• by Ross Fadner , September 18, 2008

Which venture capital funded companies are toast? "Anyone who isn't making any money," Porter Bibb of Mediatech Capital Partners said at the OMMA Global show in New York. He added that too many venture capitalists are chasing too few good deals.

Brian Wieser, director of industry analysis, MAGNA Global, agreed, adding that most of these companies rely on online advertising. He said that Google's genius was to bring small-medium sized businesses into the fold and allow them to do something they never did before. Instead of adding another salesperson, small firms could now put money into search engine advertising. In many ways, this was a reallocation of an existing budget; Google simply expanded the advertising opportunity and brought new efficiencies there. To be as successful, Wieser implies that emerging platforms need to replace incumbent processes in a similar manner. That kind of change doesn't come around very often, he argues.