Google Ventures Faces a Bumpy Ride

It's probably not appropriate to claim that a fund which has invested in companies like Uber is having difficulties, but the fact that Google Ventures is now reappraising its strategy reinforces the notion that no one has a monopoly on innovation - or brains. JL

Richard Waters reports in the Financial Times:

Google Ventures invested 20 per cent less this year than last. The number of companies it backed also fell, dropping to 34 from 57 the previous year. The amount of money trying to get into investments has caused prices to go up. The investment unit has back(ed) more than 300 companies.
If there is anything holding back Google’s venture capital arm, it is not a shortage of money or ambition. But with competition for investments driving up valuations of private technology companies, even having the backing of the world’s most powerful internet company is not a guarantee of finding enough good deals.Google Ventures, which will be renamed GV, invested 20 per cent less this year than last, even as the amount of capital it has earmarked for start-up investing has risen, according to chief executive Bill Maris. The number of companies it backed also fell, dropping to 34 from 57 the previous year.“The amount of money trying to get into investments has caused prices to go up and negotiating leverage to move to the entrepreneurs,” he says. “Capital has never been a constraint for us.” Signs that private market valuations were starting to fall in some cases made it likely that the pace of investments would pick up again next year, he adds.

The investment unit has become one of Silicon Valley’s most active start-up investors, backing more than 300 companies. Among them are ride-hailing app Uber and Nest, the “smart home” start-up that was acquired outright by Google for $3.2bn.

Google has set aside $2.4bn of its surplus cash for venture investing since getting into the sector six years ago, according to an annual fund update due to be published late on Sunday. But a third of that money — representing an overhang of $300m earmarked for earlier years, along with a new $500m fund for next year — has yet to be put to work.
In one change in approach that might speed up its investing, GV is abandoning the idea of running separate funds for overseas investing, a move that Mr Maris said would give it more flexibility when deciding where to invest.

The move comes only 18 months after it set up its first international fund, with a $125m pool of cash dedicated to ventures in Europe. Instead, it is pooling investments next year in a single global vehicle.

GV has made only six investments from the $125m European fund, which was heralded as a sign of surging venture capital interest in Europe, historically a backwater for venture investing.But Mr Maris denied that the European fund had been disappointing. While it had not met its target “dollar for dollar”, the investment pace in Europe has matched the US fund, which is also set to end the year with cash on hand.

Meanwhile, following the reorganisation of Google into tech holding company Alphabet, the investment arm is this week renaming itself GV. The new name is partly to distance it from the company’s internet business, now a separate subsidiary, and tackle perceptions about possible conflicts of interest.

There have always been grumblings from rivals, says Mr Maris, that “‘GV is a secret cloak-and-dagger unit of Google’”, set up to scour Silicon Valley for new ideas to feed Google’s own business or to act as a pipeline for acquisitions.
“The minute that happens we’re done — that’s the end of the business,” he says. “There is not a single case that supports that mythology. The company gets no information from us, we’re a shareholder just like any other. My interests are aligned with entrepreneurs and the other shareholders and not Google.”
As the ambitions of the wider Alphabet conglomerate expand, GV is already finding increasing overlap between its investments and other parts of the group.
One of the business ideas Google has considered for its driverless cars, for instance, has been a taxi-like service that might compete with Uber. Mr Maris says overlaps such as this are unavoidable but can be managed.

Of Uber, he adds: “It’s hard to believe that any companies of that size and scale don’t compete with some aspect of what Google and Alphabet are doing.”

GV’s move into life sciences — now the largest part of its activities, accounting for 31 per cent of the money it put to work this year — also potentially puts it into competition with Calico, a division of Alphabet run by Art Levinson, a former chief executive of biotechnology group Genentech.
To tackle some of the most ambitious new treatments with the potential to benefit large numbers of people, Mr Maris said the fund was planning to set aside $100m a year for the next two years that would be channelled into its three best ideas. That puts it on a more direct collision path with Calico, though Mr Maris says he does not discuss investment ideas with Mr Levinson.