David Crane is in an enviable position. As CEO of GV, a venture company funded entirely by Google at $1 billion a year, his team of about 100 people makes big bets, despite some notable limitations. That's it.
At the TechCrunch StrictlyVC event in San Francisco earlier this month, Krane said GV has invested in an astonishing 800 companies over the past five years, and over $10 billion over its 15-year history.
No company has made more money at once than Uber, which was funded exclusively by GV in a $258 million Series C round in 2013. Still, GV still operates on a large scale from time to time. For example, it re-pumped $140 million into data infrastructure startup Cribl. It was held in August as part of a $319 million Series E round.
In fact, because GV invests purely for financial gain, there are few restrictions on how it operates, Crane says. So far, GV has invested primarily in the United States, meaning it has invested about $500 million in Europe, its second-largest market. That means you'll spend half your time focusing on life sciences, healthcare, and biotech, and the other half on the overarching “digital” category.
This degree of autonomy also means there is no need to circumvent the red line between what GV can fund and what CapitalG, Alphabet's growth-stage company, can fund.
Both teams are investors in Stripe, Cribble and other companies, but when asked if the two teams had ever collided to try to make a deal or increase their stake in a company, Crane poured cold water on the suggestion. , said, “Because we are.” They are funded by the same source,” and “the secret is good communication.”
In fact, one of the only obvious no-nos, other than partnering with a company like OpenAI that competes directly with Google, is to actively bring talent within Google into the company so that GV can provide initial funding. It is an invitation to establish.
we asked, talking about the members of NotebookLM, Google's AI-powered note-taking tool. They recently left their jobs to start their own companies. This story was reported by TechCrunch on the day of our conversation with Krane. When we wondered aloud if GV would fund them, Krane said, “I don’t know. “I certainly know some of the NotebookLM team, and I knew about this team that was spinning out.”
“Every once in a while, there will be a team that leaves Google and pursues a startup, and GV will see that and GV will become involved,” he added. “…We're not setting up a giant vacuum cleaner to encourage people to leave Alphabet and pursue startups, but it does happen. Time at part of Alphabet There is a diaspora of very impressive people who have spent their time there and are now building start-up companies, many of whom have joined our network, and we have funded some of them. ”
When asked what Google thinks about GVs handing out big checks to people who go out, after all, GVs not only bring people closer to the mothership, they can also encourage people to try their luck. — Crane continued: right. The goal is to stay at Google, if you're at Google, and build transformative products. ” But “some people don’t stay forever,” he says. “That's a fact of life. Some people leave. Some people pursue startups, and then maybe we'll be part of that conversation.”
Listen to the full conversation or read below to learn more.