The goBIGnetwork is a site which aims to provides start-ups with a forum to meet venture capitalists who could fund, advise and support them. The idea is useful as it allows VC firms to find good ideas to fund which they might usually miss! Also, start-ups can list vacancies which they need filling.

Whilst the principle of the site is fantastic, it disappoints me from a design point-of-view. They don’t seem to grasp the ‘whitespace is good’ principle and the homepage looks almost as bloated as GoDaddy’s!

The site compares itself to a classifieds page in a newspaper (or indeed Craigslist) because people post ‘requests’, which are free if only shared with contacts but costs if public! I can’t find the pricing anywhere without signing up, but they call it small (one man’s small fee is another man’s fortune :P). There is no fee to join the site.

Annoyingly, the site offer a Firefox theme and plug-in. To be honest, I find toolbars for specific websites are generally useless (and eventually become a resource hog) and I think a theme is branding gone wild! Remember how every site regardless of size used to publish a Internet Explorer toolbar ? I’m sure that you, like me, installed a few but rarely used any of them.

To be honest, if I was a Web 2.0 start-up I’d be off-put from the site solely for its design, however I feel venture capitalists (and possibly firms such as PR companies) might feel more comfortable in this environment. I mean start-ups choose to deal with this PR firm (who notified me of this service and have provided me with many good leads) even though it has background music etc. so perhaps they wouldn’t mind this service. The heavy design seems to be common amongst B2B sites.

Side note: Good Flash game here and interesting post here

Tags: b2b, venture capitalism, vc, web2.0, web2, web 2, web 2.0, start-ups, business