Question for new CEOs at MySpace and Project Playlist: Now what?

After an abrupt series of events this week, former Facebook executive and Project Playlist chief executive Owen Van Natta is now officially the CEO of MySpace. Meanwhile, Project Playlist has named MTV Networks cofounder and executive John Sykes as its new CEO (no, he’s not that John Sykes). MySpace cofounders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have meanwhile been reduced from CEO and president jobs to peripheral advisory roles.

So the question for both companies is: … Continue Reading

SecondMarket sets up online marketplace for private stock sales

SecondMarket, formerly known as Restricted Stock Partners, has launched an online marketplace where private companies and their employees can sell stock, and it claims to have 600 reputable investors already signed up as buyers.

Trading in this environment will give companies greater control over how they sell their stock and who gets to buy it, the firm says. The service has been in testing over the last year but is coming to a head now … Continue Reading

Vodafone blitzes Europe with second Android phone, HTC Magic

Phone carrier Vodafone will launch the new Google Android smartphone called the HTC Magic in Germany next week.

It can record video, sports a nifty mobile address book, has touchscreen technology and has a qwerty touch keyboard (which you can have a look at here). The price will start from 1 euro (roughly $1.30), depending on the contract you buy. It offers WLAN, HSDPA und GPS, and comes in white and black. And it features … Continue Reading

California’s proposed “Amazon tax" – a destructive solution

[Update: The bill has been postponed until next year, more here.]

As in most states, when Californians buy something online from a store that is based in California, they have to pay sales tax. When they buy something online from a store that does not have a presence in California, they don’t have to pay sales tax. Right?

Wrong.

Even though out-of-state retailers aren’t currently required to charge sales tax when selling into … Continue Reading

Soros pushes Powerspan to $50M for carbon capture

A group of investors, including George Soros, has funneled $50 million into Powerspan, a company that devises ways to remove carbon dioxide from coal plant emissions. The Portsmouth, N.H.-based company says it will use the new money to set up its system at a utility-scale demo plant in Ohio.

Already, Powerspan is implementing its ammonia-based technology at a 120-megawatt demo plant that is slated to be operational by 2012. The company claims it will catch … Continue Reading

Q1 venture investing numbers not as dire as they look

[Editor's Note: Adeo Ressi published a version of this story earlier on TheFunded.com.]

The National Venture Capital Association released abysmal venture investing numbers for Q1 2009 on Friday and Saturday evening, after most media outlets had closed. The rushed articles that appeared over the weekend were either data driven, sensational, or wrong, and the story may not gather any more news cycles, which is a shame. As Founding Member of TheFunded.com, I avoid writing … Continue Reading

Netflix nails Q1, expects competition from kiosks

DVD rental company Netflix just blew the lid off its first quarter earnings. The Los Gatos, Calif. company netted $394.1 million in revenue in Q1 2009, representing a 21 percent leap year-over-year and a 10 percent bump compared to last quarter. These figures easily beat street estimates, which had the company pegged around $390 million for quarterly revenue.

Oh, but there are still a few dark clouds on the horizon.

In spite of this good … Continue Reading

Heroku starts charging for app-deployment service

A startup called Heroku is launching the commercial version of its platform to help developers deploy their applications to the web. The San Francisco company already provides its “provisionless web hosting” to 23,000 developers, but now it’s ready to start making money from the service.

The idea, says co-founder and chief executive James Lindenbaum, is to eliminate all a developer’s worries about making sure they have enough computing capacity, memory, and storage. Instead, developers just … Continue Reading

YouTube RealTime: Great for socializing and ads?

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical when I heard YouTube was working to bring real-time interactivity to the site. But now that I’ve tinkered with the feature (dubbed “YouTube RealTime”), it’s clear that the popular online video portal was ripe for social chops. After all, half the fun of discovering content on YouTube comes from sharing it with friends.

As I mentioned yesterday, the crux of YouTube RealTime is its omnipresent toolbar. … Continue Reading

Ausra raises $25.5M for narrowed focus on solar equipment

Ausra, one of the big names in Silicon Valley solar, just brought in $25.5 million to become a primary supplier of solar thermal equipment for utilities and power generation plants. The money couldn’t come at a better time as capital continues to dry up, especially in the cleantech and solar sectors. At the same time, it solidifies the Mountain View, Calif. company’s role as a supplier, and not a builder of plants itself.

Ausra is … Continue Reading

5 best Stanford tutorials in financing

Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner is every week publishing a new video or podcast on entrepreurship with great entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, Larry Page Google Founder or Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur.
Here is VentureBeat’s choice of the best tutorials in financing.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/swf/player-ec.swf… Continue Reading

Chip maker Ikanos scores $42M from Tallwood

Ikanos Communications, a maker of broadband chips, says it brought in $42 million from Tallwood Capital, a firm that specializes in early-stage chip enterprises. The money will go toward a $54 million product acquisition from competitor Conexant Systems, reports VentureWire.

Because Ikanos is a public company, this round of funding is categorized as a private investment in public equity (PIPE) — something that has become fairly popular as valuations decline. Close to $1.5 billion in … Continue Reading

Meebo: Our chat service is working great for other sites

Do web users want instant messaging features tightly integrated into their favorite web sites? New data from instant message service Meebo suggests they do. The company introduced a white-label service last year so other sites could offer IM to users in the form of a toolbar at the bottom of their web pages. It includes ways to chat with existing friends on those sites as well as friends on Meebo’s home chat-aggregator site, or on … Continue Reading

The future of video advertising: The lady or the tiger?

Much has been said, hoped and wished for when it comes to video advertising. Its proponents argue that it has the potential to become a multi-billion industry. But its detractors claim that the combination of limited efficacy, a dearth of inventory, high costs of production, and low CPMs (cost per thousand views) are holding it back from becoming a viable form of advertising.     

So who’s right? There’s convincing evidence on both sides. Supporters of video … Continue Reading

EPS lands $30M for cleantech analytics

EPS, the Costa Mesa, Calif. company that provides Fortune 500 companies with the advice and knowledge they need to make environmentally sustainable decisions, has raised $30 million in a second round of funding to continue developing its xChange Point carbon emissions management system, according to peHub.

The company says that business is actually looking up because the tough economic climate has forced more major corporations to evaluate and cut energy costs. Its core software, EPSWay, … Continue Reading

Microsoft earnings see first ever year-over-year drop

In its earnings for the quarter ending March 31, Microsoft is showing its first year-over-year drop in revenue since the company went public. That’s right, this is its first drop in 23 years.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said it made $13.65 billion in revenue, a decline of 6 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, net income was $2.98 billion and the company earned 33 cents per share, representing drops of 32 percent and 30 … Continue Reading

Welcome to the "Class F" stock, to protect you against greedy VCs

TheFunded.com, a site that lets entrepreneurs rate venture capitalists, has released documentation for a new class of common stock called “Class F,” which it says entrepreneurs can use to give them more control versus the venture capitalists who invest in them.

Working closely with an attorney Yokum Taku at Wilson Sonsini, a top Silicon Valley law firm, TheFunded has issued the documents for entrepreneurs to use as templates for agreements when they form their company … Continue Reading

App Store downloads pass one-billion mark

According to the counter on the front page of the App Store, Apple passed the one billion mark just before two o’clock today. Whoever won the title of billionth download will be making off like a bandit: The Cupertino company will be contacting them to deliver a 17″ MacBook Pro, a 32GB iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and an iTunes Gift Certificate worth $10,000.

Reaching a billion downloads so quickly is impressive: the App Store … Continue Reading

As VCs struggle to survive, Trinity closes new $300M fund

It’s been a brutal year for venture capital firms — a non-existent IPO market, a credit crunch among limited partners, and new financial regulations are just a few of the issues making it hard for them to show results. The ones looking to raise new funds are discovering that their limited partners are far less willing to give them money than in the last few years. But Trinity Ventures has closed a new $300 million … Continue Reading

Yahoo shutters GeoCities — my eyeballs are grateful

Yahoo has announced that it plans to shut down free web-hosting service GeoCities, which it acquired for $3.6 billion a decade ago.

My first response to the news was, “Wait, GeoCities is still around?” The service has fallen far from its heyday in the late ’90s. I don’t know anyone with a GeoCities site anymore, and the name has become shorthand for ugly websites (featuring animated GIF files like the one below). Just in the … Continue Reading