What motivates an investor to say "yes"

I read a wonderful article by Tim Westergren, founder of the popular music service, Pandora yesterday night. Wanted to capture the key points...

What causes an investor to shift from looking for ways to say ‘no’ to looking for ways to say ‘yes’? The shift happens when three things come together for the investor:

1. They personally believe in the entrepreneur(s);
   
2. They have a sense (and it’s often just a gut feeling) that the idea could be very big; and
   
3. They have a personal interest or background in the industry that gives them a leg up the diligence curve.

VC dollars pouring again....

1. Pinger, a San Jose, California based voice messaging start-up, has received cash infusion of $8 million dollars from Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures.
Pinger launched at DEMO earlier this year, and is essentially the next generation voice messaging service. Instead of leaving someone a voice mail, you ping them, and that results in a text message being sent to them, which can be clicked to listen to that voice mail.

Check out this DEMO video


2. Vinod Khosla has invested $6.2 million in iSkoot, the Cambridge, MA-based Skype-to-mobile extender service.


3. Wikia took a second round of funding provided entirely by Amazon (amount undisclosed). Wikia, founded by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and led by Gil Penchina (ex-eBay), provides a place for wikis on things that aren’t appropriate for an encyclopedia — most often fan pages for things like a team, product, or TV show. It had raised $4 million earlier this year.

4. Jangl, a Pleasanton, California-based start-up raised $7 million in funding from Cardinal Venture Partners, Storm Ventures and Labrador Ventures. Jangl has raised $9 million in two rounds so far.