VCs in the popular media

It used to be that being a VC was a pretty arcane profession.

My kids could never describe what I did to their friends.

Then my daughters saw A Lot Like Love and they knew what I did.

So last night we saw The Wedding Crashers. 

I loved the movie warts and all.  It was a perfect summer comedy.

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play two guys who crash weddings as a hobby bordering on an obsession.

They come up with phony names and occupations to provide them cover.

They decide to crash the wedding of the daughter of the Treasury Secretary.

And they decide to pretend to be VCs.

I have no idea what that says about the VC profession, but two movies in less than six months says something.

Comments

[Ben Black]

I saw Wedding Crashers last night as well - thought it was very funny. Vince Vaughn and his love interest carried that movie. How many VCs are in New Hampshire I wonder?

[Dan J]

It is only natural that as MSM begins to blow the cover off the hyper-secretive world of hedge funds, a concurrent expose of VCs will follow.

And we have Spitzer to thank for it.

The increasingly inquisitive take on Wall Street and its various progeny is of course a by-product of the Enron, Tyco, and Adelphia (to name a few) debacles.

In short, as Main Street's infatuation with Wall Street's less visible personae escalates, you'll see a growing interest in Venture Capitalism.

Trust me.

Today, Barron's keeps a close eye on what VCs write in their blogs.

Movies like Startup.com (highly recommended)
and E-dreams (rise and fall of kozmo.com) give us - at best - a peek at the VC netherworld.

And let's call a spade a spade - venture Cap is a netherworld distant from the average American's radar screen.

Ask 10 people in Washington Square Park what a mutual fund is - I presume at least 8 will respond correctly, if not all of them.

Now ask them: "Excuse me, sir, do you know what venture capitalists do?"

I'd like a tally on that one...

In fact, the secrecy is such that this weekend, I read in Barron's that a KPCB partner had told the weekly paper that "there's NO WAY someone not affiliated with KPCB could determine how much Doerr made on the Google investment" (or something to that effect).

You get my point.

If you're not inside the circle, you're outside it.

[Andrew]

"My kids could never describe what I did to their friends."
OK, Fred, what *did* you do to your kids' friends?