I wish the central idea here resonated across VC firms. Caring about the team and what they will bring should be prioritized but it just isn't among many VC's. Most VC's, if they even care to look at the individuals before the business plans, financial models, etc., only really look at the founders. And it's funny that more don't prioritize looking at the entire team considering the one's that are known for doing so are the one's at the top, year in and year out...a16z is a great example.

Running a company is like being a good coach, at least that's the way I like to look at it. Herb Brooks (coach of the 1980 US Ice Hockey Team) was known for saying "I'm not looking for the best players, I'm looking for the right ones". Likewise, you can have the 8 best engineers in the world but unless they work well TOGETHER, your company isn't going to go very far at all.

Bottomline: More VCs should pay attention to the entire team--not just the founders--and especially way more than the 5yr business plans, financial models, etc. because these will most likely change a fair amount, the team won't as much. If the brains are there and those brains work well together, you've got a recipe for success.

What happened to CTO Edward Wu?

He seems to have been part of the original founding team and CTO but no mention of him in the past ~1 year.

[edited, linked to previous post from Inovia] http://inoviacapital.com/2011/11/inovia-capital-is-proud-to-...

Seems to still be there according to LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=12661295&locale=...

That's his LinkedIn, which simply may not be updated.

He's not mentioned in the OP-- which seems to list everyone in the company by name-- nor anywhere on Vidyard's website.

Congratulations to the Vidyard team! Looking forward to what they bring next to the video platform.

Didn't realize there were two videos in that player -- the second one is pretty funny.

Good thing the vc doesn't use commas correctly. Red flag.

What should it have been:

"Ultimately, the team you build is the company you build"

?

ha, that's what I get for copying a quote off of twitter.

Copywriters and editors, they do good work...

It's a good thing they make investments, and not edits.

unless inovia has invested in disqus (not in the portfolio page from what i can see), it looks a little tacky to have Disqus advertising on your VC company's blog.