As VC is stressed in the recession and struggling as a model in the United States we're seeing new players move into that arena.Since large ad agencies owned by holding groups also have to adjust their model, some of them are developing VC capability. (These are the firms that were not the pioneers in "digital" (AKQA), or "interactive" (Barbarian) even if they now have an arm that offers that).
There were some agencies that developed brands in-house, incubated and launched them (Berlin Cameron, Fuse). But that takes human resources away from their consulting and forces them to become product managers as well as an array of other B2C responsibilities.
This seems like a good next step, excited to see how it turns out.
Having VC capabilities allows them to transfer their consulting abilities to advisory abilities.
In addition to injecting funding, they can also provide "the creative capital that can't be found elsewhere." That is more than the support a traditional VC will provide.
"Most early startups can't afford to go to agencies, they're too expensive. And many startups don't have leadership with business acumen that agency execs do."
Another view from founder and CEO of Loopt, Sam Altman, is to get investors that have "a ton of experience building companies and understands what it takes to scale."
The difference between a small business and a start-up is scale, start-ups can scale exponentially.
So finding those that can help you move quickly on the right track to scale.
We are seeing an iteration, or iterations, of organizations that fund ventures. Like Bjarke Ingels equated the design process to mapped evolutionary trees, some of these organizations that fund ventures will succeed and be iterated further. Some will go extinct.
Iterations upon this can feature investors also being developers that have understanding of marketing but core competencies in helping "build" the "products" the venture sells. Adage outlines how "VC" can move from just investing and advising their venture to placing the venture in the complex markets. That can be furthered by having different types of consultancies also getting into VC.
http://adage.com/article/agency-news/venture-capital-offers-latest-tactic-agencies/226807/