Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

"Super Angel" Aydin Senkut Talks About VCs, Start-Ups and Shaking Up Tech Investing

While in Vancouver last week, BoomTown got some time to chat with Aydin Senkut about his recent announcement of a new $40 million investment fund, which is part of a “super angel” trend in Silicon Valley.

In many ways, the concept of a super angel was pioneered by well-known tech investor Ron Conway, whom Senkut mentions in the video interview I did with him, below.

But now the market is getting very crowded, with a $30 million fund being raised by Dave McClure just one of many similar efforts by others, from Chris Sacca to Michael Dearing to Conway himself, again.

Apparently, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, these super angels have some kind of mysterioso “magnetic” effort–which means entrepreneurs like them and other investors pay mind.

Also, they compete with VCs, which–IMHO–simply means more VCs of different shapes and sizes. Oh joy!

In all seriousness, via Felicis Ventures, Senkut has been a serious regular-size angel investor for many years, since he left a post at Google (GOOG), with wins that include Mint, which sold to Intuit (INTU), and the Google-acquired Aardvark.

Here’s my chat with Senkut, which touches on all these topics and more:

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus