Testing Time for the VCs

A double major in neuroscience and computer science would keep most college kids pretty busy. But when Yale junior Joshua Newman, 20, scampered across campus this spring, he wasn't thinking too much about finals. He was more concerned with raising $10 million by the fall--and then giving it away. A native of (where else?) Palo Alto, Calif., Newman just happens to be a budding venture capitalist, one of the early-stage investors who fund high-tech ventures before they go public, in exchange for a potentially lucrative stake. His fledgling fund, Paradigm Blue, plans to give about $500,000 to promising dorm-room start-ups that can't possibly get a meeting with the cozy club of old-line VCs.

Newman has already raised some $8 million. Until recently it wasn't too hard, even for an undergraduate, to line up donations. As long as tech stocks were pushing the NASDAQ index to record highs, VCs could take scores of seedling companies public before they had time to fail, and walk away with triple-digit gains. The recent market downturn doesn't seem to faze Newman. "We're taking a long-term view," he says, like a Silicon Valley pro.

Well, what choice does he have? For the moment, at least, NASDAQ isn't rolling out the welcome mat for most dotcoms, and high-flying Internet IPOs are practically a distant memory. Like his fellow VC wannabes, from buyout king Henry Kravis to anonymous Florida retirees, Newman isn't about to let a little thing like a bear market crush his dreams of jump-starting the next Yahoo and riding it to the bank. Never mind that the vast majority of VC bets have failed or that inexperienced players may have a tough time picking winners in a choppy market.

"A lot of people have been moving into the industry assuming it was all reward and no risk," says Chris Nawn, a general partner at Technology Crossover Ventures. By contrast, Nawn's company has warned its investors not to expect the stratospheric returns of recent years.

Last year some $52 billion in venture capital was funneled into start-ups, almost three times 1998's total, according to Venture Economics, a division of Thomson Financial Securities Data. That doesn't include an estimated $30 billion more in seed capital plunked down by "angels," wealthy individual investors who help get start-ups going before they hit up the VCs. Through the first three months of this year, that feverish pace continued, with VCs doling out $23 billion, mostly to dotcom prospects.

Celebrities and sports stars, from Martha Stewart to Joe Montana, are jumping on the VC bandwagon. In the past several months, corporate heavyweights IBM, News Corp., Time Warner (parent of TIME) and Arthur Andersen, to name a few, have launched their own funds. Even the CIA has set up a venture arm, In-Q-Tel. And later this year, Silicon Valley start-up MeVC, along with VC Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will roll out a publicly traded venture fund that lets individuals with a net worth of at least $150,000 plunk down a minimum of $5,000 to play.