Venture capital

Two bits of news recently passed by without excessive fanfare, but these seemingly unconnected stories had huge implications about how the future is being funded, or underfunded, as the case may be. First, there was news that Google bid $6 billion to buy Groupon and, more astoundingly, Groupon reportedly rejected the offer. Groupon is essentially a coupon company. Not trying to dismiss the value of Groupon — it’s an interesting (though not novel) business model, but in the big scheme of things, how important is Groupon to the future? I mean, what would biotech companies working on human longevity projects do with $6 billion? How far would a few billion bucks go to fund a Reprap-like project? Could a quantum computer company use $6 billion? Groupon has joined several other companies as darlings of the current venture capital pantheon. Zynga, [...]