Ron Conway Sells Out, Angel Investors Lose Out On The Hype Cycle

Venture Capital

from the can't-take-it-any-more dept

Ron Conway’s Angel Investors “funds” were hot stuff during the bubble years. There were plenty of big name investors, and the well connected group seemed to get themselves in on the seed rounds of just about every super hot startup in the late 90s. The portfolio was a who’s who of all the companies gracing the glossy pages of tech/business magazines right before those magazines all went out of business… quickly followed by many of those overhyped startups. This resulted in, not just a book about Conway, but more than a few unhappy investors in Conway’s funds — though, honestly, those investors only had themselves to blame. No one forced them to put their money with Conway, and his investment strategy (which you could boil down to: “invest in the hype”) was widely known. Last year, some people noticed that Google’s IPO basically rescued one of Conway’s funds, but the other was in too much trouble to be saved. It appears that all of this losing has worn down Conway, who has agreed to sell what’s left of the fund to CSFB for a few million dollars, giving the investors, who believed they were investing in pretty much a “sure thing” during the boom years, a bit more than $0.50 for every dollar they put in. Investing purely in hype works as long as the hype lasts, but once any bubble deflates, it’s apparently not much fun being left holding the bag.