Venture capital firms have billions of bucks in their bank accounts. In just the past month, two Boston-area firms, General Catalyst Partners and Flagship Pioneering, announced that they had collected an additional $3.4 billion in fresh capital, which they plan to use to back fast-growing companies.
Could VC firms like these be players in an emergency stimulus program, pouring some of those billions into the local economy to give it a boost?
The short answer is no. But the longer answer offers insight into how venture capitalists think in recessionary times — like 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst, or 2008, when the mortgage crisis hit.
