Venture Capital - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• Robert von Goeben and Kathryn Siegler produced a comic strip called The VC between the years 1997-2000 that parodied the industry, often by showing humorous exchanges between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Von Goeben was a partner in Redleaf Venture Management when he began writing the strip.

• Mark Coggins' 2002 novel Vulture Capital features a venture capitalist protagonist who investigates the disappearance of the chief scientist in a biotech firm in which he has invested. Coggins also worked in the industry and was co-founder of a dot-com startup.

• In the Dilbert comic strip, a character named 'Vijay, the World's Most Desperate Venture Capitalist' frequently makes appearances, offering bags of cash to anyone with even a hint of potential. In one strip, he offers two small children with good math grades money based on the fact that if they marry and produce an engineer baby he can invest in the infant's first idea. The children respond that they are already looking for mezzanine funding.

• Drawing on his experience as reporter covering technology for the New York Times, Matt Richtel produced the 2007 novel Hooked, in which the actions of the main character's deceased girlfriend, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, play a key role in the plot.

• In the TV series Dragons' Den, various startup companies pitch their business plans to a panel of venture capitalists.

• In the 2005 movie, Wedding Crashers, Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) and John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) are two bachelors who create appearances to play at different weddings of complete strangers, and a large part of the movie follows them posing as venture capitalists from New Hampshire.

• A documentary, Something Ventured, chronicled the recent history of American technology venture capitalists.

• In the ABC Reality Show "Shark Tank", in which Venture Capitalists ("Sharks") invest in Entrepreneurs.