Dr. Jim Stefansic of Pathfinder Therapeutic sent me something I never thought I would ever see:
On Friday, April 20, I would like to invite ANY person that wants to meet to come by our office in Raleigh, NC. You can have just an idea all the way to a well run business doing millions in revenue. It doesn’t matter. And all the typical venture capital BS that you may hear is removed – you won’t be screened out in advance, you don’t need to know someone to “get in” and there are no secret handshakes required. Everyone is welcome and I’ll plan to be in the office all day.
This was posted by Jason Caplain of Southern Capitol Ventures at the blog site TechJournal South.
I knew that VCs had a lot of extra cash these days, but this sounds like it is either desperation or an unprecedented PR stunt for a VC firm. Either way it seems to indicate what many of us have suspected — VCs have over-sold their funds.
I think that this may be a result of smarter start-ups. For instance, Flickr spurned the overtures of VC’s and then sold to Yahoo for $30M. If you can go straight from bootstrap to sale, who needs VC?