If a brand is built, there will be equity in selling the company, and that benefits the venture capitalist. Indeed, with their eyes on the ever-important initial public offering down the road, it's no surprise that many venture capitalists have embraced the hard sell. Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist in Redwood City, Calif., says he urges the dot-coms he funds to advertise on shockjock Howard Stern's radio show. The trouble is, with everyone thinking along the same lines, it's hard to stand out. So what happened through the course of the fourth quarter was Internet companies late to the game pointed to Internet companies early in the game and said, 'I like that one.
Venture capitalists themselves are aware of the risks.
The result was money being wildly spent for ads that were mostly ineffective. Active Research, a Burlingame, Calif., Web research firm, found last December that nearly a quarter of Internet users polled couldn't recall a single dot-com ad they had seen on television. I try to give them as much help as I can. Before she joined the firm in 1996, arcane technology was a Bessemer specialty. Formed in 1911 by Henry Phipps, an original business partner of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, the firm invested in recent decades in biotechnology, technology software and communications companies.