Florida Venture Blog by Dan Rua dan

No-BS Venture Thoughts for No-BS Entrepreneurs.

A running perspective on Florida's growing tech and venture community, with an occasional detour to the Southeast/national scene, venture capital FAQs and maybe a gadget or two....

By Dan Rua, Managing Partner of Inflexion Partners -- "Florida's Venture Fund".

That WikiSucks


SiliconBeat had an interesting article about how China is drawing talented people away from Silicon Valley. In particular, Chinese venture capital fund Northern Lights has recruited the founders of Silicon Valley successes NetScreen, OmniVision, Spreadstrum and LinkSys to be a part of their $100M fund in China. That's just one datapoint and it worries me, but the second part of the story really hit home.

In parallel to Silicon Valley losing talent to the West, they continue to suck talent from the East. Take Wikia for example, a St. Petersburg, FL startup whose founder, Jimmy Wales, is well known for launching Wikipedia -- one of those sites that will be educating the world long after we're all gone. It was exciting for the region when Wikia landed their first venture round from Bessemer, Omidyar and various CA angels (Andreesen, Gillmore, Hoffman, Kopelman, Ito, Kapor, Bullington, Conway, Penchina, Tanne and Whorton). Jimmy was on the cover of FloridaTrend magazine. But the inevitable happened shortly after funding. The company moved to Menlo Park and Penchina stepped in as CEO. I don't know the details behind why but I can guess, and only time will tell if it was the right move.

Wikia's funding proves what we've known about the region for some time -- some of the country's most creative and passionate entrepreneurs call the Sunshine State home. Wikia's move to CA proves that, this time, we weren't able to help one company build their dreams where they prefer to raise their families. However, as more FL-based funds like Inflexion succeed, we'll hold onto our fair share, and the region will share the rewards. And that, will be WikiKewl...

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Comments (3)

Blogger Mark Crofton said...

Dan,
How much do you think companies like Wikia leaving Fla is a question of not being able to find a critical mass of qualified, experienced employees? I remember a partner at a VC firm where I interned doing deal generation complaining about this issue when I brought him Florida deals. In fact, they had a portfolio company in Brevard county that eventually moved out of state due, among other things, to this reason.
Disclosure: One reason I ask is that I'm a Central Florida native who has designs on moving home someday. On my recent trips home, I've been meeting with tech folks trying to get a sense for the state of tech ecosystem.
Mark Crofton

12:07 PM  
Blogger VC Dan said...

Mark: I think recruiting is one of the big reasons investors give for moving companies closer to them, although it is often a rationalization for avoiding the unknown and reducing their travel load. In each of the geographies I have built funds/companies (FL, NC, VA, MD, NY, GA) SV and Boston firms questioned talent pool and tried to move companies out. However, the funds that learned how to build companies where they were founded won over the top entrepreneurs and reaped significant rewards. As you might guess, backing only those companies that agree to move can result in adverse selection.

Don't get me wrong, Silicon Valley and Boston have awesome talent pools, but they're not the only ones. Partnering with funds that know how to back you locally and have reputation/relationships to source talent local/national can be the best of all worlds for an entrepreneur.

9:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This has been a topic of discussion/ thinking for us a lot since we're a Miami based startup. At the end I actually see this as an advantage for entrepreneurs, VCs, and the technology community as a whole in Florida. We have a nice ball of clay that can be completely molded our way, and develop into an awesome community (The Miami community is developing with a few nice "Web 2.0" startups). Right now, we have the chance to make Florida one of the next big tech spots. In terms of recruiting talent... selling them on living in one of the world's top vacation destinations is not that hard. It is awesome to see funds like Inflexion who "get" what is going on. There are a few other great funds down here, that if opened to the great companies and opportunities, could become out of nowhere players in the Web 2.0 age. Seems like we have a lot to connect on. Take care.

Sincerely,
Jason L. Baptiste
Co-Founder of theWeblogWire.com

2:13 PM  

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