Founders Fund, investors in Facebook and Space X, last week announced it had raised $625 million for its fourth fund, larger than the first three funds combined. Want some of their money? A promising robotics idea could help.
"We'll be looking at that [space] more in the next five years," partner Bruce Gibney told Private Equity Hub. There's been relatively few promising robotics companies until now, he said, "but people are becoming more commercially disciplined–they're taking it seriously now as a business rather than as a science project."
The fund, founded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, is also interested in artificial intelligence, which it currently has three companies in stealth mode.
How does the six-year-old fund make decisions about its investments?
Unlike most venture capital firms, not at Monday morning meetings.
"We’re just highly skeptical about most traditional decision-making models, which we think are focused on process and not results," Gibney said. "At most venture firms, you have to be at Monday meetings, when maybe you should be meeting with a great company. Everyone has to talk for roughly the same amount of time. And there’s this strange pressure to approve someone’s deal, even if you’re skeptical of it, because you want to get your own deal approved. We think [that approach] doesn’t produce particularly good results."
Gibney noted that Founders Fund partners don't need regular Monday meetings because they have similar hobbies and overlapping social lives. For example, partner Ken Howery was Gibney's college roommate and Howery now lives with Luke Nosek, another partner.
But the larger the deal–initial investments tend to range from $500,000 to $5 million–the more consensus is required. "And we seem to achieve consensus on all our significant deals," Gibney said. "Those on which we all agree tend to be the best, too," he said.
Gibney also explained how the fund's investment in Facebook stacked up against its principle of backing entrepreneurs doing valuable work.
He pointed out that in 2004, Facebook was not an obvious investment candidate.
"It wasn't clear that social networking would be important or big or could even work technologically," he said.
Friendster, which the fund also invested in, became slower as it became more popular, he noted. "It turned out that managing these connections was computationally complex," Gibney said. "[Figuring that out] was something that we think was important and quite valuable and in that way, it fits in with our core thesis.
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A rising number of entrepreneurs are delving into a sea of green – a wave of opportunities in the green technology industry that have the potential of producing millions of green jobs. Although the world’s richest people cannot be expected to rescue the economy as the world gets ready to turn the corner into a new year, experts say green business leaders do have the potential of paving the way for a brighter economic future.
According to experts, the world’s wealthiest individuals actually are placing more of their focus on protecting their own assets in the slow-growth economy. For this reason, they are expected not to be as risk-taking in 2012 – at least not as risk-taking as is necessary to help to boost the economy.
Robert Frank, a Wall Street Journal writer who spoke recently at the Economist’s World in 2012 summit, said that millionaires throughout the world likely will have to pay more in taxes to help nations that are struggling with high debts.
In addition, Frank said he expected that the number of millionaires in Asia should be higher than the number of millionaires in the United States next year.
However, green technology is opening up several doors for aspiring entrepreneurs, and the work of these entrepreneurs should create many more job opportunities in America. Green businesses can be both cost-saving and money-making in that they provide green products and services that help customers to reduce their ecological footprints while saving on energy costs. Billions of dollars are wasted as people waste water, energy and other important resources.
Green companies also promote recycling, which further saves people money. Because of the increasing demand for green businesses’ offerings – such as clean energy and clean water – their money-making potential is high, which translates to more green job opportunities, thus getting more unemployed individuals back to work.
Small green businesses actually are more capable of creating new jobs faster than large companies can and thus should be at the forefront of leading America’s economic recovery through clean energy technologies and green employment opportunities, according to the Center for Small Business and the Environment.
The wealthy worldwide may be expected to be more cautious with their spending next year in light of the volatile economy, but the volatility of the market – combined with people’s growing realization of the need to save money and save their planet – should provide a breeding ground for green entrepreneurs to arise and make a difference. It’s a difference that can preserve the Earth, people's hopes of landing jobs, Americans’ wallets and subsequently the economy for coming years.
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