Former Dell Execs Now Leading Austin Venture Capital Fund

Its always fun to track the exploits of former Dell executives and mangers.

Just saw the following article in the Austin American-Stateman today… Former Dell execs looking to invest in breakaway ideas. It seems that a number of former and current Dell Management committee members are participants in Daylight Partners, a venture capital fund that provides bridge funding, an investment between an angel or seed funding round and formal institutional monies, to startups.

Interesting to read that the partners do not have formal offices, but meet together in person every couple of weeks. The partners are seeking investments in companies that value the partners’ “operating experience”.

I’ll keep an eye on this and see what the VC industry perspective is on this fund. The industry is usually skeptical about these kind of partnerships.  Its acknowledged that there are too many VC funds chasing too few deals. At the same time, early stage funding is hard to come by, so a fund with open pockets is refreshing.

If will be interesting to see if the funds’ operating experience is needed by the propsective portfolio companies. Also, investment partnerships such as this by non-professionals tend to fizzle out as interest wanes or if they are not able to generate desired portfolio returns.