James Temple writing in on tech website Re/Code has an excellent profile of Google Ventures founder Bill Maris and his quest to re-invent the venture capital industry.
Certainly the Silicon Valley venture capital industry is ripe for disruption; Maris is not alone in pointing out that most investors in the sector and focused on short term incremental gains like shopping apps and online stores.
Probably the biggest thing that Temple points out in the story is the importance of Big Data to the Google Ventures model, although Maris seems to be acutely conscious of the limitations of relying on algorithms to make decisions;
Because you can 100 percent use data and statistics in exactly the wrong way. That’s a trap some fall into, one that we really try hard to avoid. But I think it’s important to use that as a tool.
The data is a support. It’s just like having your other partners there.
Being skeptical about the infallibility of Big Data and algorithms seems a very un-Google thing, but it may work well for Bill Maris and his team.
Whether Maris and Google Ventures can upend the Silicon Valley investment culture remains to be seen; the real message though is that the venture capital industry is just as vulnerable to disruption as any other.