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Angel No More: Why One of Silicon Valley’s Savviest Investors Has Shut His Wallet
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/05/angel-no-more-why-one-of-silicon-valleys-savviest-investors-has-shut-his-wallet/The last new investment Hartz made was more than a year ago. At the time it was a little company no one had heard of called Pinterest. You’ve probably heard of it now. Hartz also made early bets on Airbnb, Flixster, Palantir, Trulia and Yammer among others. He’s mobbed up with the PayPal mafia, not as a former colleague, but again, because he was an early backer. Hartz is making follow-on investments in his current roster of startups, but he’s not looking to do anything new — it’s just too expensive.
“We don’t know where we are in this cycle,” Hartz says from Eventbrite’s San Francisco headquarters. “We can’t know how much longer this abundance of capital will last, but I don’t want to be a part of it. When I see a massive number of new investors and carpetbaggers coming in, it’s time to get out.”
Hartz doesn’t use the word bubble; it’s more complicated than that for him as a guy who sits on both sides of the money equation as an investor and an entrepreneur. It’s more a winter is coming view of the startup world, especially for the consumer internet on which Hartz focuses. His advice: Get prepared for a chill to set in.
As an investor Hartz points to the usual signs of too much money-chasing deals. The billboards on highway 101 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley touting startups no one has heard of. The bus stop signs in tech-heavy locales like Mountain View and Palo Alto advertising scads of engineering jobs.
“We don’t know where we are in this cycle,” Hartz says from Eventbrite’s San Francisco headquarters. “We can’t know how much longer this abundance of capital will last, but I don’t want to be a part of it. When I see a massive number of new investors and carpetbaggers coming in, it’s time to get out.”
Hartz doesn’t use the word bubble; it’s more complicated than that for him as a guy who sits on both sides of the money equation as an investor and an entrepreneur. It’s more a winter is coming view of the startup world, especially for the consumer internet on which Hartz focuses. His advice: Get prepared for a chill to set in.
As an investor Hartz points to the usual signs of too much money-chasing deals. The billboards on highway 101 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley touting startups no one has heard of. The bus stop signs in tech-heavy locales like Mountain View and Palo Alto advertising scads of engineering jobs.
