Tech Firms Set Up Shop At Google Ventures’ Startup Lab, NY Times:

And with growing competition to fund the youngest, early-stage start-up companies, Google Ventures wants to set itself apart from other venture firms and angel investors.

How? 

Google Ventures, which has grown from two partners in March 2009 to roughly 20 staffers today, has a small team of experts whose job is to help portfolio companies design their products. Google Ventures is also about to bring on its first full-time recruiter to help startups hire engineers.

The Startup Lab is different from other programs that combine mentoring and early-stage funding, like Y Combinator, he said. The plan, he said, is not to bring in a new batch of entrepreneurs every year and give them a set curriculum, but to provide an easy way for startups to take advantage of Google’s resources.

That’s how.  The Google halo and access to people, paid for and subsidized by the ad dollar machine. 

Unrelated: Investment banks have physically moved data centers and trading machines closer to the markets to take advantage of fractions of seconds in trades.  Is this how tech companies do the same?

Incubator 5.0?