comeuppance

Big sharks, little pond

Nick Douglas · 07/16/07 03:12AM

"We made the angels blink and understand the real money had arrived." So said some nasty venture capitalists, quoted by a saner one, rejoicing over swinging their dicks at a startup. One of the reasons everyone else in the startup ecosystem hates VCs is that these guys think they're the "real money." Clearly they've never come up against a hedge fund manager: While the VC industry may invest nearly $30 billion in 2007, the hedge fund industry is currently handling nearly $2 trillion.Compared to the big-time deals that biotech and other high-cost firms are making, the average VC deal is piddling. If these hundred-million-dollar startups put out biotech and clean-tech solutions to the world's biggest problems, wresting attention away from the Internet scene, those high-flying VCs could end up feeling like the hundred-thousand-dollar angel investors they stepped on.