Tuesday, January 17, 2017

How Not to Run a VC Entity

MIT had announced its Engine Initiative, an intent to have a $250 million fund to invest in start up based upon the technology coming from the Institute. I never saw this as a positive, in fact it can have great down side effects.

Today they announced the "Team" to oversee this effort. You really cannot make this up.

My first question would be:

"Have any of these people ever run a start up?"

I would strongly doubt it. Then when you see all of these people, first it costs money, lots of it to keep all these folks going. That drives up tuition.  Second, massive committees like this never get anything done. The Soviets had dozens of Five Year Plans, see where that landed them.

There is a wealth of VC entities just around the corner. Why do something like this. The assembly of this massive team clearly demonstrates that many have not a clue.