Rob Monster made quite a stir when he entered the Seattle venture capital scene. But nearly two years after establishing Bellevue's Monster Venture Partners, the founder and former CEO of Global Market Insite is pulling the plug. It is not for lack of trying. During his short tenure in the venture game, Monster backed more than 20 early-stage companies, sinking more than $7 million of his personal funds into startups such as Alerts.com, Complaints.com, Demoxi and Wishpot.
He also hired two well known investment professionals in town -- Jeff Schrock and Todd Humphrey -- to scout deals. [Both previously left the firm] So what's going on?
Monster, who recently shut down the Bellevue office, said the early-stage investment market "changed dramatically" in 2008.
"MVP’s model was to fund the seed and early stage -- what I call 'North of an angel, South of a VC,'” he said via email. "Investor appetite for this asset class largely disappeared during Q4 2008. With capital markets still relatively frozen so far in 2009, the prospects were limited for raising our first outside fund to supplement what to date had been personal capital."
The firm had planned to raise as much as $40 million.
Monster said that most of the companies he invested in have made the transition to "bootstrap" mode or have raised capital from other investors. He said the transition started about five months ago, with an eye toward protecting shareholders of those companies.
In several instances in the past, I referred to Monster's insatiable appetite for new deals. Investing in more than 20 deals in less than two years is an incredible pace, one that Monster admitted today was simply too much.
"As for what I would have done differently, in retrospect it is clear that I should have gone more slowly," he said.
So what's next?
At the age of 40, Monster said he's too young to retire. So, he's returning to his "entrepreneurial roots." He's hatching a new "Web 3.0 media company" called Epik.com, along with Alerts.com founder Pascal Stolz. The idea, he said, is to build on his vision of the "user-centric semantic Web" in a way that helps people find domain names.
Monster said he's ready to move on.
"While the venture experiment has been somewhat humbling, I learned a lot from the experience and look forward to the next phase of the journey," he said.
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