East Coast vs. West Coast

One of the interesting things that I've encountered along the way is the seemingly quite significant difference in investment criteria for VCs geographically. Now, my sampling isn't that significant (less than 15 firms), but the investment criteria might look something like this:


Okay, sure, I'll take the "you're exaggerating" comment. But Marc Andreessen's point about qualify, qualify, qualify is hitting home with me, and I believe a major issue is geographical. East of the mighty Mississippi, things are just different - and even though my sampling might small for early-stage technology firms, the fact is that venture capital on this side of the country just isn't as venturous as it is on the other side.

There are intrinsic differences between West Coast and East Coast VCs. I'm personally not beyond thinking that it stems from cultures seeded as the West was won through the Gold Rush and so on. There are some free thinking styles that emerged throughout the later 1900's that didn't take on this side of the country. It's like we got tobacco, cotton, coal, and steel mills and they got PARC.

My recent experience also indicates that although there's a myriad of nearly free communication and collaboration tools out there (full disclosure: I am CTO at some such company) startups and investment firms seem to have a new addiction to having their teams local. Having come from a software background where the entire objective has been to deliver solutions with teams scattered all over the world, I'm skeptical of this need for VCs to have their entire portfolio right in their backyard.

There's something to be said for the perceived impact of the investor and their activities within the startup that would be a driving force in whether the remote VC would be successful. For investors who like to get their hands dirty, I can see why they wouldn't be able to do the remote thing but so much. Even so, technology is rapidly driving the down the cost of being remote and companies are every day utilizing tools that enable remote relationships of this magnitude (our product being one of them).

Either way, there remain some challenges to having the remote VC that impact the style of investment and management based on geographic location. Would love to hear some thoughts on folks who have been through a startup-remote VC relationship and how that came together (or didn't).