Confirmed: Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs will be a SXSW Core ConversationDecember 22nd, 2008 View Comments |
Last Friday SXSW added “Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs” to the Core Conversation schedule. Obviously I’m looking forward to leading the discussion; I have been thrashing around the topic in blog posts and conversations with friends for the better part of a year. Thanks goes to Ethan Bauley for originally suggesting I submit the idea to SXSW.
“Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs” is an idea that describes the need for a fundamentally different model for for creating and funding micro-businesses in the Long Tail of the economy as our society shifts towards a more personal, collaborative and distributed system of value creation.
I’ve continued to see the themes crop in a wide variety of conversations with friends, entrepreneurs and investors through the year and during my travels; there are a number of people that have seen the same gap and are pursuing a wide variety of approaches throughout the US. As we’ve discussed before, Y-Combinator, TechStars and Launchbox Digital are three obvious examples, but they are merely one approach, applying the same investment model, incenting the same goals, using a different economic structure for a rather specific industry. It’s the same approach with different math.
There are some interesting parallels with Chris Tacy’s core conversation “Do We Really Need VC’s Anymore?”, but the key is that this is not just about the the changing cost structures of startups, the current economic downturn or about the “too small to fail” ethos; this is not a call that “venture capital is broken”, but rather, it is realization of a broader cultural shift that will impact all industries (not just web businesses) as people look for ways to apply the same organizational and economic principles to the broader economy. It’s about finding a model for allocating and deploying capital (money, time and social capital) that can profitably support and encourage a broader, more personal and collaborative approach to entrepreneurship. It’s about reframing the goals, incentives and approaches to creating value.
That’s a lot to think about; looking forward to more conversations from everyone, and of course, come to SXSW and participate in the discussion…
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Background: below are a series of posts building up to and thrashing around the idea. I suggest you start with Venture Capital for the Long Tail (July 21st) as a good introduction, then dig into the April 10th and June 4th posts for the broader “thinking out loud”.
- Is this what we need? Is this what we want? (April 10th) on taylordavidson.com)
- Do we need a new funding model for starting businesses? (June 4th on taylordavidson.com)
- How can we create a funding model for lifestyle businesses? (June 12th on taylordavidson.com)
- Venture Capital for the Long Tail (July 21st)
- Venture capital creates real options (August 8th)
- Want to hear more about Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs at SXSW? (August 8th)
- Markets in Everything: Innovation in Angel Capital (Sept 2nd)
- Update: Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs (Nov 3rd)
December 22nd, 2008 at 06:36
Congrats
December 22nd, 2008 at 09:26
That's awesome. Keep on rollin'!
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:47
I'll be at SXSW and would love to participate in this discussion. Obviously, it's near and dear for me. Hopefully we can meet up.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:25
I'll be following this conversation as it unfolds. Thanks for the updates.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:40
Obviously
I love what TechStars is doing; it would be great if we could touch base before SXSW.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:46
happy to connect any time – email david at techstars dot org and let's set something up. thanks for the thoughtful post. good stuff.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:58
Boy, I can't wait to cash in THIS social capital account
LOL
December 22nd, 2008 at 22:57
congrats man.
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:33
Congrats Taylor – this is going to be a hot discussion… and more timely every day.
December 23rd, 2008 at 15:11
I'm pretty excited to think of what could happen between now and SXSW, some great work going on this world every day…
December 27th, 2008 at 10:33
I'm looking forward to seeing you figure out how to “cash that in”…
December 27th, 2008 at 11:02
hahaha
justin has been pushing something on me in recent phone conversations:
“if you have enough friends, you don't need money”
as a thought experiment: i think he means that very literally
December 27th, 2008 at 12:05
I would love to see you two expand on that…
I'll remind you (and Justin) of that as I ask to sleep on your couches. Literally.
December 27th, 2008 at 13:24
This will be great if you go into your SXSW discussion with an already active conversation! Is this post the hub for the topic? How cool would it be if all speakers were completely transparent with their information, providing links to references, research, etc? Then if attendees had a chance to look at that, they would already have in-depth context before you even begin conversing (or to dive in deeper post-presentation). You could craft your presentation around ideas that had garnered the most attention…you're probably already doing this…
December 27th, 2008 at 19:17
Planning on it: will summarize all the random thoughts and conversations that have led up to this (including summary slides), some hacking that I'm still putting together in this space, links to background writings, links to other people that have contributed to the thinking, links and details on the various approaches and activity cropping up in this space, for both before and after SXSW.
And of course, if you have any ideas on how to present this, I'm open for suggestions…
January 9th, 2009 at 10:53
[...] had a very short but interesting “random” call with Taylor Davidson today, after I had commented on his blog a while back. Taylor recently drove across the country stopping along the way to meet as many [...]
January 12th, 2009 at 09:35
Hey Taylor – that's great to hear. We
March 12th, 2009 at 11:49
[...] “Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs” is an idea that describes the need for a fundamentally different model for for creating and funding micro-businesses in the Long Tail of the economy as our society shifts towards a more personal, collaborative and distributed system of value creation. Click here to read more about the subject. [...]
March 15th, 2009 at 00:17
[...] you’ve read some of my past posts, none of this should be a [...]
March 15th, 2009 at 04:21
[...] Click here to read past writings and comments about the subject. [...]