VC prediction: Zillow goes IPO

VC prediction: Zillow goes IPO Commenting in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, a venture capitalist said she expects to see property-search and automated home valuation site Zillow go public this year. Lucinda Stewart of OVP Venture Partners in Kirkland, Wash., predicted that Zillow.com, iFloor (an online flooring store) and WorldClass Strategy (a consulting firm specializing in e-business initiatives) -- all Washington-based companies -- will join the ranks of publicly traded companies in 2007. If they were given $10,000 to invest either in Google or Microsoft, the group of four venture capitalists split: two said they'd invest it in Microsoft, one said he would divide it -- half for Microsoft and half for Google, and the fourth said she would invest it all in Google. Favorite investment sectors among the VC folks include: compound semiconductors, user-generated wireless content, business software and services, and digital biology. And if these VCs were given $5 million to set up their own companies, they had some very different ideas about what it would be: a super spam filter with a low error rate, a user-generated video company for the China market, a company that improves customer contact/interface, and a "green" company that finances the acquisition of products that help companies reduce environmental impact. –Glenn Roberts Jr., Inman News

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