Bessemer Venture Partners celebrates its missed opportunities

Legendary Silicon Valley venture capital fund Bessemer Venture Partners publishes, on its website, its "anti-portfolio," containing investments it could have made, but chose not to. These investments are as star-studded a portfolio as you can imagine, a testament to the difficulty of picking investments in startups. As Daniel Isenberg wrote in "Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value," "Entrepreneurship and the process of betting on it may be impossible to systematize, precisely because of its contrarian nature."

BVP's successful investments include Skype, Staples, LinkedIn, Celtel and Yelp. Its missed opportunities include these:

Google: Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”

Lotus & Compaq: Ben Rosen, one of the founders of Sevin Rosen, offered Felda Hardymon the chance to invest in both Lotus and Compaq Computer on the same day. Says Hardymon: "Lotus wasn't proven yet, and I was worried about the situation there. As for Compaq, I told him there was no real future in transportable computers since IBM could do it."

eBay: "Stamps? Coins? Comic books? You've GOT to be kidding," thought Cowan. "No-brainer pass."

And more are available on the site. (Thanks to Dan Isenberg for referring to this list in "Worthless, Impossible and Stupid.")

Bravo to the BVP Partners for sharing their list and their sense of humor.