Leigh Anderson: "... I can understand why venture firms would rather keep alive several capital-light web 2.0 portfolio companies during their liquidity crisis."
This is an incorrect statement. There have been $100m rounds over the past few months: Pacific Bio, Sapphire Energy, Range Fuels come to mind... I am not arguing the merits of the technology, I am just saying that there are money around. One venture capitalist even wrote about this today: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/12/theres-plenty-o...
There has to be another explanation of why the "next Intel" could not raise.
Interesting discussion. I am the founder of another OVP-backed company, which is in the same stage, NanoString Technologies. There have been sales and customers, the company needs another 15-20 mil. to pull through.
I wonder if OVP's track record of failure over the past 10 years has something to do with this. There are money around, I have seen some eye-popping deals close very recently. It feels like people just don't want to get associated with proven losers. As an example, the CFO that OVP put at NanoString was previously the COO of another OVP failure, Action Engine. How would he be able to go and ask VCs for money with a straight face, given that?
