VC World (www.vcworld.gr) is a venture capital community website that probably few would have noticed, if it hadn’t won the Ermis Web Silver Award 2009 in the public sector category (the Ermis Awards being the official annual creativity event of the communication industry in Greece).

I feel very happy and flattered about this since, through my association with Ventris – a top-notch strategic consulting agency – I was responsible for the strategy, the web concept & architecture and the selection process to appoint the design agency which finally implemented it.

The owner of the website is TANEO, the only venture capital fund-of-funds in Greece which, after a restructuring process in 2007, has already been able to leverage funds in the order of €300 mill, completing its curent investment plan ahead of schedule.

The idea for this community website came as a result of a full market research into SMEs and a repositioning corporate strategy which we developed with Ventris during 2007 and 2008.

The objective: To leverage the potential of the market through the creation of a community oriented web presence, facilitating knowledge exchange, networking and synergies among potential venture capital business partners.

Considering that this is the first online community of its kind in Greece, the model was developed after an extensive research into similar projects from abroad, alternative strategic scenarios and “heated” discussions (the most…”creative part” of the process, as always).

So, this is a good opportunity to cite a few cases and lessons learned out of this project.

Online business communities are now enhanced through the emergence of web2.0 platforms and pose very special challenges. Some of them aim to “match” angel investors or VCs with business ideas, while others mostly facilitate networking among aspiring entrepreneurs. Indicative examples:

• Vator.tv (name derived from “elevator pitch”) is described as “the place for emerging companies to showcase and market themselves, and share their news”. It features a start-up directory, a rich resources section, a competitions section and a members’ section. Startups can submit their profiles and two minute videotaped elevator pitches which allows them to pitch simultaneously to multiple potential investors. Interestingly enough, pitches can be ranked by users themselves, “saving investors valuable time”. Vator.tv essentially became a startup on its own right.

• VentureNetwork.vc which was described as the “Facebook of VCs” when launched, is a restricted online social network built exclusively for the venture community, featuring services such as a Deal Exchange, a career center, a research forum etc. It gained quite a bit of publicity at the time and very good insights can be found here and here.

• PartnerUp is a small-business & startup community with more than 400.000 members that according to CEO Steve Nielsen, has a mission to “connect innovators with the people, advice and resources they need to build and grow their businesses”. The site also exploits Microsoft’s BizSpark programme which supports software startups.

• Raisecapital is quite self-explanatory. It is a member based community which also connects entrepreneurs to more than 5,000 investors – mostly high net worth individuals – and boasts more than 4,700 active ventures on the site. You can post your business idea and potential investors can contact you, create alerts, search for opportunities etc.

• Of the “looser” networking type, 4networking.biz is a large UK business community boasting 23.000 members, ClubENetwork, , ryze.com and many others.

• Of course we should not overlook the high profile TechCrunch and its own 60sec video elevator pitch facility, although it is not a community feature, as entrepreneurs pitch to the general public who can vote and comment.

• A similar very clever idea is by Richard Branson who has set up pitch.tv, which essentially asks from anyone with an entrepreneurial idea to upload a 2min video to the website and the 5 most voted for by users, are shown to businessmen travelling with Virgin Atlantic, a truly “captive community”!

Any community platform is a very demanding exercise. There are no ready-made solutions and you need to spend a lot of time at the drawing table to weigh and balance business objectives, expected outcomes and significant constraints. A financial community is very different from a pharma/medical community or a  software developers’ community. It needs a clear strategy but also careful cultivation and constant nurturing while the organizational demands can be daunting if the community becomes very large. The minimum requirement is a  dedicated Community Manager to run and maintain it and a true commitment by the initiator.

For a business community the long-term benefit however can be significant as it seems that one of the major reasons for an enterprise to partner with a VC Fund is the need to exploit business synergies and not just the financial infusion (the merits of which are often questioned as Seth Godin puts it humorously here , e.g. “The companies that VCs most want to invest in are the companies that don’t need their investment to survive”).

In this sense, an online community can be a major ally especially for a fund-of-funds institution which by definition leverages communities offline. But the critical success factor for an online VC community is how to strike a balance between the need for privacy and the benefits of open networking. As Simeon Simeonov, a partner at Polaris Venture Partners,  says here, “In theory you want to be protective. You don’t want somebody else to be able to take away the thing you may have found, the diamond in the rough.”

But all too often, good ideas and deals do not progress because they do not fit a certain investors’ current strategy or is simply overlooked. A community can keep these ideas in the loop until they find the right partner at the right time.

So, the issues associated with these types of communities are complex and sensitive and largely have to do with the need to maintain confidentiality, secrecy and a stronghold on the value of the network itself.

Jeremiah Owyang while still at Forrester, put together some useful ideas in his report on Online Communities Best Practices, where it is clear that there is no real life-cycle for a successful community, but actually a never-ending process of continuous improvements.

Very good insights can also be found at the Deloitte led Tribalization of Business Study-2009, – conducted in conjunction with Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research – which measures the responses of more than 400 companies (including Fortune 100 organizations) which have created and maintain online communities today. The study indicates that while enterprises are effectively using online tools to engage with customers, partners, and employees for brand discussion and idea generation, organizations are continuing to struggle with harnessing social media’s full potential.

So, to come back to TANEO’s effort with VC World, creativity recognition is of course welcome but it’s not a precondition for success in this case. The critical factors are two: Firstly, whether the business community in Greece, hindered by a significant degree of introversion and “willingness to embark on  innovative entrepreneurship” *, is ready to embrace this new concept and keep the community alive with ideas and relevant content. And secondly, whether TANEO can now kick-start and eventually sustain the community, offering true value to the members, and keep up with the significant organizational demands of such a project.  After all, an online community always takes “two to tango”.

On a final note, my personal opinion is that today more than ever, the financial crisis –as every crisis should do – can pave the way for a re-thinking process. We know that every crisis carries the seeds of regeneration within itself, so time will tell if these are ready to bloom.

*(worth reading the excellent 2008 research report by Deutche Bank: “Venture Capital: Bridge between idea and innovation”, which compares 15 european countries, including Greece, and draws useful conclusions)

(posted by Vassilis Goulandris)