Meet the people behind Google Ventures

If you’re down and out of luck with Google AdSense, perhaps you can think up new ideas and launch your own company with the help of another branch of the Mountain View giant: Google Ventures.

That right, folks. Google has a venture capital branch where all sizes of “creative” companies can apply for financing.

Here’s the official bio…

Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies – we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. We’re studying a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care.

We invest anywhere from seed to mezzanine stage and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance.

Our team includes entrepreneurs, investors and innovators, along with some 20,000+ exceptional Googlers whose breadth of knowledge, experience and creativity constitute perhaps our own most valuable resource. You don’t have to be a potential Google acquisition for us to want to work with you; we’re out to build great companies, period.

Whew! Quite a pitch — it’s basically open to anyone for any project that’s remotely interesting.

In other words, you should send your idea even if every other venture cap firm turned you down because this outfit looks a lot more down to earth than the others.

Moving on, let’s look at the two managers’ short bio…

• Bill Maris is a Managing Partner of Google Ventures.
  • Bill brings more than a decade of diverse operational, entrepreneurial and leadership experience to Google Ventures.
  • Bill’s past successes include founding Web hosting pioneer Burlee.com, which he subsequently sold to Interland, Inc. (NASDAQ: WWWW), now known as Web.com.
  • Prior to that, Bill was a portfolio manager for Stockholm, Sweden-based Investor AB, one of the world’s largest industrial holding companies, where he co-managed the biotechnology and health care portfolios.
  • Bill’s background also includes scientific research into cholinergic visual pathways, cell membrane patch clamping techniques and in-vivo neuronal cell injection at Duke University Medical Center, Department of Neurobiology.
  • Bill is based in Mountain View, CA and received an A.B. with honors in Neuroscience from Middlebury College.
• Rich Miner is a Managing Partner of Google Ventures.
  • He has spent the past 25 years growing businesses with innovative communications and interface-intensive applications.
  • Rich joined Google through the acquisition of Android, a mobile platforms company that he co-founded.
  • During his first three years at Google, he helped lead the development of the Android platform and ecosystem.
  • Prior to Android, Rich was a Vice President at Orange, where he led R&D activities in North America and also started and was a principle in Orange Ventures. He came to Orange through the acquisition of another company that he co-founded, Wildfire, which made a voice-based personal assistant.
  • He met his Wildfire co-founder when he helped incubate Avid Technology in his university lab.
  • Rich is based in Boston, Massachusetts and received his doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

They look like fine young gentlemen and seriously, I’d trust them!

Their resumes must be akin to “brain candy” since they both have solid academic backgrounds. That means they’ll probably know what you’re talking about when you present them with your idea. Which is obviously very good. There’s nothing as bad as a “bland stare” when you’re pitching your “exciting new idea”… you want people like Bill and Rich who “get it”.

There are two offices — west coast and east coast. It’s like the Ivy League but for venture cap…

• Google Ventures, Mountain View
  1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
  Mountain View, CA 94043
  United States
• Google Ventures, Cambridge
  5 Cambridge Center, 4th Floor
  Cambridge, MA 02142
  United States

And for those living in the 21st Century, they also have an email address, which will probably come in handy.

I couldn’t find a list of companies they’ve invested in but I suspect there might be quite a few, given their apparent open mindedness.

All in all, this might just be the venture cap firm you’ve been waiting for so go ahead and share your knowledge with, in hope of being rewarded with money and fame.