"We made the angels blink and understand the real money had arrived." So said some nasty venture capitalists, quoted by a saner one, rejoicing over swinging their dicks at a startup. One of the reasons everyone else in the startup ecosystem hates VCs is that these guys think they're the "real money." Clearly they've…
If Apple does indeed have $12 billion in cash and easy liquidity, then what to do? Purchase Yahoo? Or perhaps North Dakota? Business Week suggests that big-time acquisitions are passé, and that the smart play is to turn a portion of that money into venture capital. It's a neat idea, not so much because of actual…
Tim O'Reilly has finally come "out of the VC closet," as one reader notes, with the announcement of O'Reilly Alphatech Ventures. The owner of Web 2.0 plans for his VC arm to invest in "hackers" and "disruptors" and "bionic software" and "photon torpedoes" (note: only one of those is a lie). Current investments…
Owen Thomas at Business 2.0 has an amusing riff describing how VCs are like Mafia families. The analogy is a little strained, since traditionally, you paid the mob for protection, rather than having them "invest" in you. (Mobsters notoriously prefer shorting securities, property, and limbs.) Still, it's a nice way…
An insightful article on "startups on a shoestring" in the New York Times covers the rise of companies running on angel investors, loans, or even credit cards. It's a switch from the more famous method of raising piles of venture capital from a firm. But what does that mean? It means startup founders get to keep more…
A loyal reader-commenter, "That Chinese Broad," asks Valleywag:
The New York Times goes crazy for Peerflix today in a particularly uninsightful article, in which the bartering site's CEO brags about taking $10 million from venture capitalists.
2004: Venture capitalist Brad Feld writes about one blog post per day at "Feld Thoughts."
2005: Feld writes about a post and a half per day.
January to 6 September 2006: Feld writes two to three posts per day.
7 September 2006: In a story about former billion-dollar firm Mobius Venture Capital, the Wall Street…
The Mercury News ran yet another story this weekend about the "Green Revolution" — basically, the rise of high-profile Silicon Valley investments in clean-fuel technology.
Aw, venture capitalists are so CUTE! From their nerdy haircuts down to their wingtips, these guys are lovable dorks that spent business school wonking away in the library. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, they're reliving those days of kissing up to the frat boys. Witness one VC stress about how he looked…
In the booming Silicon Valley economy, everyone's looking to buy or be bought. But not all offers are equal. How do you politely turn down a lowball without burning your bridge? Let's take a look at three turn-downs — none of which were publicly reported.
Blogger Om Malik's decision to go full-time and raise seed money (a story broken on Valleywag) is all over the blogosphere today. His tech blog GigaOM broke the 5,000 rank on Alexa (putting him at anywhere from 20k to 80k views a day) while he was still working full-time for Business 2.0. What could the man do for…
A venture capitalist, overheard:
In Silicon Valley, where busy parents need another place to send the kids all day, Proposition 82, the Preschool for All Act, is supported by VC John Doerr and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.
What happens when you stick a handful of VCs into a room and ask them to pontificate? Apparently not much. By the time that notables like John Doerr and Steve Jurvetson got to this late excerpted part of their panel at the Churchill club, they were playing the Valley version of those late-night college bull sessions…
With the posting of the millionth article about Buck's Restaurant (this time in the Seattle P.I.), the Silicon Valley pancake house is now officially in a new golden-brown age.
