Online Brokers Breaking Into Venture Cap Plays

Online brokerages do whatever it takes to be players. They buy blue-blood trust companies. They give away trips to Hawaii. Heck, they'll sponsor the Super Bowl halftime show if they have to.

Now they're turning that energy and focus to a less visible but potentially more lucrative area: venture capital.

It may be hard to imagine an industry built on the discount fringe of the market as a source of funding and counsel for nascent companies, but three of the sector's bigger players are aggressively pursuing venture investments, action that may even foreshadow pre-IPO opportunities for individual investors. Sometimes they even find new partners or outright acquisitions. ...