VC foul-ups: the ones that were thrown away

Bessemer Venture Partners says it could well be America's oldest venture capital firm, with an unbroken history stretching all the way back to 1911.

This "long and storied history has afforded the firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up", it admits.

So top marks to the company for publishing the Anti-portfolio, a list of some of the bigger screw-ups, the ones it turned away.

Bessemer spurned pre-IPO opportunities to invest in Apollo Computer (bought by HP), Apple Computer at a $60 million valuation, Checkpoint, eBay, Lotus and Compaq.

Check out the site for the reasons it rejected these, and other, firms. ®

Related Link

Techdirt.com. This is where we stumbled across the Anti-portfolio link.