Venture Capital Investing

Daniel V. Leff

Venture capital is money that is typically invested in young, unproven companies with the potential to develop into multibillion-dollar industry leaders, and it has been an increasingly important source of funds for high-technology start-up companies in the last several years. Venture capitalists are the agents that provide these financial resources as well as business guidance in exchange for ownership in a new business venture. VCs typically hope to garner returns in excess of 3050 percent per year on their investments. They expect to do so over a four- to seven-year time horizon, which is the period of time, on average, that it takes a start-up company to reach a liquidity event (a merger, acquisition, or initial public offering).

Very few high-tech start-up companies are attractive candidates for VC investment. This is especially true for nanotechnology start-ups, because the commercialization of nanoscience is still in its nascent stages. Companies that are appropriate for VC investment generally have some combination of the following five characteristics: (1) an innovative (or disruptive) product idea based on defensible intellectual property that gives the company a sustainable competitive advantage; (2) a large and growing market opportunity that is greater than $1 billion and is growing at more than 2030 percent per year; (3) reasonable time to market (one to three years) for the first product to be introduced; (4) a strong management team of seasoned executives; and (5) early customers and relationships with strategic partners, with a strong likelihood of significant revenue.

An early-stage start-up company rarely possesses all of these characteristics and often does not need to in order to attract venture financing. Indeed, early-stage start-ups are often funded without complete management teams, strategic partners, or customers. Absent these characteristics, however, there should be, at a minimum, a passionate, visionary entrepreneur who helped develop the core technology and wants to play an integral role in building the company.