How Venture Capital is Trying to Get Down with Young CEOs

Money Man David Cowan, 40,
Courts Hot Web Startups
At a Networking Kegger
By REBECCA BUCKMAN
July 8, 2006; Page A1

SAN FRANCISCO -- Venture capitalist David Cowan is a professed chess-playing nerd who studied math and computer science at Harvard. Last year, though, he decided he needed a crash course in getting hip.

To stop embarrassing themselves with the young crowd, some investors are outsourcing networking activities to new, under-30 "associates," hired specifically to talk the talk with the youthful Internet leaders and hang out with them. "They wear black" and fit in at cool San Francisco clubs and restaurants, says Wes Raffel, 50, a partner with Advanced Technology Ventures in Palo Alto.