Why do VCs do this?  This morning I read about a $7M investment in Snapfinger, a company that lets you (get this) order food from (get this) chain restaurants via (get this) iPhone!  Just what we needed… now, there’s an App for THAT.

While pining for a native iPhone SeamlessWeb app (it’s just a mobile web site for now) and wanting to volunteer to help them write one for a mere $1.967M paid to me for the idea, I noticed a quote from Snapfinger’s new investors and saw the light:

“What they’ve done at Kudzu [Snapfinger’s parent] is combine three of the hottest areas right now for venture capital investing — e-commerce, mobile and local,” said Joshua Goldman, a Norwest general partner who will join Kudzu’s board.

“Combine, eh?”  Recalling the bits of set theory I took at Stanford, I seemed to remember than when things (s.a. markets) are represented on a Venn diagram, their intersection is usually a subset, not superset of the whole.  Wonder how their slides looked.  Probably a lot of hockey sticks.  

But, I guess, if you’re a VC sitting on a $1B+ fund, you need to put the money somewhere.  Too bad.  There are about 5 FourSquare’s (meaning agile companies) that could have been funded by this investment. 

And, speaking of spaces, compare this to something like Square (which is also e-commerce and mobile) but, unlike this one, interesting, new, and brilliant (in my opinion)  though also funded by a large investor (plus others)…  See a difference?

So, startups… you heard it:  e-commerce, mobile, and local.  Let’s write those business plans and make sure you mention the three terms.