Over time, the company tried securities speculation and private equity, investing in what it thought were promising start-up companies.
Venture capitalists uniformly say they wouldn't turn down a promising start-up simply because a woman founded it.
These regulations could hobble several promising start-up concerns, which had hoped to go public this year to capitalize on the pell-mell growth of online usage here.
Idealab, which offered promising start-up companies money, advice and services in return for an ownership stake, helped get concerns like CarsDirect.com, HomesDirect and eToys off the ground.
After achieving success in the computer industry in the 1990s, Mr. Conway became an angel investor, taking early stakes in promising start-ups, mostly in Silicon Valley.
The new class of promising start-ups highlights the rapid speed by which Web companies are now forming and gaining traction.
Just last week, Charles River Ventures announced it would offer loans of $250,000 to entrepreneurs as a way to gain access to promising start-ups.
So far the second internet boom has mostly seen big firms paying generous prices for promising start-ups, but in 2008 it may start to look more like the first Bubble 2.0, if you like.
Intellectual Ventures may be best known for its huge archive of patents and its willingness to pursue lawsuits in defense of those patents, but it's also a part-time incubator to promising start-ups.
In particular, many big companies are scrapping large, centralised R&D teams in favour of smaller in-house units and alliances with promising start-ups.Venture firms are certainly feeling more bullish.
