robotSequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz often says that the best time to invest is when people are cowering under their desks. Google appears to have taken that message to heart because it’s launching a new venture fund at a time when the VC industry is busy practicing its duck-for-cover exercises. Monday night, the search sovereign announced the creation of Google Ventures, a fund that over the next year will invest $100 million in “exceptional” start-ups. A vague category, but one quite in keeping with Google’s We-Are-The-Champions worldview.

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Presumably, then, the scope of the fund’s investments will be as diverse and, ahem, fascinating as the whims of Google’s leadership. Which isn’t always a good thing. That said, Google Ventures may do much to help the company innovate itself out of this downturn and perhaps even spot and engulf the next Google (GOOG) killer before it has a chance to live up to its namesake. As Google Ventures explains in its FAQ, it’s not above engulfing a company it’s incubated. “Acquisitions by Google of portfolio companies are possible, but this is not the goal or focus of our investment activities. Our focus is building great companies and generating long term financial return.”

Obviously. But for Google, right?

[Image Credit: Ignorance Is Futile!]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090331/googles-mission-to-organize-the-worlds-start-ups-and-make-them-universally-acquirable/feed/ 1 Google's Mission: To Organize the World's Start-Ups and Make Them Universally Acquirable http://allthingsd.com/20090331/googles-mission-to-organize-the-worlds-start-ups-and-make-them-universally-acquirable-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090331/googles-mission-to-organize-the-worlds-start-ups-and-make-them-universally-acquirable-2/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:10:54 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15724 google_giant_robotSequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz often says that the best time to invest is when people are cowering under their desks. Google appears to have taken that message to heart because it’s launching a new venture fund at a time when the VC industry is busy practicing its duck-for-cover exercises. Monday night, the search sovereign announced the creation of Google Ventures, a fund that over the next year will invest $100 million in “exceptional” start-ups. A vague category, but one quite in keeping with Google’s We-Are-The-Champions worldview.

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Presumably, then, the scope of the fund’s investments will be as diverse and, ahem, fascinating as the whims of Google’s leadership. Which isn’t always a good thing. That said, Google Ventures may do much to help the company innovate itself out of this downturn and perhaps even spot and engulf the next Google (GOOG) killer before it has a chance to live up to its namesake. As Google Ventures explains in its FAQ, it’s not above engulfing a company it’s incubated. “Acquisitions by Google of portfolio companies are possible, but this is not the goal or focus of our investment activities. Our focus is building great companies and generating long term financial return.”

Obviously. But for Google, right?

[Image Credit: Ignorance Is Futile!]

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