Pass the Mic: Charles Beeler with Steve Hall at DEMO 07
Venture capital investor Charles Beeler speaks with fellow-VC Steve Hall (his DEMO observations can be found here), from Vulcan Capital, at DEMO 2007 in January. Another positive mention for Zink, and agreement that lots of small steps are being taken in the direction of improving search technology. Hall also gets in a plug for one of his investments….
Transcript:
Host: Charles Beeler – PodTech
Guest: Steve Hall – Vulcan Capital
Charles Beeler – PodTech
This is Charles Beeler reporting for the PodTech network. I am here with Steve hall from Vulcan Capital at the DEMO Conference, 2007. Steve thanks for talking to us today. How have you enjoyed the conference so far?
Steve Hall – Vulcan Capital
Hey Charles, this has been great. I have been here the last five years and every year it keeps getting a little better. You get your mix of companies, I feel like I see the same photo sharing app every year, but every now and then you see something that really makes a break-out and changes things. We saw Zink today with the new printer technology. It’s going to be a great hit with photo, camera phones and digital cameras, lot of other interesting Web applications. Nothing that’s standing out yet, but I think there is a lot of small, interesting search-related technologies chipping away at how we find information and the fringes of some of Google’s shortcoming.
So, it’s an exciting to be, lot of investor interest here, great place to hang out, have a glass of wine and some dinner with some fellow investors. So, it’s a good trip.
Charles Beeler – PodTech
Do you have any companies that are presenting in the conference this year?
Steve Hall – Vulcan Capital
I do, thanks for asking. We have the plug for our good friends in Boston, ZoomInfo. They are doing data harvesting across the Web for people and company information. We are a big fan, they are doing great, very excited about what they are up to.
Charles Beeler – PodTech
So, they are a successful company already. What are they going to be announcing here at Demo?
Steve Hall – Vulcan Capital
They have got their new release of the power search product. I’ve been a Beta and an Alpha user for as long as I can remember and I can tell you it’s a great product. When you think about the value of structured information, you can do searches; you can’t do in the world of keyboard plain text Google searches. So, show me all software developers that went to Stanford, live in Seattle; I can ask structured information, data set like ZoomInfo, sophisticated queries and get real answers. So, we are pretty excited about what they are doing tomorrow.
Charles Beeler – PodTech
Steve, some of the folks in Silicon Valley may not have heard of Vulcan Capital, although they should have; can you tell us about the firm, it has had a long history, a very successful history, can you tell us a bit about your firm?
Steve Hall – Vulcan Capital
Absolutely, thanks Charles. So, Vulcan Capital is the entity that manages, the assets for our sole limited partner Mr. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and our venture effort is very focussed on early stage technology companies. We tend to be pretty hands on and invest locally. We have a lot of activity in the North Western Seattle, though we have a lot of great syndicate partner relationships in the Bay area and a few deals in Boston so we look for early stage companies in areas we think we can add value. We are investing in semantic Web, data intelligence, alternative energy; we have an investment in pure renewables doing some bio-diesel, as well as couple of investments in other energy related matters. So we are early stage, very active these days and that’s Vulcan Capital.
Charles Beeler – PodTech
Right, so you have been listening to Steve Hall of Vulcan Capital at DEMO 2007. Steve thanks for your time and thanks to all our PodTech listeners for listening in.
Steve Hall – Vulcan Capital
Thanks Charles, thanks a lot.
Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy
Posted in:
Connected Social Media, DEMO Conference, Enterprise 2.0, Entrepreneurship with John Furrier, Tech Conferences and Events, Technology
