Google launches venture capital fund – Google Ventures

Google Ventures - Venture Capital Funding

Google has announced another new avenue for it to explore – venture capital – and the project has been given the name Google Ventures.

This is Google’s effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. By borrowing the best practices of top-tier, financially focused venture capital firms and bringing to bear Google’s unique technical expertise and brand, we think we can find young companies with truly awesome potential and encourage their development into successful businesses.

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet. Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.

I think this is a really interesting move by Google and shows that it is perhaps afraid that it’s current search and PPC model is not going to be as reliable a revenue stream in the future, as it has been in the past, and why should it be? There will always be new kids on the block and the Twitter phenomenon has shown how fickle an established brand can actually be when a new idea comes along.

By setting up Google Ventures Google can get involved with interesting and potentially lucrative projects from the ground. The Google brand is so strong and its success story so well known, there is surely already a queue of internet startups knocking on Google’s door.

How do you pitch your idea?

The best way to make first contact is through email (ventures@google.com). Pitchers are requested to limit their presentations to no more than 20 slides or three type-written pages.

A summary of the FAQs

Google Ventures is interested in startups in the following industries:consumer internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and others. Google Ventures is looking for creative and innovative problem solving and a significant financial return on its investment. Google is able to invest up to tens of millions of dollars depending upon requirements and it is prepared to work on projects with other investors.