Rebecca Buckman in The Wall Street Journal today had an article entitled "Many Internet Start-Ups Telling Venture Capitalists: "We Don't Need You." The thrust of the article is that many start-ups these days (versus the late 1990s) simply sell out rather than get involved with venture capital firms.

The writer provides several reasons for this change in attitude. But there is a fundamental difference between then and now. In the late 1990s into 2000, most start-ups were driven by the idea of an IPO. Also established media companies were not commonly buying Web site properties at that time.

Today we find that most purchases of Internet start-ups are coming from established media companies or the Search Engine organizations. Witness Myspace.com being sold to NewsCorp and Flickr being purchased by Yahoo.

Interestingly yours truly was in the VC game for a few years from 1999 until 2002 (Jupitermedia still has small interests in a variety of Internet companies from these VC days such as mdlinx.com, biocompare.com, techtracker.com, madeforchina.com and many more). Our model was revolutionary in 1999 because it was not based on having an investment turn into an IPO, but rather it was based on the idea that vetically focused start-up Web sites would be built up and sold to established media companies. I remember having trouble raising VC funds back then because potential investors were focused on the hot IPO market. It is nice to see that our investment philosophy of 1999 has in fact become accepted today as most start-ups are being sold to established companies rather than pursuing the IPO route.