Venture Capital has been under massive change over the past 5 years.  We’ve seen the emergence of new “products” from angel, super angel, to new institutional firms like Andreessen Horowitz.

Andreessen Horowitz business model is the “gold standard” in technology investing.  Andreessen in a short time has become the dominate venture capital firm on the west coast.  Their playbook is very simple.  Hire successful partners that are all ex-entrepreneurs and successful operators and invest in the best deals both early stage and growth stage.

The Andreessen Horowitz model is coming to Boston in the form of Atlas Ventures and Chris Lynch.

Today, I have learned that Atlas Ventures has hired a new venture partner Chris Lynch, east coast entrepreneur and ex CEO of big data startup Vertica (acquired by HP). Chris will be a full partner.

Lynch recently stepped down as CEO of  HP Vertica this year with a goal of accelerating Boston-based Big Data companies. He’s reportedly invested in ten east coast startups. He’s also Chairman of the Board of Hadapt, a Yale spawned Big Data startup that recently moved its HQ to Boston from Connecticut.

This move by Atlas is a signal that the Boston venture scene is moving fast and in line with the west coast.  In addition this move by Altlas highlights what I see happening in the changing venture landscape. Historically the big guys controlled everything. We then saw the emergence of super angels who started to effectively compete with VCs at the early stage level with a “spray and pray” tactic. We saw a huge number of deals that were supposedly independent when in reality the super angels have become aligned and formally affiliated with VC firms as scouts, etc. Firms are being outed as not really independent but instead “stalking horses” for the big guys. The smart firms are coming clean on this disclosure very fast – Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

To make things more complicated we’re seeing an evolution as a wave of angels started hanging out their own shingles and competing with super angels and VCs based on collaboration, openness, speed and access to entrepreneurs. Lynch and Atlas are making a smart move that in my view is a sign of the winning model/trend in venture, bringing entrepreneurial angel mojo and successful tactical community-based investing to a traditional VC. This has been clearly validated by Andreesen Horowitz, started by executives that have been there and built companies and have trust with entrepreneurs. Lynch and Atlas can quickly rise up and be the east coast Andreessen Horowitz (if they play their cards right).

The New VC Model

The new model of the successful institutional (big) venture firms is the ability to invest in large amount of early stage deals while doing those massive B or C round deals – aka Andreessen Horowitz model.  This new model is a hard task, but it’s doable by having the partners who can earn the trust of the angel networks and entrepreneurs.

Lynch is a unique individual with deep operational experience, winning record and a story that resonates with early stage CEOs. As angels begin encroaching on the traditional domain of VC, Lynch, by aligning with Atlas creates a large and established platform that can bridge the gap between old school VC and emerging angel investment vehicles that are often more attractive to early stage entrepreneurs.

I’ve talked Lynch about collaboration with other VC’s. While he’s focused on Boston I don’t think it’s totally exclusive and he’s shown interest in working with the west coast ecosystem. From what I can tell he’s “all in” on the collaboration front. Meaning he wants to partner with the leading Big Data brains, alpha geeks and investors.

Chris Lynch gets the attention of entrepreneurs because he adds value and has the track record. His first big hit came when he was running sales and marketing for Arrowpoint Communications which sold to Cisco for nearly $6B over a decade ago. He was also CEO of Acopia, a storage virtualization company that sold to F5 for more than $200M; and most recently he was CEO of Vertica, which HP acquired for more than $300M.

Last week I spent some time with Dave Vellante in Cambridge, MA, meeting with the hottest Big Data startups in the region. Throughout our survey of Boston we kept running into early stage CEO’s that were working with Lynch, preferring early on to work with angels rather than old school VC’s. More than half of the CEOs we talked to said they knew Lynch and he had either invested in them, or was a mentor.  He clearly has his hand in the region.

Regarding this move to Atlas, I talked to Lynch through email and asked him why Venture and why now?  Here’s what he said:

“In the past month, I have seen 20-30 interesting deals per week, and I have made a handful of angel investments. However, the fact of the matter is, I don’t have the resources alone to handle all the opportunity Boston Big Data represents -I needed a platform. I now have that and it is my sincere hope to work with everyone to put Boston back on the map.”

In addition to being a VC, Lynch has his fingerprints on several Big Data initiatives beyond his seed investments. For example, he’s also helped launch Hack Reduce, a Boston-based Big Data accelerator that provides free resources for developers and startups; a capability which the region sorely lacks. Atlas now gets this package and if it makes the right moves could emerge as a serious player.

Here’s a video of Chris Lynch talking about east coast/west coast schism with Dave Vellante of Wikibon: