BizDeansTalk - business management education blog

Why Business Plans Don’t Deliver - WSJ

Click here for the article of the Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2009.

The five most common flaws—and how to fix them.

An economic downturn is a great time to start a business.

It sounds paradoxical, but think about it. Costs are lower, and more talent is available, thanks to layoffs. Prospective clients are more likely to try a new supplier who can help them cut costs or increase their competitiveness. Established players, too, are focused on cutting costs instead of increasing market share...

"Venture Day 2009" 9th July - IE Business School (www.ie.edu) - Business Plan Competition

        

Program

Techcrunch - The Top 100 Networked Venture Capitalists

Post of Techcrunch, June 27, 2009.

So which venture investors have the best networks? Here are the top 10:

1. Draper Fisher Jurvetson
2. Sequoia Capital
3. Accel Partners
4. Intel Capital
5. First Round Capital
6. Dag Ventures
7. New Enterprise Associates
8. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
9. Benchmark Capital
10. Ron Conway

Vijay Dondeti, a graduate student in bioinformatics, applied the analysis in the Hochberg paper to about 2,700 investors in CrunchBase who participated in over 3,300 startup funding rounds between 2006 and 2008. He scored each investor based on how well connected they are to other investors as well as how well-connected their co-investors are to other investors. “In summary,” says Dondeti, “to get a high score, you need to co-invest often with others that also co-invest often.”

Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance -

Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT - post from www.startup-book.com (blog and book) of Hervé Lebret

"Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley"

Links

• Voir la version FRANCAISE

Pages

• Start-Up: the book
• Content and summary
• Media and “Start-Up”
• About the author

Product Description
Although start-ups represent a major phenomenon in the USA, they also create skepticism and even suspicion, perhaps because of the excesses of the Internet bubble. Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Yahoo and Google were all start-ups and these success stories show that the phenomenon is not mere speculation. The goal of this book is to show start-ups from a different angle. Start-ups are created by individuals who are passionate and who have dreams. Therefore this work should not only be read by specialists of innovation or by high tech entrepreneurs, but also by anyone interested in the history and economics of start-ups. The book is presented in two parts: it begins with a presentation of Silicon Valley start-ups, which ends with a description of the ecosystem of this region. The second part is dedicated to Europe, where the start-up phenomenon has failed in comparison. The main message is that it is absolutely necessary to take more inspiration from Silicon Valley.

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Post from www.startup-book.com March 12th, 2009

A new report has been published about the Entrepreneurial Impact of MIT

It is full of data and even if obviously self-serving, it remains very interesting. Let me just quote what I noticed:

- Growth: the number of “first-time” firms has increased from about 2′000 in the 70s to 6′000 in the 80s and 10′000 in the 90s.

- Origin: Non-US founders had slight visibility in the 40s, grow to 12% in the 90s and 17% in the 00s. 30% of MIT foreign students founded a company at some point.

- Age: Before and during the 70s, 24% of first-time entrepreneurs were under 30, growing to 31% in the 80s and 36% in the 90s. There is no real difference between industry segments.

- Serial entrepreneurs: I have a small disagreement on that point as I am not sure serial

AdAge - Malcolm Gladwell (in The New Yorker): Chris Anderson Is Wrong About 'Free' (book 7 July release)

The Stuff You Really Want Will Still Cost -- a Lot, Advertising Age, June 29, 2009.

by Henry Blodget

Finally, a smart person who is widely considered cool calls B.S. on Chris Anderson's popular argument that everything should be free.

Here's an excerpt from Malcom's New Yorker piece pointing out the flaws in Chris's argument. Malcolm was paid to write the piece, of course. Handsomely. As was Chris for writing his bestseller:

There are four strands of argument here: a technological claim (digital infrastructure is effectively Free), a psychological claim (consumers love Free), a procedural claim (Free means never having to make a judgment), and a commercial claim (the market created by the technological Free and the psychological Free can make you a lot of money).

The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, "has so far failed to make any money for Google."

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Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It's Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity (includeds video)
By Chris Anderson 06.22.09

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Free: The Future of a Radical Price

This title will be released on July 7, 2009.

Amazon: The New York Times bestselling author heralds the future of business in Free.

In his revolutionary bestseller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates niche markets, allowing products and consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company's survival.

School of Everything

http://schoolofeverything.com

Creative Commons News- The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age

Jane Park, June 26th, 2009

The report is available in PDF via CC BY-NC-ND.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/Future_of_Learning.pdf  (2.45MB, 82 pages)

HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) announced a new report called, “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age,” now available at MIT Press. The report is in response to our changing times, and addresses what traditional educational institutions must know to keep up. From the announcement,

“Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg in an abridged version of their book-in-progress, The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, argue that traditional institutions must adapt or risk a growing mismatch between how they teach and how this new generation learns. Forms and models of learning have evolved quickly and in fundamentally new directions. Yet how we teach, where we teach, who teaches, and who administers and serves have changed only around the edges. This report was made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in connection with its grant making initiative on Digital Media and Learning.”

A central finding was that “Universities must recognize this new way of learning and adapt or risk becoming obsolete. The university model of teaching and learning relies on a hierarchy of expertise, disciplinary divides, restricted admission to those considered worthy, and a focused, solitary area of expertise. However, with participatory learning and digital media, these conventional modes of authority break down.”

Not coincidentally, one of the ten principles for redesigning learning institutions was open source education: “Traditional learning environments convey knowledge via overwhelmingly copyright-protected publications. Networked learning, contrastingly, is an “open source” culture that seeks to share openly and freely in both creating and distributing knowledge and products.”

Homepage of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009

http://create2009.europa.eu

"Can Governments Till the Fields of Innovation?" - NYTimes.com

Click here for the article of the New York Times, June 20, 2009

INNOVATION — the tricky, many-step process by which ideas become products and services — has typically been seen, studied and celebrated at the micro level, as a pursuit for entrepreneurs and clever companies.

But governments are increasingly wading into the innovation game, declaring innovation agendas and appointing senior innovation officials. The impetus comes from two fronts: daunting challenges in fields like energy, the environment and health care that require collaboration between the public and private sectors; and shortcomings of traditional economic development and industrial policies...

Reaction from Huffington Post, Innovating or incrementing?

Book "Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World" - Victor K. Fung, William K. Fung, and Yoram (Jerry) Wind

www.competinginaflatworld.net

On Google Books,  On Amazon

From the Back Cover

“This is essential reading for anyone seeking to compete–and succeed–in the flat world.”

–John Hagel, Chairman of Deloitte Center of Innovation

 

“Competing in a Flat World provides an extraordinary glimpse into a new kind of organizational architecture, one built around the notion of orchestrating resources you don’t control and doing so in a way that builds both trust and agility. This architecture may well turn out to be the dominant model of the firm for the 21st century. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to compete in a flat world. Every chapter details new and powerful ideas.”

–John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and coauthor of The Only Sustainable Edge

 

“We are led by unstoppable economic forces to connect our resources to form smart networks, either wired or unwired. The authors bring forward the notion of ‘network orchestration,’ an almost one-size-fits-all strategy for organizations to survive and excel in an ever-flattening world.”

–John Chen, Sybase Chairman, CEO and President

Book: "Innovator's Solution" - Clayton M. Christensen - Michael E. Raynor

www.theinnovatorssolution.com

Google Books

At best one company in ten is able to sustain profitable growth. Yet capital markets demand that all companies seek it relentlessly, punishing mercilessly those who fail. . In his worldwide bestseller The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen explained why disruptive innovation is so hard, and the powerful forces that drive established leaders to set the stage for their own destruction. The book sent shock waves through strategy “war rooms” in every industry, and put executives on notice: disruption is inevitable, and you’d better do something about it.

Over the last five years, Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Michael E. Raynor, a director at Deloitte Research, probed deeper into the nature of disruptive technologies. They knew how established companies made themselves vulnerable to attack. Now, they wanted to discover how successful innovators could shape nascent ideas into killer disruptions. In The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Harvard Business School Press; Publication Date: October 9, 2003; $29.95/hardcover), they reveal some surprising truths about innovation, and offer a set of proven theories managers can use to revive their sputtering growth engines by shaping and launching disruptive innovations.

Innovation is Much More Predictable Than We Thought

In this groundbreaking book, Christensen and Raynor show that innovation is not nearly as random and unpredictable as managers have come to believe. While the outcomes of the innovation process have seemed random—such as superior innovations that tank and unlikely products that take off—the process itself, that is, the forces that shape and package innovations within companies, is very predictable. Christensen and Raynor demystify this process and explain how managers can greatly increase the odds of successful growth...

How to Enlist a Global Work Force of Freelancers - NyTimes.com

Click here for the article of the New York Times, June 24, 2009.

Small businesses increasingly are tapping a new talent pool: the world.

A new generation of online service marketplaces is giving small companies more opportunities than ever to find specialized expertise and affordable labor. Main Street businesses can shop a virtual international bazaar of freelancers to recruit computer programmers in Russia, graphic designers in San Francisco or data analysts in India.

“This is one more step in the path to leveling the playing field between small and large businesses,” said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “The Future of Work” (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). “A small-business person in a company of one can look to the world like a very large company and have access to all kinds of services — and that’s largely because of this kind of model.”

These online marketplaces are fueled by several trends. The recession and recent wave of downsizing have forced many corporations to eliminate in-house services and use independent contractors instead. Buyouts and layoffs have pushed many skilled professionals into the freelance marketplace...

Ethics should not be a Fad in MBAs By Craig McAllaster, Dean, Rollins MBA

This was kindly sent into BizDeansTalk by Craig McAllaster, Dean, Rollins MBA.

In 1982, I published an article in a journal on the perceived value of mergers. My opinion was that few mergers and acquisitions actually provide value. Often times, the cultures are too different to fully integrate or the merger was made for the wrong reasons.

In his book, “Naked Economics,” Charles Wheelan describes what some of those reasons might be. Wheelan notes that the actions of the CEOs who run our corporations are not always in the best interests of shareholders or even employees. Wheelan says: “They may steal from the cash register figuratively by showering themselves with private jets and country club memberships. Or they may make strategic decisions from which they benefit but shareholders do not.”  Wheelan notes that two thirds of all corporate mergers do not “add value to the merged firms” and one-third are “worse off.”   

In the past year, we’ve witnessed firsthand the results of decisions made by senior executives to advance their own aspirations and, often times, wallets.  I’m talking about those mortgage-backed securities that turned a quick profit for many on Wall Street and which have played a major role in this bitter recession.  

At the AACSB International Conference & Annual Meeting in Orlando this year, I moderated a panel called “Are Business Schools Responsible for the Current Economic Crisis?”  In it, we discussed whether the current meltdown in the markets, the credit crisis, bonuses for executives in companies going out of business and/or receiving government bailouts are signs that business schools are not doing enough to instill ethics and values.

Specifically, as business school deans, we need to examine what role our institutions have played in shaping the attitudes that influenced this crisis and possibly revisit what it means to be a successful graduate.   

We need to reexamine how we teach ethics, culture and value to our students. And we need to make sure that ethics and culture are instilled in our students not just during down times, but all of the time. We also need to help our students understand that the value of an MBA is not just a function of cost and ROI, but it’s also based on the ability to act ethically and with the best interest of organizations, shareholders and employees.  

As the timetable for an economic recovery remains unclear, one thing is certain: far greater accountability will be required of our leaders. I can’t think of anything that would be more detrimental to the reputation of a company than a senior executive who puts his/her interests before those of customers or shareholders. As we move forward in this economy, on thing that is certain: the MBA must also advance with ethics as a strong and driving force.

Book: "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers" (by Geoffrey Moore)

Wikipedia entry
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers (1991, revised 1999), is a marketing book by Geoffrey A. Moore that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products. Moore's exploration and expansion of the diffusions of innovations model has had a significant and lasting impact on high tech entrepreneurship. In 2006, Tom Byers, Faculty Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program, described it as "still the bible for entrepreneurial marketing 15 years later".

Amazon.com Review
Author Geoffrey Moore makes the case that high-tech products require marketing strategies that differ from those in other industries. His chasm theory describes how high-tech products initially sell well, mainly to a technically literate customer base, but then hit a lull as marketing professionals try to cross the chasm to mainstream buyers. This pattern, says Moore, is unique to the high-tech industry.

Moore suggests remedies for the problem that can help businesses meet their long-term goals. He coaches marketing professionals on how to move slowly through the gulf, teaching them to create profiles and target specific segments of the population rather than trying to plow right into the mainstream. He cites examples of successful chasm crossings by such companies as Apple, Tandem, Oracle, and Sun, showing what they all had in common and exposing the different weaknesses in their strategies. Moore also assigns responsibility for success to programmers and developers by suggesting they design a "whole product model." Here, because integration tasks are daunting to the mainstream market, all the components of a technological product must be in one package. Moore also describes strategies for competing with rival companies and assessing the best distribution channels for penetrating the target market.

Written not just for marketing specialists but for all employees whose futures ride on the success of a technical product, Crossing the Chasm delivers crucial information in an engaging, readable tone.

Innovation & Entrepreneurship (by Peter F. Drucker)

Book on Amazon ( published1985):

Peter Drucker's classic book on innovation and entrepreneurship

This is the first book to present innovation and entrepreneurship as a purposeful and systematic discipline that explains and analyzes the challenges and opportunities of America's new entrepreneurial economy. Superbly practical, Innovation and Entrepreneurship explains what established businesses, public service institutions, and new ventures need to know and do to succeed in today's economy.

About the Author

Peter F. Drucker is considered the most influential management thinker ever. The author of more than twenty-five books, his ideas have had an enormous impact on shaping the modern corporation. Drucker passed away in 2005.

From http://homepage.mac.com

• Innovation & Entrepreneurship (by Peter Drucker)
  • Preface
    • Entrepreneurship is a means to an end
  • Introduction: The entrepreneurial economy
    • Shifting Composition of the Economy
    • Early stages of a major technological transformation
    • Where did the new jobs come from

The New Internet Start-Up Boom: Get Rich Slow - Time Magazine

Click here for the article of Time, April 09, 2009

It's time to stop whining. The economy might be melting down like a pat of butter on a hot Hummer roof, but for some people — you, maybe? — this could be a very good thing.

Here's why. At no other time in recent history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company. Possibly a very profitable company. Let's call these start-ups LILOs, for "a little in, a lot out." These are Web-based businesses that cost almost nothing to get off the ground yet can turn into great moneymakers (if you work hard and are patient, but we'll get to that part of the story).

How do you get started? All that's required is a great idea for a product that will fill a need in the 21st century. These days you'd do best if your idea either makes people money or saves them money.

And launching now will make your company stronger later — you'll learn to survive on fumes until the economy improves...

...On a website called 37signals.com he learned about the virtues of lightweight programming languages like Ruby on Rails, which are ideal for the project he envisioned. He visited RentACoder.com and Elance.com sites where you can find software developers...

..."At this point, it would be hard for companies to get any cheaper," Graham said. Since everyone already has an Internet-connected computer, "it's gotten to the point that you can't detect the cost of a company when added to a person's living expenses. A company is no more expensive than a hobby these days."

Innovation in Disruptive Environments - Robert F. Bruner, Dean, Darden School of Business

Click here for the full post, 4/17/200.

I spent the past two days in Seattle, meeting with the chief innovation officers (CIOs) of a dozen major companies.  The purpose of the meeting was to share and compare best practices about innovation.  The activities and achievements of these companies were dazzling.  The whole event reinforced a nagging reflection in my own mind regarding a challenge facing management education.

.....

Collaboration builds the network of innovation.  Much has been written about collaborative innovation within firms.  What emerged in this conference was inventive collaboration of a higher order: collaboration among firms.  Collaborative corporate innovation (producer with customer; producer with supplier; even producer with competitor) was the consistent theme among these CIOs.  And I was also impressed that the CIOs were using this kind of collaboration to assist them in responding to the heightened uncertainty in the current environment.  Much of the share-and-compare dealt with creating promoting, and accelerating collaboration.  I heard enough success stories to persuade me that mastery of collaborative skills can put people and companies at the cutting edge of their fields.

Forbes Midas list - annual ranking of best dealmakers in high-tech & life science venture capital

*As per Wikipedia    *On Forbes website

Intel Capital advice to Entrepreneurs, look to venture capital assocs

www.intelcapital.com

Key Steps Before Talking to Venture Capitalists

Gain valuable insights on how to approach presenting your ideas to venture capitalists, as an entrepreneur.Download the PDF (46KB)

"It is extremely important to know who the investors are and their profile. A good way of understanding the industry is looking for information in venture capital associations (nonprofit organizations promoting entrepreneurship) and investor web sites. A sample of links to such information is provided here:

National Venture Capital Association - www.nvca.org
Endeavor - www.endeavor.org
Michigan Venture Capital Association - www.michiganvca.org
Venture Capital Insitute - www.vcinstitute.org"

Furthermore,

European Private Equity & Venture Capital Association - www.evca.eu

China

China Venture Capital Association - www.cvca.com.hk

Guide to doing Business in China

Starting a Business in China by DoingBusiness.org

Nextstepshanghai.com

Thomas Crompton: China, Internet and new media seen from Asia.

Jobless MBAs Opt for Entrepreneurship - BusinessWeek

Click here for the article of BusinessWeek, June 18, 2009.

B-school graduates are giving up on the job market and starting their own businesses instead. Funding is scarce, but schools are offering support.

"We've told them there is no funding, so they have to operate in an environment where their costs are almost zero"

...

The new business bug has bitten both graduate and undergraduate business school students hard this year. Typically, only a handful start businesses after graduating, with most choosing to go the more conventional route by securing a full-time job offer.
...

The upsurge in entrepreneurship comes at what is in many ways the worst possible time. In the first quarter of 2009, venture capital activity plummeted to just $3 billion—a new 12-year low—according to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Assn., raising the possibility that many student ideas might never proceed beyond the business plan stage, says Kip Harrell, president of the MBA Career Services Council, an umbrella group for MBA career services officers: "Students recognize how bad the economy is and how hard getting capital is."

In response, schools are ramping up the support they offer to aspiring entrepreneurs, creating summer business incubators, launching new curriculums in the subject, and giving them additional counseling on how to start a business in challenging economic times.

...

Business Plan Competitions

Another way students are testing the waters is by entering their ideas into business plan competitions, which have gained in popularity in recent years as interest in entrepreneurship has burgeoned. These competitions are generally sponsored by companies, which finance the awards. The competitions are typically judged by angel investors or venture capitalists and offer students the chance to win a large monetary prize, as well as the chance to get feedback on the viability of their business plans.

Ask the experts: MBA Jobs Clinic of the Financial Times

If you are an MBA student of the class of ‘09 and are still looking for a job, or you are thinking of setting up your own company, get the latest news and views from the FT’s monthly online Jobs Clinic now.

On Wednesday June 17, between 2pm and 3pm BST, a panel of experts answered your questions on http://www.ft.com/jobsclinic/june2009.

Our panel were: Michelle Antonio, Director of MBA Career Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Lydia Price, Associate Dean and Academic Director of the MBA programme at Ceibs in Shanghai; and Andrea Buck, Head of MBA-Direct, the Financial Times specialist MBA job board.

Contest of Nokia Forum - Calling All Innovators.com - deadline 30 June 2009

The total cash and prizes for the 2009 Calling All Innovators contest are worth more than $250,000!

We challenge mobile and web application developers worldwide to submit entries in three categories:

• Internet innovation – Calling on web developers to transform consumer-focused ideas into real applications on Nokia devices using technologies that include Nokia Web Runtime, XHTML, CSS, Java Script, AJAX, widgets and other standards-based web technologies.
• Flash – Challenging creative developers and designers to build compelling applications that expand the capabilities and user benefits of Flash Lite on Nokia devices.
• Emerging Markets and Mobile Necessities – Urging developers to create innovative applications across mobile technology platforms – ranging from SMS through Series 40 and S60 device platforms. All applications will be considered, including those developed using Java, Python, or open source.

Each contest category has been refined to provide you with additional guidance about the types of applications that the judges will be expecting to see.

All entries must be submitted by midnight (Eastern Standard Time) on 30 June 2009, so get started right away!

2 books on Innovation - "Democratizing Innovation" and "Innovation Happens Elsewhere" (also available free online)

Democratizing Innovation

Click here to download for free from MIT
Click here to view on Amazon

Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.

The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.

Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for
Reviews
"Every manager concerned with growth and innovation should read this book. It explains how companies can replace a broken innovation paradigm with refreshingly effective and efficient methods for finding new growth products and markets."
—Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business School, author of The Innovator's Dilemma

"The fruits of his labor are nicely summarized in Democratizing Innovation, a useful primer on what he calls 'user-centered innovation.'... Despite its brevity, Democratizing Innovation is a heavyweight book, written with the lightness of touch you might expect from a regular contributor to the journal Management Science. But where innovation comes from and how value gets created are heavy questions for all companies in all industries. No innovation means no value added, and ultimately no profits."
— The Financial Times

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Innovation Happens Elsewhere, Open Source as Business Strategy

Free online version

Click here to view on Amazon
First Sentence:
BUSINESS IS CHANGING after the expansive thinking of the law 1990s followed by the lessons learned in the early 2000s: It no longer makes sense for every company to make and own every aspect of its business...

"Innovation Happens Elsewhere is at least as important for those who have no interest in software as those who do, because in the details of the history and practice of the open source community lie clues to the institutional adaptations of the information economy; in the clauses of the various software licenses lie the case law that will come to define property in the information age. There are other books that have a great deal to say about this evolution, but none combines the personal experience and inside-out insight to be gained from the engagement of Ron Goldman and Richard Gabriel in so many flesh-and-blood open source projects and the development of the structures that have supported them."—from the foreword by Chris Meyer, Monitor Group

Andreessen and Horowitz Raise $300-Million Venture Fund

From All Things Digital, June 12. (also see post from Jason Calacanis, Marc Andreessen’s Venture Fund–and how “micro VC is transforming the Valley”)

Even in the midst of a tough investing environment, Silicon Valley legend and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen (pictured here) and his longtime investing partner, Ben Horowitz, have completed the raising of his new venture fund, according to numerous sources close to the situation, and it is oversubscribed.

Sources said the fund–which was nicknamed “Project A” but is actually called Andreessen Horowitz–will be $300 million. It is $50 million over the $250 million he and Horowitz had planned.

Several major institutional investors–from universities, for example–have invested large chunks of up to $20 million or more, while a spate of Silicon Valley luminaries has put in amounts of $1 million or less.

The quick completion of the fund raising, in the midst of a national econalypse, is a good sign perhaps for the forward-leaning culture of tech, which has seen some pullback by VCs over the last six months.

Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape–the iconic browser company that was key to introducing the modern Internet to consumers–and a lot of other start-ups, announced on the “Charlie Rose” television show in February that he was creating the new fund.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen at the time (see the video below)...

SiliconValley.com - The Mercury News Silicon Valley 150 SV150 + Top 10 charts

www.siliconvalley.com/sv150/

Click here for The Mercury News Silicon Valley 150

1. Hewlett-Packard
2. Cisco Systems
3. Intel
4. Apple
5. Oracle
6. Google
7. Sun Microsystems
8. Calpine
9. eBay
10. Synnex

Silicon Valley 150 Top 10 charts: