Innovation America Innovation America Accelerating the growth of the GLOBAL entrepreneurial innovation economy
Founded by Rich Bendis

(Reuters) - Index Ventures, a leading European technology venture capital firm, is stepping up the pace of its early-stage investments as the plummeting costs of starting up a business make smaller investments more meaningful.

Index -- which has backed Skype, Net-a-Porter and MySQL -- is strengthening its team and allocating a dedicated pool of capital with the aim of closing about 20 deals in the next two years, compared with about 30 such deals in the last five.

Partner Saul Klein, one of the five-strong team leading the new drive, said on Monday venture capital firms needed to get involved earlier with sums as small as $50,000, or risk being too late to help entrepreneurs shape their strategy.

To read the full, original article click on this link: Index seeks early-stage deals as start-up costs drop | Reuters

Author: (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by David Holmes)