Technology
Dot-com dollars no longer flow without questions
Washington Business Journal - by Jennifer Jones
Deep-pocket venture capital invest-ors these days are poking around extensively in dot-com business plans before handing out the dough, according to a recent poll of the nation's venture cap-ital firms.
"We have seen a fresh trend among investors. It seems the bloom is going off the rose when it comes to dot-com companies.
"Instead of so much money chasing anything with dot-com attached to it, investors are digging deeper," said Brian Hill, author of a new poll of 100 investment firms.
Not surprisingly, the pendulum may be swinging back to old-fashioned investment practices, said Hill, who is president of the Phoenix-based consulting firm Profit Dynamics.
"Investors want to know not just how many visitors a start-up gets on a site, but how that company can sell to those visitors once they come there," Hill said. "It seems as if things are shifting back to normal market dynamics."
That is not to say, however, that the insatiable appetite VC types have for Internet start-ups shows any signs of slowing. Hill's survey, in fact, points in the other direction.
"We've noticed a tremendous increase in the number of business plans that VC firms all over the country are receiving, and that is obviously related to the rush to create Internet companies. A lot of importance has been placed on the first-to-market advantage," Hill said.
The type of investors eyeing In-ternet deals is also changing. Money once targeted at other industries is being funneled into dot-com ideas.
"We've noticed a tremendous shift in the interest in Internet-related deals, which is coming from not only VC firms. Even investment partners that have been concentrated on industries such as biotechnology are looking at Internet deals," Hill said.
One investment firm with significant local presence fits that pattern. Chevy Chase-based Kinetic Ventures -- which works between here and Atlanta -- is investing funds from the gas and electric utilities into emerging technology ventures, said Managing Director William Heflin.
"The utilities industry is now a deregulated $270 billion industry, and these folks know they are on a collision course with a lot of opportunities as they try to move into the Information Age," he said.
"Our focus is to help our investors look out over the telecom and Internet space in order to retain and build an investor base," he said.
Kinetic recently helped Columbia, Md.-based telecommunications firm Corvis Corp. wrap up its third round of funding. PricewaterhouseCoopers cited Corvis as nailing $11 million in the second quarter of 1999.
Golf dot-com venture finds green in tee times
These days, even the biggest deals are brokered on fairways.
Now, corporations looking to lock up group tee times can drive their search for the perfect course through Leesburg-based eteegolf.com.
The site targets conference planners tasked with hooking up hundreds of golfers on the best fairways.
Eteegolf.com just signed on with Manassas-based Sapphire Group to enhance functionality of its site.
"We helped them identify 7,000 golf courses around the country that are worthy, since many others are pub- lic courses which cannot be closed down," said Doug Kittelsen, Sapphire's CEO.
Eteegolf.com is using Sapphire's new Firewater 2.0 service, a set of tools to provide interactive content and commerce features to postings on each golf course.
"What we have done is attach a Fire-water form to each golf course," Kit-telsen said.
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