The trailblazing founders of technology companies like Apple and Atari get scores of books and movies written about them and heaps of attention; the people who gave them the funds to realize their visions, not as much. A new documentary called Something Ventured hopes to rectify this, focusing on the early Silicon Valley venture capitalists and their impact on those early companies and on tech culture today. The documentary, which was executive produced by Molly Davis and directed by Emmy Award-winners Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine and first aired at SXSW 2011, has recently had its distribution rights acquired by Zeitgeist Films.
From a recent Q&A the documentary’s creators gave to Popular Mechanics:
Q: Why do you think it’s important to capture the stories of these early venture capitalists?
DAVIS: They’ve had a lasting effect on our lives and how we communicate.
DAYNA GOLDFINE: And it’s not just about the technology that they helped bring into the world; it’s also about the way startups are formed. [These venture capitalists] changed the culture around things like that. I think we all know that there’s no Fairchild anymore—a lot of that was the East Coast management. They wouldn’t do stock options. I think [it’s surprising] to find out that stock options, which we all take for granted, were anathema at one point and time. And these guys changed that.
(via Popular Mechanics. Thanks, Sarah!)
