From the Jacobius article, it appears that there is much room for improvement in venture capital investment decision-making. As an IP Business Strategist and Consultant (more info here: http://www.jackiehutter.com/), I am a strong advocate of using knowledge and information to reduce risk and improve the rate of return on investment. I have written about such concepts in this blog (link: http://tinyurl.com/supercrunchers) where I discussed the “Super Crunchers” concept. I firmly believe that venture capitalists, and those who include venture capital in their investment portfolios, can improve their the quality of their investment decisions by collecting and analyzing available information available in published patent data.
When one knows how to extract and analyze the right data in patents, significant business insights are effectively “hiding in plain sight.” In short, valuable business information is available for the taking by smart investors. And, why wouldn’t you seek to gain knowledge that could reduce the strategic uncertainty of your investment decisions to better manage the risk of your decisions? (I have discussed this concept in detail http://ipstrategyformaximumassetvalue).
In particular, before you invest in a new business idea for a new venture, why wouldn’t you want to know whether you can own the business idea in the long term or whether you have minimal opportunity to innovate freely in relation to that business idea? Or, why wouldn’t you want to know whether another firm has invested $100K or more in patent rights alone in the new business idea that you are investigating? This, and other, valuable business insights and information are embedded in published patent filings.