David Krane is in an enviable position. Former CEO of GV; The $1 billion-a-year venture capitalized entirely by Google, his team of roughly 100 takes a lot of bets, with some obvious limitations.
During the TechCrunch StrictlyVC event Krane said earlier this month in San Francisco that GV has invested in an astounding 800 companies over the past five years and has invested more than $10 billion over its 15-year history.
No one got it in one shot like Uber. $258 million The Series C round was the only financing from GV in 2013. Still, GV is still large at times; For example, In August, it invested $140 million in data infrastructure startup Cribl; $319 million Series E round.
in fact, Since GV invests purely for financial returns, There are few limits to how it can operate, Krane said. To date, GV has invested roughly half a billion in Europe, its second largest market, meaning that GV has invested the most in the US. It spends half its time on life sciences; That means it's focused on healthcare and biotech, and the other half in the all-encompassing “digital” category.
That degree of autonomy means that Alphabet's growth stage, CapitalG funding, no longer has to distinguish a red line that GV can fund.
When asked if the two teams had ever elbowed each other to get a deal done or take a bigger stake in a company — both teams — Stripe; Cribl and others invest in some outfits – Krane pours cold water on the suggestion that “because we're funded by the same source” is “the secret to good communication.”
Indeed, One of the only obvious no-nos, rather than partnering with an outfit like OpenAI that directly competes with Google, is that GV is actively attracting Google's internal talent to be the first to fund a startup.
While talking to members of Google's AI-driven note-taking tool NotebookLM, we asked; He recently left to start his own company. – TechCrunch broke the story the day we sat down with Krane. When GV wonders out loud if they can fund them. “We know some of the people on the NotebookLM team, we know that this team is going around.”
“Occasionally, there are teams that will leave Google and GV that will run the startup will see it and GV will be involved,” he added. “… we didn't build a giant suction vacuum to force people to leave Alphabet and pursue startups, but it happened. There's a very impressive crowd of people who have spent time in parts of Alphabet and are now running startups, many of whom are in our networks, and some of whom we've funded.
When GV asked how Google felt about writing a big check for people out the door — they're close to motherhood, but can also encourage them to try their luck — Krane added: “Yes. I think that's exactly what it is. Right, if you stay at Google and create transformative products, the goal is to stay at Google.” But “some people don't last forever,” he says. “It's a fact of life. Some people left. Some people may look for startups and show up in that conversation.”
To learn more you can Listen. Watch the full conversation or below.