Tech Investors as Human Beings, Really.

All my life I've been taught to equate money with evil. My grandfather came to Canada with a grade 2 education only to be interned and have his home seized. At 8-years-old I was a latchkey kid and sat eating bologna sandwiches and watching 80's movies where the villain was always a land developer. The grunge era taught me that anyone with power was living off the spoils of oppression. My university taught me to become a smug grassroots activist. But as of today, I'm beginning to think that people are just plain old people.

THE WEEK'S EVENTS
I've just finished a week at TechCrunch 50 and I'll get to that. But surprisingly, the highlight of my week was last night's Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives.

Intimidated beyond belief, I was invited to sit at a table hosted by my company's investors. The woman on my left was a Yale graduate and Marketing Director for Mayfield Fund, the woman on my right was equally impressive with more than 40 portfolio clients including Slide - which was recently valued at about half a billion dollars. Both of these women sat and pointed out a few of the investors on the Forbes Magazine Midas List. As a Canadian from the burbs, I'd never even heard of this list.

THE MIDAS LIST
The Midas List is an annual list of all of the top tech investors in the world. If telecom is big one year, those with telecom portfolios move up on the list. If Indian companies are big, those with Indian investments move up. Basically, these people have the direct ability to change the world, and they were nice enough to sit there patiently and explain this all to me.

I am amazed by these women. I believe they are successful because they are both intelligent and genuinely nice. After being invited to this event I had nightmares of being in a room full of older White conservatives with furrowed brows and a disdain for peons like myself. But these women were actually pretty diverse in age, ethnicity and experience. They were strategically placed in every major company, investment house, or media outlet - and they were nice to me, and to each other. It occurs to me, that THEY might be the fabled and elusive Illuminati.

I returned home feeling better about the state of the universe, like at least a few of the people at the top are trying to make something positive happen. I feel honored to peek into that corner of the world and feel welcomed. Take it from this pinko bastard, successful investors (at least these ones) are just people.

TECHCRUNCH 50
My favorite companies at TechCrunch 50 are Yammer (monetizing Twitter and leveraging it for project management makes sense), GoodGuide (it would be evil not to like them), and Swype - a really cool keyboard interface demoed below.

Video

Nevertheless, I am beginning to see TechCrunch in a new light. This year, as I sat there amongst excited startup company co-founders and drunk young engineers, I felt like an old veteran. I was actually substantially older than a great deal of the attendees.

Not surprisingly, the investors look at their CEOs and entrepreneurs like 40 children they are nurturing and raising. Essentially, they want their babies to stay comfortable and fed enough to take care of their parents when they are older. The best we can do is earn their trust, try our best, and have fun doing it. At the end of the day if you're a funded entrepreneur, someone is bankrolling your dream - I'd rather an experienced stranger do it than my own biological parents. Oh God, the horror. The alternative would have me pitch Oprah Winfrey every freaking day.

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