VC World Journey

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:24:07 +0000

www.TechStars.com is a “startup boot camp” for tech entrepreneurs in which selected companies receive up to $18,000 in seed funding, three months of mentorship from successful entrepreneurs and investors, and the opportunity to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program. The incubator has signed on many high-profile Seattle investors and VC funds to act as mentors including Bezos Expeditions, Buerk Dale Victor, DFJ, Founder’s Co-op, and Vulcan Capital. Other Seattle-based mentors include Ben Huh, Chris DeVore, Glenn Kellman, Adam Brotman, Alex Algard and Adam Doppelt. Read more…
AdWhirl Spins Its Own Open Source iPhone SDK And Server – www.AdWhirl.com is a mobile advertising service that allows app developers to easily switch ad networks without being a hassle to the end users.
The Mobile Internet Report by Morgan Stanley
Investors including Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, which also holds a stake in Facebook, have bought about $180 million of the securities of social gaming company Zynga. Read more…

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:21:31 +0000

Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws of Cloud Computing and SaaS
Zoho Reports Steps Out Of Beta With Pricing Model And New Features
Bit.ly is rolling out a new service called bit.ly Pro, which allows Web publishers to bit.ly to send out short links with their own branded (short) domain names such as nyti.ms, 4sq.com, mee.bo, or tcrn.ch. Read more…
www.crunchbase.com – is the free directory of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.
The Mobile Internet Report by Morgan Stanley

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:27:11 +0000

www.CloudShare.com, formerly IT Structures, today announced it has received $10M in series B financing from Sequoia Capital, Gemini Capital, and Charles River Ventures (CRV).
www.nyew.org – New York Entrepreneur Week (NYEW) is the largest entrepreneurial movement throughout New York State. For the first time, thousands of entrepreneurs across New York State will have the opportunity to actively engage the foremost entrepreneurs, investors and dealmakers both in the State and from around the world.
www.abovethecrowd.com – blog by Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital
alwayson.goingon.com – AlwaysOn: VC Events, News Resource

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:40:56 +0000

Kuala Lumpur-based MOL, a payment systems seller known much better in Asia than in America, announced today its acquisition of Friendster, an early-adopter social network founded in 2002 in Mountain View. The Financial Times guesstimates the sale price at $100 million. Read more…
www.service-now.com – (ITIL v3 + Web 2.0 + SaaS) – is the pioneer of On Demand IT Service Management. Combining ITIL v3 guidelines with Web 2.0 technology, we offer Software as a Service that is thoroughly modern in its delivery, price, and value. Approachable and attractive, integrated and complete, designed for the Global 2,000. You’ve never seen IT management done like this before…
AT&T, most likely because of the iPhone, can’t keep up with demand for wireless data in these two cities. Read more…
LeWeb – a tech conference (with 1,800 participants in 2008.
www.appnexus.com – cloud hosting
www.pogoplug.com – personal “cloud” (not really…) by Cloud Engines – Raiseed $3 Million For Global Expansion Of Pogoplug
What To Expect From A Venture Capitalist by Guy Kawasaki
www.cloudsplit.com – cost control of the cloud spending

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:10:26 +0000

Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition (SVCIC)
The Relationship Between Venture Capital and Open Source (presentation, 2005)
Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner
The Arrogant VC: A View From the Trenches by Fred Destin
www.cloudcamp.com – CloudCamp is an unconference where early adapters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas.
Start Up Weekend – Startup Weekend provides … networking, team building, learning, and life changes for its attendees and their communities.

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:44:01 +0000

Vinod Khosla – very successful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Interview with Vinod on Green Beat available on fora.tv.
Green Beat 2009 – The seminal conference on the Smart Grid.
SOASTA, the leader in cloud testing, today announced the successful close of $10 million in Series C funding as it prepares its global expansion. The round was led by UV Partners, and included participation from all existing investors Canaan Partners, Formative Ventures and The Entrepreneurs’ Fund.
Technology Review – published by MIT
The Churchill Club’s Top Ten Tech Trends

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:29:54 +0000

As per peHub: “it appears that VC firms raised more fund capital in Q4 than in any of the preceding three quarters. In fact, the Q4 tally is nearly as large as Q2 and Q3 combined. A big part of this, however, is $1.2 billion from Norwest Venture Partners – which raises money from a sole LP, rather than beating the endowment/foundation/pension bushes”
The Big Money Facebook 50, a ranking of the brands that are currently making the best use of Facebook.
2010 tech predictions from John Cook’s Venture Blog
Pitch TV by Virgin
Churchill Club’s channel on YouTube

VC Nuggets of the Day

Eugene Lebedev — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:16:55 +0000

Technology Monitor by The Economist
Guy Kawasaki on Venture Capital

Viable vs. fundable business
VC is a “Hot or Not” dating games (you have about 15 seconds to make an impression)
You need to present a clean deal (e.g. using typical law firm, not hiring your relatives)
PowerPoint is a standard (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 points font): (1) Title slide with contact information; (2) Problem slide; (3) Solution slide; (4) Business model – how you make money; (5) Underlying “magic” (e.g. technology, people skills, access to unique info); (6) How to you access the market; (7) Competition slide (honestly show gaps); (8) Team slide; (9) Projections (the most important part is a metrics not the dollar amount); (10) Status and timeline (where are you now)
“Drill a lot of holes” – you will need to make a lot of effort to raise capital.
“if the dogs are eating the food” = “We need more money to scale” = very attractive opportunity

www.churchillclub.org – The Churchill Club is Silicon Valley’s premier business and technology forum. The 6,000-member, nonprofit organization has built a reputation for dynamic, in-the-news programs featuring Silicon Valley CEOs, up-and-coming executives and national business leaders.

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:42:33 +0000

Venture Capital section of Deal Book of The New York Times edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Developers worldwide can integrate LinkedIn into their business applications and Web sites. Read more…
www.startuphire.com was created in March 2009 as a place for VCs and startups to list their job openings.
www.defragcon.com – Defrag is focused on the tools and technologies that accelerate the "aha" moment, and is a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, and thinkers that are building the next wave of software innovation.
Harvard Business School (HBS) says that it will hold a new business plan competition open to HBS alumni from all over the world. Read more…
“investors should be prepared for lower-than-average historical returns with heightened government regulation, lower consumption, slower growth and a shrinking global role for the U.S. economy” Read more…
The formation of a new company to run the online newsstand — sometimes characterized as an “iTunes for magazines” — may be announced in early December. Read more…
Venrock = Venture + Rockefeller; A pionering venture capital firm formed in 1969.
David Pakman – a Partner at Venrock in New York, David focuses on early stage venture investing in internet and digital media companies. Read more…
Cloudera, the commercial Hadoop(TM) company, today announced that it has secured a Series B venture capital funding round led by Greylock Partners. Read more…

VC Nuggets of the day

Eugene Lebedev — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:30:42 +0000

The Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) is a not-for-profit association committed to serving limited partner investors in the global private equity industry. Members of the ILPA manage more than US $1 trillion of private equity capital.
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world.
Delta Cloud API by Red Hat’s Emerging Technology group – an API that abstracts the differences between clouds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gurley
ZDNet: Tech News, Blogs and White Papers for IT Professionals
John Borthwick CEO of Betaworks – business acceleration platform – collection of 22 loosely coupled entities (e.g. TweatDeck) .
Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: John Borthwick and Sarah Milstein, "A Conversation about the Realtime Web"
Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: Danah Boyd, "Streams of Content, Limited Attention (a rough unedited crib of the actual talk)
Building Enterprise Mashups – Web 2.0 conference – a presentation by Michael Ogrinz, author of Mashup Patters
AltAssets – Global Private Equity News & Research
SG Partners and Glocap – head-hunters specializing in PE industry.
Silicon Alley 100 (complete list)