OSS and Venture Capital podcast

Earlier this month we had the pleasure of listening to some of Boston's VC thought leaders discuss the impact that open source and Web 2.0 have had on their investment landscape.  Joining us were: Austin Westerling of Charles River Ventures, Larry Bohn of General Catalyst Venture Partners , Michael Skok of North Bridge Venture Partners and David Beisel of Masthead Venture Partners (and founder of the Web Innovator's Group ). Those who missed the event can subscribe to our podcast or Listen Now!...

The podcast lasts about an hour and focuses on why VC's  are interested in OSS and Web 2.0 - whether it's operational efficiency, new marketing models or simply déjà vu all over again (the next dot-bomb).  Do they really believe these models are $100+ Million babies?

The format was a panel discussion, MC'ed by Mark Withington and the attending audience (both live and Skypecast).  A partial tag cloud includes:

• Using Alexa to "Find a parade to get in front of"; 

• Looking through the OSS investment lens - death to the commoditized stack;

• OSS as a platform to deliver value technology enabled service (monetized via subscription or advertising);

• Trends in building apps on OSS vs Proprietary stacks;

• Shifting the value-add up the stack (e.g. solving the biz problem);

• Software as a service - where does the value reside, ;

• Light-weight start-up funding;

• Web 2.0 focus groups;

• Using Web 2.0 to find the next enterprise/mainstream;

• Shifts in the VC world as technology converges with advertising and media