Most VC websites stink. To be honest, this is a phenomenon that I don’t fully understand. However, I will do my best to rationalize it.

First, with regard to the poor aesthetics of the sites, I am sure that part of the story is tied to laziness or  cheapness.  However, I think that there might be a bit more here. VCs play matchmaker between conservative Wall Street money and the cutting edge future of our society. My intuition tells me that some VCs keep their websites conservative in order to show the right face to their investors.

The second issue with VC websites relates to their description of their investment strategy. I have found that VCs that share a sector and stage often have nearly identical descriptions of their investment strategy. However, when you talk to them they focus on different sectors, prefer different types of barriers to entry and seek different types of management. There strategies can also diverge around when it comes to an underlying philosophy that drives their investment decisions.

Unfortunately, few of the nuances that differentiate them are captured (or even highlighted) on their websites. My best guess as to why VCs do this is because they want to cast a wide net. I suspect that they don’t want to be too specific and scare away an opportunity that might be slightly adjacent to their investment strategy, but an opportunity that they want to invest in nonetheless.

This certainly puts entrepreneurs at a disadvantage when trying to find VCs that have strategies that align with their ventures. As a result, entrepreneurs should be sure to speak to other founders, VCs and agents to get a better sense of the VC landscape.

Maybe someone will create a robust set of categories that describe VCs investment strategies so that there is a relatively common lexicon for evaluating what VCs invest in. However, until then I hope that the next generation of VCs will do a better job with their websites.

Comments

[Joe]

Laziness or cheapness shouldn't be an excuse anymore. You can get a very nice website done by someone on Elance for a few hundred bucks and without spending a lot of time.

I don't understand this either. I've actually decided not to drop resumes at firms whose websites looked like they were optimized to work in Mosaic 1.0. I can only imagine what entrepreneurs looking for funding would think.

I think Sequoia's did a nice job on their website. I guess ComVentures thought so too.

[Adam Carson]

Check out http://www.thefunded.com/ for lots of good info on VC firms. It's better than their websites most of the time. It's like a VC database.

[Sam]

I completely agree that most VC websites suck. The rational as I understand it is that "guys with the money don't need to market themselves." This may be true to an extent, but...

I think the issue comes down to information. A really graphically appealing VC website might get me pumped for for 30 seconds, but the real test of character is in the transparency...Union Square Ventures (Fred) does a great job, using his blog as way for outsiders to learn about the firm and its investing style, but without spending gobs of money. Others could learn a lot from them

http://www.leveragingideas.com

[listen_to_mark]

It is true that 'aesthetically speaking' they stink. But content wise they have a *most* of the content that entrepreneurs look for.

That said I would really like the VC firms list their failed investments too ;)