ComVentures has been quite successful with its investments so far. Entrepreneurs come to us because they know we increase their odds for success. Our co-investors and colleagues in the industry like us because we bring deal flow and insight to the table. We’ve made a lot of money for our limited partners, our partnership, and our entrepreneurs. And we will continue to do so, regardless of the biased analysis and comments here.

This debate on TechCrunch is just jaw-jaw for the failures and unsuccessful. An informed editor or analyst or forum would have thrown it out. As they say, when what you read is for free you get what you pay. Forbes and Fortune matter. TechCrunch or ValleyWag don’t.

We won’t miss the entrepreneurs that choose to go somewhere else. Our future success is not dependent on those losers.

Re: the article referrenced in #150.

“At the time, investors holding preferred shares, including Benchmark and August Capital, had claim on the $45 million they had invested collectively. The four founders, the suit says, were led to believe that the company was worth $23 million to $38 million, making common stock worthless.” Had they been given this information, they contend they wouldn’t have agreed to the merger, rather they would have waited for their shares to increase in value. ”

As you can see the epinions guys probably had a better reason to complain than the founders of FilmLoop. They were told that their shares were underwater when in fact the VC’s knew that it would soon be “above water” but witheld it from the 3 founders who had left.

In FilmLoop’s case, there was no way in hell the company would have been worth $13M and the fact that it was actually sold for $3M showed that the VCs had no intention of “screwing” the founders of gains that they otherwise would have gotten… they were just trying to preserve any remnant value in their investment.

if the company had $3million cash in the bank, the company sold at the value of the cash in the bank? good deal huh..
say, i don’t know if that is a true figure, but let’s say that FilmLoop does have 100,000 unique users per month.
and let’s say there was no cash in the bank - zero, zilch, nada..
that would mean a valuation of $30/user wouldn’t it – that would basically value the technology and IP at zero..
based on fabrik’s price of $3/month for storage, if these guys can convert all of FilmLoop’s users they could break even on the deal in about 10 months, huh..
now, if the story is true and there still was $3million cash in the bank at the time of the so called sale…
Fabrik starts making money day 1 by just converting a very small % of the FilmLoop’s users..
Now, the ComVenturers out there wouldn’t happen to be privy to some kind of insight (or should we say, ‘inside information’) from internal marketing research available at their ‘other’ baby, would they?
Now, if on top of all that, the cash value of the sale went straight into the ComVenturers’s pockets.. hmm.. hmm..i don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like a fair deal to me..
All that, again, without valuing the technology and IP at all.
So, how did you say this was a good deal again?

Baris Karadogan’s (partner at ComVentures) impressively vague comments above fail to address any of the very grave allegations about ComVentures.

Not only is the failure rate of start-ups irrelevant to this ethics issue; my understanding is that his assertion about “9 out of 10 of all VC investments fail” is also wrong. For example, Susan Kelley reports in Cornell’s Alumni Magazine (http://cornell-magazine.cornell.edu/Archive/2005sepoct/depts/Currents.html) that “One-third of all VC deals fail and another third break even, according to the National Venture Capital Association. But the rest make money–sometimes a lot.” So perhaps it is only 9 out of 10 *ComVentures* investments that fail. If the sort of support of entrepreneurs described in the note is true, perhaps their failure rate is not surprising.

Veteran VCs will tell you that the companies that succeed (including all 3 of the major players in the Internet today: Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo) are those in which entrepreneurs remain involved with the company. VC’s tendency to ignore this bodes badly for them, for their partners and investors, and for entrepreneurs who do not carefully check up VCs reputation before accepting investment.

Alex, yeah its interesting, because the stats I hear most is that only 1 in 10 become super-stars, but a lot more have good to ok outcomes and about a third are complete failures… but it is the 1 in 10 that delivers the superb returns ie. 10x+ that makes the investment risk worth it.

“Failure” – another myth propagated by the VC industry..
What gets me really, is how shameless and untruthful VCs like ComVentures’ really are.
How can Baris Karadogans of the world define as ‘failure’ an entrepreneur who came to them with an idea and then turned that idea into a product and 100,000 unique monthly customers? Who the heck are they to say that? They simply have no clue of what they are talking about –they are just puppets of a corrupt and shameless industry. The least Baris Karadogans of the world can do is just say this (common Baris, you can do it man! Just repeat after me):
“Hats off to the entrepreneur! He turned an idea into a product and a market. Me, Baris Karadogan, I could probably never do anything like that.”
Common Baris, say it, you can do it man!
One can define failure anything in that manner.. Microsoft can be a failure because it cannot get google fast enough, google can be a failure because of the miserable performance in china and the plethora of new products they bring out and never become major stars..
In their rush to get their hands on a company’s assets, these VCs become outright liars:
The success rate is 100% - that is the truth and they should just admit it.
They create a myth to just be able to take out competition and protect/monopolize one field or another. At some point, someone should take a closer look at what these guys are ‘really’ doing.
Why 100% success? Because an entrepreneur walks in with an idea and a few months later the idea has become a product used by quite a few customers.
It’s that simple.
If one raises the bar high enough, one can call failure anything one wants..

“We won’t miss the entrepreneurs that choose to go somewhere else. Our future success is not dependent on those losers.”

wow. . . arrogant words . . . those who do not chose you are by definition losers? what is this? highschool? what are you? a 14 yeard old cheerleader?

I’m am at a lost for words

Funding is good, but they are margin accounts, be weary always of margin accounts. VC only when there is no other alternative.

nice