{"id":2046,"date":"2009-11-21T14:48:56","date_gmt":"2009-11-21T22:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=2046"},"modified":"2009-11-22T19:06:46","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T03:06:46","slug":"worst-venture-capital-fund-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/worst-venture-capital-fund-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Worst venture capital fund, ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was at a CFO conference on Thursday where the keynote speaker was CFO of the Department of Energy, Steve Isakowitz.\u00a0 You’d think a CFO, even one in government, would talk about things like accountability or controls for spending, especially with $36 billion in stimulus funds dropped into his department’s lap.\u00a0 Instead, this CFO ran a cheerleading session about all the investments the government was making on “green” initiatives and energy independence, which he acknowledged had a history of failure, but not one word about accountability.<\/p>\n

At the end of his talk, I got up and asked him:\u00a0 “What controls will you have to monitor the returns on these investments?\u00a0 And how will you keep from crowding out private investment in similar energy projects?”<\/p>\n

His answer:\u00a0 “The private sector is not making these investments.\u00a0 In fact, one of our screens for making any particular investment is that the private sector is not financing such projects.”<\/p>\n

When I sat down, a couple of the CFOs sitting at my table shrugged and said that it appeared that he didn’t want to answer the question about accountability for returns, or that he chose to answer it with with a highly questionable assertion<\/a> about lack of private sector involvement.<\/p>\n

I felt that his answer was clear.\u00a0 He basically said that the government has created a huge venture capital funds–rivaling Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, NEA, etc.–and that this fund will only make investments that no private investor would touch.<\/p>\n

What upset me wasn’t that he failed to answer my question, because I think he did after a fashion, but that his answer was intended to satisfy a finance audience.\u00a0 And what really upset me is that it appeared, aside from a few of us cranks, that it worked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was at a CFO conference on Thursday where the keynote speaker was CFO of the Department of Energy, Steve Isakowitz.\u00a0 You’d think a CFO, even one in government, would talk about things like accountability or controls for spending, especially with $36 billion in stimulus funds dropped into his department’s lap.\u00a0 Instead, this CFO ran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,21],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-2046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectivist-instinct","category-politics","tag-whatever-happened-to-npv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2046"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2067,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions\/2067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}