Pat Gallagher, General Partner of CrunchFund and previous partner of venture capital firm VintagePoint, joined Lu Gang yesterday afternoon at TechCrunch Beijing to talk about his experience as a VC coming from the Silicon Valley.
The very first thing Pat pointed out is the seed fund difference between now and 15 years ago in the Silicon Valley. While VC started to shift seed fund to 1 to 2 million dollars per investment, it would cost about 5 million dollars 15 years ago. The reason behind this change,as Pat expressed, is that 1 to 2 million dollars is enough for a company to test its product on the market and to see the level of market fit.
When asked about how CrunchFund compete with other bigger VC funds such as Sequoia Capital and KPCB, Pat explained that instead of competing, CrunchFund is rather collaborating with those funds.CrunchFund tends to come in early in the investment cycle, and more well-funded VCs would come in later to invest with larger funds as the company grows stronger and better.
Pat also described the benefits of having crowd-funding platforms such as KickStarter and IndieGoGo. He emphasized that they make greatinitial stage for startups because these platforms are perfect for productmarket testing. “[These platforms] are for people to put their idea out there and to see if there is a market for it. To see if your product works,” said Pat.
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