Gould says VC firms have gotten too big; leaves to do her own thing

Kathryn Gould co-founded one of the top Silicon Valley venture firms, Foundation Capital, but she left last year to start her own gig, Gould Investments. She’ll be investing between $50,000 and $200,000 of her own money into new start-ups. According to Dan Primack, she’s already invested in Before The Call, a Pleasanton on-demand sales lead intelligence company that recently scored $2.7 million in Series A funding led by Labrador Ventures.

Why am I doing this now rather than stay in the conventional VC business? … The more complicated answer is that the VC business has changed. It has structurally moved away from what I like to do. The great VC firms can now only invest large amounts of money, and when you take this on, you give up not only ownership, but degrees of freedom in the outcome. Yet many startups don’t need large amounts of money, and using less money to get off the ground is a huge benefit to the entrepreneurs.