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Silicon Valley VC likes the investment atmosphere he sees in Triangle

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CARY, N.C. – Take heart, Triangle entrepreneurs. Another venture capital firm with roots in Silicon Valley is looking to do more business in North Carolina.

John Burke of True Ventures was in the area this week checking up on the firm’s one local investment – DataCraft in Durham. He then did some shopping for other possible investments before stopping off at the PricewaterhouseCoopers venture breakfast to participate in a panel discussion.

“I’ve made productive use of my time,” a smiling Burke said in an interview after PwC’s quarterly review of venture investing and trends. ”We’ll be spending more time here.”

Why the Triangle rather than Silicon Valley or in the Mid-Atlantic? Not only is the area a tech-heavy market; it also is flush with veteran entrepreneurs who in Burke’s view reflect a community he sees in the Valley – the nirvana for VCs and startups.

“There’s definitely something in the water in Silicon Valley,” Burke said. A software entrepreneur himself, he noted that fellow startup execs like to talk with each other, creating a cross-pollination of ideas, companies and investment opportunities. The VCs don’t talk to each other, however. He says the opposite is true in the MidAtlantic.

In the Triangle, Burke sees a mixture of both, which he believes creates a lucrative mix of deal making.

“It’s a feeling you get,” he said of the region’s investment atmosphere.

Not all VC firms have large teams, he noted, and smaller ones such as True Ventures rely on networking to help them find deals. True focuses on early-stage investments out of its offices in Palo Alto, San Francisco and Northern Virginia.

“The second best answer for an entrepreneur is a quick ‘No,’” he said. By filtering deal flow through other entrepreneurs and recommendations of fellow VCs, Burke said he and his team can more quickly determine what’s what and what’s chaff.

Of course not even good recommendations and veteran management teams guarantee success. Burke noted that True Ventures invests in entrepreneurs, especially serially successful ones, yet even his firm has a “wash out rate” or “mortality rate” in the 40 percent range. (Website GigaOM, a must read for VCs according to Burke, is one of his firm’s hottest investments.)

Technology, he noted, is not the essential investment factor. "It's changing too fast," he said.

So how do startup entrepreneurs get their technology and ideas past filters at True Ventures and other firms? Networking and getting to know VCs, Burke said.

In other words, get involved in groups that help make the Triangle special - such as the Council for Entrepreneurial Development and the N.C. Technology Association. Oh, and come to the next PwC breakfast. It's called "Shaking the Money Tree" for a reason.

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