sutton020

The conventional wisdom is that starting a web business is (at least) 10x less expensive today than it was 10-15 years ago. It’s said that a decade ago, you needed millions of venture capital in order to launch an Internet startup whereas today, thanks to open-source software, cheap hardware and new ways to acquire users for free (in particular virally via Facebook/Twitter and with SEO via Google), you can do the same with a small fraction of that. And that, while great for entrepreneurs, makes it difficult for large VC funds with many hundred million dollars under management, to deploy their capital because startups ask for less money. I’ve heard it dozens of times, from VCs, founders, bloggers and others. It’s almost like a mantra, part of the Web 2.0 creation myth, which everyone believes without challenging it. I always wondered if that theory is true, because it didn’t cost Christopher Muenchhoff and me more than about $100 to build and launch DealPilot.com in 1997...

I’m thrilled to announce that together with Robin Klein at Index Ventures , Dave McClure ’s 500 Startups fund and my friend and former Atlas Venture partner Alexander Bruehl I’ve made an investment in Geckoboard . Geckoboard is a beautiful real-time status board that lets businesses keep an eye on all the indicators that matter to them. It’s a bit like “Pageflakes for businesses” (although “Chartbeat for everything else” is probably a better analogy), which is one of the reasons why investing in Geckoboard was a pretty easy decision for me. Another reason is that Geckoboard will be provided as a web-based service, with a free trial and a pay-as-you-go subscription model. Exactly the kind of SaaS business that I’ve developed a focus on in the last two and a half years. Another reason was the huge demand for the product's beta invitations ( one of my favorite requests for a beta invite is this tweet , but there are many more). And of course the fact that the company was founded b...