Suddenly In-Q-Tel Gets Lots Of Attention
from the spies-like-us dept
In the past few months there has been much more focused attention on U.S. intelligence gathering – and in the tech world that means a lot more focus on their relatively new venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel. We’ve been mentioning more and more companies that have received money from In-Q-Tel, and on Friday there was an AP story that looks at some of the deals they’ve done lately. However, a more interesting article comes from the Red Herring (who amazingly have started publishing their website again after quite the unexplained hiatus). This article is more about some of the culture clashes between the CIA and In-Q-Tel and how to determine if In-Q-Tel’s investments have been successful. Since they’re not doing it for the money, they’re trying to figure out if it’s investments are actually useful to the CIA in any way. About a year ago, I met someone who worked for the CIA who claimed they were “technically” Gilman Louie’s boss – but that Gilman never acted like he had a boss, suggesting just a bit of the culture clash that went on between the two organizations.
