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Interview with Richard Wolpert, The Mail Room Fund

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Richard Wolpert is the head of the Mail Room Fund, a new venture fund backed by William Morris, Accel Partners, Venrock, and AT&T. Wolpert is well known for his work as Chief Strategy Officer for RealNetworks, as president of... See more » Richard Wolpert is the head of the Mail Room Fund, a new venture fund backed by William Morris, Accel Partners, Venrock, and AT&T. Wolpert is well known for his work as Chief Strategy Officer for RealNetworks, as president of Disney Online, as well as for his angel investments. We sat down for breakfast a few days ago to chat with Richard about the new fund, his angel investments, and what he sees as the promise of Los Angeles. Richard Wolpert: We started the fund about two months ago, called the Mail Room Fund. That's sort of an LA play on the garage, if you will. In Silicon Valley, everything gets started in the garage--in LA, and although we're not specifically focused on entertainment, a lot of famous people got started in the mail room. So, David Geffen got started in the mail room, Barry Diller started in the mail room, William Morris specifically. So it's the Mail Room fund, and it's partnered with AT&T, Accel, Venrock, and William Morris. The idea is to specifically invest in companies in LA, that are in the broad Internet consumer space. So there's a little bit of an assumption that since William Morris is involved, we're just working with entertainment companies, and just looking at content, but it's actually the contrary. We're looking broadly at Internet consumer plays and services, and technologies that support those plays. Our ideal investment per deal is about a million dollars. And, we're looking for earlier stage things, things that have not or are not to the Series A stage yet. We're off and running. What's your ideal investment--what do you want to see in a company, how far along do you want them to be? Richard Wolpert: If I could answer that question with just 20 words, I'd be smarter than I am. But, I'll give you some guidelines. In terms of the entrepreneur, the most ideal is someone who has had a successful exit. My first company, I got funding, and hadn't had a successful exit. So, that's not a requirement for us, but if you've got value out of a successful exit, the odds that you know what you are doing are great. To the extent that they haven't had a successful exit, if it's a group of young guys, who are sharp and working hard but also open to knowing they need help, that's something we're completely happy and willing to do as well. I would say we're looking at a mix of companies right now. We haven't announced or done any deals yet, and if I can think of two of the ones that are more interesting. One is a guy who has done this twice before, and one are some guys who just got out of college three years ago, and this is basically their first thing. It just depends on their talent, the space, their ability to learn, and their experience. Richard Wolpert: In terms of kind of company, we are saying broadly consumer Internet. Some people think that's so broadly ambiguous it doesn't mean anything. We're not doing hardware in any sort. Not doing back end storage. We're not doing at this point pure content plays -- like "fund this TV/webisodic series" -- we're not doing those sorts of things. We're trying to avoid the hits bet -- the hits bet being somebody who needs $20 million dollars to build something and we won't know until they've spend $20 million dollars if it's a hit or not. One of the things that is very different about 2008 than 2000 is that you don't need $5 million dollars to build a web site. So when we ask people to come to us--who have spent half a million dollars--and have a couple of good people on their team, and have actually built something to show for it, and they need a million/million and a half to get to the next step, that's very, very interesting. When we have people come to us, saying "here's our idea" and need $5 million dollars and 18 months to show for it, we don't think that is that interesting --based on the tools and how the market works today. We think the market is such that you can actually launch -- some level of a service -- even if it's not the ultimate service or a complete vision, for a million or million and a half dollars. We are looking for people who get See less »

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Interview with Richard Wolpert, The Mail Room Fund

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