The BABC Northern California hosted its 5th Annual “Funding, Exits and IPO’s” event in Menlo Park on February 24th, 2016 with over 120 guests in attendance. The panel was made up of an esteemed group of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capitalists, who divulged their expertise and predictions for the year ahead. The panel consisted of Steve Goldberg, Managing Director of Venrock, Mitchell Kertzman, Managing Director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Bill Reichert, Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, Sharon Wienbar, Managing Director of Scale Venture Partners and Richard Waters, West Coast Editor of the Financial Times who moderated the panel.
The evening drew upon the panel’s collective experiences which offered an invaluable insight into the world of venture capitalism. Richard Waters introduced the evening by likening the rise of Silicon Valley to that of the Roman Empire. In doing so, Richard inevitably asked the panel whether we would witness the fall of the so called ‘Roman Empire’. There seemed to be a general consensus among the panel that we will not see a decline, but rather a readjustment and a shifting of the balance of power within Silicon Valley. Bill noted that there is no systematic risk to Silicon Valley; rather the failures that we are witnessing now are occurring due to natural causes as has always been the case. Sharon added that it is the very nature of the industry to experience both high and low tides and that the current climate is starkly different to the conditions which led to the dot com bubble in 2000. Whilst there will be instances where unicorns have to “hang up their horns”, this will not be the case across the whole industry. Mitchell noted that companies need increased governance and oversight in order to keep them in check. The panel then turned to the assessing the future of the industry and what areas should investors should be taking note of. Steve indicated that machine learning and robotics should be a focus for future investment. Sharon agreed that there is a need for investment in machine-learning, particularly as it fills the void in the low-skilled labor market where the US struggles to attract low-skilled manual laborers into work.
The entire panel made some bold predictions for the upcoming year in relation to: the potential formation of new IPO’s, which industries will demise and flourish over the course of 2016 and what impact, if any, should we expect the presidential election to have on Silicon Valley.
We would like to thank all the panelists and attendees, as well as our Gold Sponsors: CCW Business Solutions, HSBC, Osborne Clarke, Carr McCellan, British Airways, Four Seasons Hotels, Casto Travel, and our Beverage Partners: Goldschmidt Vineyards and Dunkirk Spirit Gin.
