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Hey, starving storage wannabes! Michael Dell wants to give you CASH

$60m in the Fluid Data Storage Fund pot

Dell Ventures, the Dell investment arm, has a hefty $60m pile of greenbacks to dish out to early-stage storage startups. The cash has been assigned to the Dell Fluid Data Storage Fund and the fund managers want to invest in five to 10 promising storage start-ups and assign $3m to $5m to each one for an equity position.

Dell is looking for start-ups that are working on affordable and easy-to-manage storage products that are "aligned" with Dell's fluid storage architecture concepts. The eventual aim is to bring enterprise-level storage features to the mid-market at an affordable price.

The fund managers are, in effect, a cross-functional Dell team of "experts from storage, software, CTO and corporate development" as a Dell blog puts it. This team will work with the start-ups and provide oversight. Dell says it wants to be involved more "deeply" than as a quasi VC, and that it offers both expertise and advice, which it refers to as "sweat equity." It says it can provide "a global brand and footprint, technical expertise and IP, OEM and go-to-market capabilities".

The Dell fund will invest alongside pure venture capitalists – so the funding won't be exclusive. The firm says it will be very careful with its cash and that the $60m is merely an "initial" amount – so there could be more where that came from.

If you're in an early-stage storage start-up and think you have a good case for tapping into this fund then get in touch with Dell Ventures here. ®

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