Up and Running Blog

New Venture Capital Database

by Tim Berry on August 7, 2008

I’ve posted here several times about The Funded, which seems to me like an extremely useful database of venture capital firms, with reviews and comments added by entrepreneurs. This is a good resource for those rare high-end startups that are actually real candidates for venture capital. (You know who you are; and, in fact, if you have to ask, then you aren’t.)

Now, apparently, there’s another good site, with a different approach, but also offering useful related information. My thanks to Guy Kawasaki for his News Flash yesterday on his How to Change the World blog:

This morning young Matt Winn told me about a tool he created called the VCDB (venture capital database).

Indeed, you should check out this tool because it’s quite useful. You can enter “bio keywords” and find venture capitalists. You can also enter locations, and the tool shows you venture capitalists in the area. Matt explains the tool here.

And as I post this, I’d like to just add, as a reminder, that the days of sending shotgun blasts of hopeful messages to a database of venture capitalists are — if they ever even existed in the past, which I doubt — long, long gone. The correct use of a database like this is to pinpoint investors who might have the right kind of match and interests. You need quality targets, not quantity.

About Tim Berry

Tim Berry

Tim Berry is the founder of Palo Alto Software, a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. Tim is the originator of plan-as-you-go business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching, and evangelizing for business planning. His full biography is available on his blog.

More from Tim Berry

Tags:


{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Matt August 7, 2008 at 6:44 am

Tim – thanks for the mention. You’re absolutely right about blast emails. Getting a good look usually takes targeted networking, something I hope VCDB facilitates.

Best,
Matt

Reply

Leave a Comment

{ 1 trackback }

Previous post:

Next post: