Will you bet on VenCorps?

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Alberta, Canada, Dead Startups, Startups

The VenCorps machine has been ramping up lately and it got a further injection of excitement with some posts in the last week.

The premise of VenCorps is this: You record a video of your “pitch” and upload it. The “crowd”, that is the Vencorps community, then votes and chooses some winners. Those winners then go on to be vetted in a traditional investment process involving angels and other sources of funding. Chosen startups then get some amount of funding.

VenCorps isn’t the only new Canadian video-pitches-for-financing site to launch, fundfinder.com, which also connects your pitch to a “crowd” of would-be investors. The difference being that VenCorps uses the Cambrian House software to help manage the selection/voting process. The end result however (videos of startups pitching) looks quite similar.

We first covered Vencorps in January and at that time we were told that they would be making more announcements at the end of the month, but it seems to have taken almost 5 more months to see any sort of public activity. This is no doubt the result of some of the problems Cambrian House has been having.

I decided to poke around and, as you might have guessed, I managed to find some differing opinions. Overwhelmingly, from community members to current and former employees, the sense is that this is truly a last stand for Cambrian House, and had Sean Wise not come along with money from Spencer Trask, that things would look a lot different right now.

One of the overwhelming reactions I did get was that Cambrian House CEO Michael Sikorsky is a brilliant guy who took this thing as far as anyone could have. I think we need to applaud Michael and the entire team for doing something worth doing here in Canada. I have no doubt Michael will be back with something great again.

So the question I have is: Will you bet on VenCorps? Will the best startups in the Canada, and the world, flock to VenCorps to pitch themselves? Will there be enough investors and money to make it attractive?

I think it is possible for this to work. It takes guts to attempt something like this.

However, the model has failed a few times already, Cambrian House has proven that it has serious flaws, so VenCorps is going to have to do more than just re-apply that model with a more direct financing spin on it. In a video that Cambrian House recently posted (included below), they say that VenCorps will focus more on teams than on ideas, and that the lack of focus on teams was one of the downfalls of Cambrian House.

The thought that lingers in the back of my mind is whether or not VenCorps should have attached themselves to Cambrian House or not? My gut reaction was a big No, but you have to weigh that against the fact that the Cambrian House crew have probably learned a few things about community building in the last couple of years.

Will you pitch on VenCorps?

Comments

21 responses to “Will you bet on VenCorps?”

May 21, 2008

heri

the idea is compelling but in its current form, i won’t

Will Pate said anyone (say for instance a teenager in any country in the world) could join the crowd and vote for a startup. There is something flawed here.

Reply
May 21, 2008

heri

the idea is compelling but in its current form, i won’t

Will Pate said anyone (say for instance a teenager in any country in the world) could join the crowd and vote for a startup. There is something flawed here.

Reply
May 21, 2008

Omar Ismail

No, I won’t.

And I highly doubt anyone worth their salt will. This is a solution that’s looking for a problem. I’m sorry to sound excessively harsh here, but anybody that is seriously looking for Venture Capital can find it. Or at least get the opportunity to present to VCs.

The only utility I can see in this application is for VCs to weed out crappy pitches not find good ones. So if you’re a startup you can ONLY hurt yourself by presenting on VenCorps. Smart businesses will realize that and avoid the service, while the stupid ones that would/should never get funding will try it out as a last ditch attempt.

MAYBE there will be a diamond in the rough, but I’m skeptical the service will last long enough to ever find one.

Reply
May 21, 2008

Omar Ismail

No, I won’t.

And I highly doubt anyone worth their salt will. This is a solution that’s looking for a problem. I’m sorry to sound excessively harsh here, but anybody that is seriously looking for Venture Capital can find it. Or at least get the opportunity to present to VCs.

The only utility I can see in this application is for VCs to weed out crappy pitches not find good ones. So if you’re a startup you can ONLY hurt yourself by presenting on VenCorps. Smart businesses will realize that and avoid the service, while the stupid ones that would/should never get funding will try it out as a last ditch attempt.

MAYBE there will be a diamond in the rough, but I’m skeptical the service will last long enough to ever find one.

Reply
May 21, 2008

Will Pate

Hey Jevon, there are numerous points that need correction and clarification. I would have appreciated a heads up before posting to check the facts, but I understand as well as anyone the desire to post first.

To correct:

– Startups need not post a video to their pitch, we give them the opportunity to add a video to their startup profile because we think it will help the community make better choices.
– The difference between VenCorps and other current “pitch for funding” sites is that we are owned by an investment company, and ready to do regular investments. We’re happy to syndicate deals and bring new accredited investors into our fund.
– The winners are chosen by the community, not the investors. The investors are part of the community, but the overall community decides who should get seed funding.

To clarify:

– The reason you haven’t heard much news in a while is that we wanted to put a lot of thought and work into the site before we started inviting people in. It’s not perfect, but we’ve worked very hard to make the site start from a good place.
– We are using the Cambrian House platform for our site and inviting the 65,000 Cambrian House members in as some of the first members. We think it’s a natural evolution of what worked and didn’t work at CH, as MJ has explained well.

heri, we are going to use a weighted algorithm (a sort of internal PageRank) to make sure that everyones vote is counted while at the same time the community can make smart choices. We’re also seeding the community with the right kind of people like CH community members, investors and other members of the startup ecosystem.

Omar, the response we have received from entrepreneurs and investors has been terrific. There are still lots of startups out there looking for more funding, and investors who would love to have a community vet startups to invest in. The real value adds for the startups will be tapping the community and our network of investors to help grow those startups that win.

We won’t get it perfect right out of the gate, but we feel like we will be off to a good start and we’re committed long term to improving.

Cheers,

Will Pate
Community Manager, VenCorps

Reply
May 21, 2008

Will Pate

Hey Jevon, there are numerous points that need correction and clarification. I would have appreciated a heads up before posting to check the facts, but I understand as well as anyone the desire to post first.

To correct:

– Startups need not post a video to their pitch, we give them the opportunity to add a video to their startup profile because we think it will help the community make better choices.
– The difference between VenCorps and other current “pitch for funding” sites is that we are owned by an investment company, and ready to do regular investments. We’re happy to syndicate deals and bring new accredited investors into our fund.
– The winners are chosen by the community, not the investors. The investors are part of the community, but the overall community decides who should get seed funding.

To clarify:

– The reason you haven’t heard much news in a while is that we wanted to put a lot of thought and work into the site before we started inviting people in. It’s not perfect, but we’ve worked very hard to make the site start from a good place.
– We are using the Cambrian House platform for our site and inviting the 65,000 Cambrian House members in as some of the first members. We think it’s a natural evolution of what worked and didn’t work at CH, as MJ has explained well.

heri, we are going to use a weighted algorithm (a sort of internal PageRank) to make sure that everyones vote is counted while at the same time the community can make smart choices. We’re also seeding the community with the right kind of people like CH community members, investors and other members of the startup ecosystem.

Omar, the response we have received from entrepreneurs and investors has been terrific. There are still lots of startups out there looking for more funding, and investors who would love to have a community vet startups to invest in. The real value adds for the startups will be tapping the community and our network of investors to help grow those startups that win.

We won’t get it perfect right out of the gate, but we feel like we will be off to a good start and we’re committed long term to improving.

Cheers,

Will Pate
Community Manager, VenCorps

Reply
May 21, 2008

Jevon MacDonald

Will: I don’t do heads ups on posts. period. You can ask anyone about that. 😉

Reply
May 21, 2008

Jevon MacDonald

Will: I don’t do heads ups on posts. period. You can ask anyone about that. 😉

Reply
May 21, 2008

Ken

I don’t know if our startup would use this service. However, the fact that we are in the hunt for funding right now, and I can’t say conclusively that I would use this as a sourcing vehicle, doesn’t bode well for the concept. With that said, there’s a good chance that if other startups pitch on the site, and are successful, that I would feel more comfortable with committing to using it. I guess right now I feel more confident in our present options than I do in this as an additional one.

Reply
May 21, 2008

Ken

I don’t know if our startup would use this service. However, the fact that we are in the hunt for funding right now, and I can’t say conclusively that I would use this as a sourcing vehicle, doesn’t bode well for the concept. With that said, there’s a good chance that if other startups pitch on the site, and are successful, that I would feel more comfortable with committing to using it. I guess right now I feel more confident in our present options than I do in this as an additional one.

Reply
May 22, 2008

Bret

Hi,

Thanks for the mention on the blog post on VenCorps today. One correction is that our name is fundfindr.com not fundfinder.com.

A couple of other points fyi:

fundfindr’s focus is very much on also nurturing and educating the start-ups and small businesses including our Expert Community featuring Video Success Snacks http://www.fundfindr.com/community.html and our sister media site http://www.fundfindr.tv featuring a wealth of tips, interviews and hot events. We have other big plans so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Bret Conkin, CEO

Reply
May 22, 2008

Bret

Hi,

Thanks for the mention on the blog post on VenCorps today. One correction is that our name is fundfindr.com not fundfinder.com.

A couple of other points fyi:

fundfindr’s focus is very much on also nurturing and educating the start-ups and small businesses including our Expert Community featuring Video Success Snacks http://www.fundfindr.com/community.html and our sister media site http://www.fundfindr.tv featuring a wealth of tips, interviews and hot events. We have other big plans so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Bret Conkin, CEO

Reply
May 22, 2008

fundfindr on Startup North | fundfindr.tv

[…] has been going full bore for the last couple of weeks and has recently been fed some blog time on Startup North’s – Will you bet on Vencorps?. CEO, Bret Conkin’s comment on the […]

Reply
May 22, 2008

fundfindr on Startup North | fundfindr.tv

[…] has been going full bore for the last couple of weeks and has recently been fed some blog time on Startup North’s – Will you bet on Vencorps?. CEO, Bret Conkin’s comment on the […]

Reply
May 25, 2008

Richard Reiner

Jevon, Will, Bret: since I’ve chatted with all of you recently on this subject, and said the same thing to all, let me try to distill the crux of what I’ve been saying about this:

First, it would be great (for all parties, except perhaps for the few top-tier VCs who today get the lion’s share of attractive deals offered to them first) to see a workable angel / venture capital marketplace with greater liquidity than is achieved today by the available conventional means.

However, there is a fundamental problem with the model as all of the two dozen or so sites I’m aware of that are trying this have so far implemented it. The problem is the one usually called Gresham’s Law — see http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9366139 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law.

In other words, the flood of low-quality deals (which AFAIK nobody yet has a workable mechanism for keeping out) will drive away the good deals… and then the lack of good deals will drive away, or fail to attract in the first place, the investors.

As an investor, I will use a facility of this sort ONLY if it presents to me deals of quality sufficient that the expected value of reviewing one exceeds the cost (including opportunity cost) of doing so. So how can the deals presented to investors be filtered for quality? You can’t ask real investors to do it (they have better uses for their time). You can’t use an algorithm — if you really had a deal-quality-picking algorithm you’d use it to go get rich, rather than filtering deals for me. And you can’t use the crowd — as anyone with real deal-picking skills will opt out of the crowd due to Gresham’s Law, and there’s no reason to think what’s left can do better than chance. (That last is an empirical claim, so it’s open to refutation — but only by evidence, not argument).

Cheers,
Richard

Reply
May 25, 2008

Richard Reiner

Jevon, Will, Bret: since I’ve chatted with all of you recently on this subject, and said the same thing to all, let me try to distill the crux of what I’ve been saying about this:

First, it would be great (for all parties, except perhaps for the few top-tier VCs who today get the lion’s share of attractive deals offered to them first) to see a workable angel / venture capital marketplace with greater liquidity than is achieved today by the available conventional means.

However, there is a fundamental problem with the model as all of the two dozen or so sites I’m aware of that are trying this have so far implemented it. The problem is the one usually called Gresham’s Law — see http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9366139 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law.

In other words, the flood of low-quality deals (which AFAIK nobody yet has a workable mechanism for keeping out) will drive away the good deals… and then the lack of good deals will drive away, or fail to attract in the first place, the investors.

As an investor, I will use a facility of this sort ONLY if it presents to me deals of quality sufficient that the expected value of reviewing one exceeds the cost (including opportunity cost) of doing so. So how can the deals presented to investors be filtered for quality? You can’t ask real investors to do it (they have better uses for their time). You can’t use an algorithm — if you really had a deal-quality-picking algorithm you’d use it to go get rich, rather than filtering deals for me. And you can’t use the crowd — as anyone with real deal-picking skills will opt out of the crowd due to Gresham’s Law, and there’s no reason to think what’s left can do better than chance. (That last is an empirical claim, so it’s open to refutation — but only by evidence, not argument).

Cheers,
Richard

Reply
May 29, 2008

Bret

Richard,
A well-reasoned post and a challenge of quality deal flow that we take up. We’ll keep you posted on progress.
Cheers,
Bret

Reply
May 29, 2008

Bret

Richard,
A well-reasoned post and a challenge of quality deal flow that we take up. We’ll keep you posted on progress.
Cheers,
Bret

Reply
December 17, 2008

pinayseo

there some needing answers

Reply
December 17, 2008

pinayseo

there some needing answers

Reply
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