VentureBeat

Chris Morrison

URL: http://venturebeat.com/
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.

Posts by Chris Morrison

Twitter isn’t the only company trying to build a big business off short messages. For text messages, or SMS, delivered via mobile phone, there’s Mozes, which says it’s ready to take the leading position in a growing marketing and communication business, and now has an $11.5 million funding (unearthed by peHUB ) to back up [...]

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Below is the agenda of SF Green, the cleantech event that we’ve joined its founder Steve Newcomb to put on tonight at San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery. This schedule isn’t set in stone, but should give a rough idea of how the evening will go, from the doors opening to the end of the night. [...]

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Some venture firms are having difficulty raising new funds, but top firms are still getting money with ease — in part to invest in fast-growing places like China and India.
In the past month we’ve seen Foundation Capital take $750 million, Kleiner Perkins grab $700 million, plus its $500 million “Green Growth” fund, and now Lightspeed [...]

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Today, natural language search engine Powerset is finally opening its doors to everyone, as well as unveiling a set of tools that have previously been seen by only a handful of people. This marks the end of a long phase for Powerset — since we first outed the stealth-mode company in 2006, it has kept [...]

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The clean-technology event VentureBeat is co-hosting with SF Green is coming up on Monday (it starts at 5pm for networking at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco; program content starts at 6pm).
We’ve added three companies onto the roster of exhibitors, which already included Tesla Motors and Kleiner Perkins managing partner Ray Lane. [...]

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updated

The back-story on Jangl’s slow death — Yesterday, we reported on Jangl’s asset sale process. A tipster tells us that Seattle-based WhitePages had offered to buy Internet phone company Jangl for $20 million, but then kept the company in diligence for more than a month and walked away at the last minute — giving Jangl [...]

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Earlier this week I wrote about a PricewaterhouseCooper report on cleantech investment last year, which pointed to a rising trend in the startup world. A new report released today by the same company gives a good look over the opposite side of the cleantech fence — the board rooms of electricity utilities worldwide. The [...]

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In the cleantech world, carbon sequestration, or the practice of capturing CO2 emissions and trapping them underground or inside materials, is something of a black sheep. Environmentalists call it a “boondoggle”, some engineers think it’s “absolutely crazy”, and even some politicians have called it a risky bet. Yet a string of recent announcements show that [...]

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There has been no shortage of attention to market research in the past few years. Established business like Nielsen and J.D. Power have struggled to encompass the Internet and use its information to give their clients a better idea of how new products are seen by consumers. Where they’ve fallen short, multiple startups have bloomed [...]

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VentureBeat is proud to announce a gathering for clean technology entrepreneurs next Monday, May 12. We’ve joined forces with SF Green, a San Francisco gathering founded by Steve Newcomb that aims to help shape the region’s cleantech and environmental future.The aim is to bring together some of the brightest local entrepreneurs and investors, as well [...]

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With oil past $120 a barrel and possibly headed to $200, cellulosic ethanol companies are looking like a smarter investment choice every day. Following the increase of Range Fuels’ second funding to $166 million, its competitor Mascoma has pulled the wraps off an $81 million funding of its own, with $10 million coming a major [...]

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It’s pretty rare that venture capitalists will bet on a company that shows a hint of impropriety. Yet happens occasionally, for companies that don’t push the envelope too far.
In March, for instance, soft-porn site Zivity got $7 million from two prominent firms. The latest is PurePlay, a poker and proto-gambling site that today announces $15 [...]

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Venture capitalists invested $2.2 billion in cleantech companies over the last year, excluding debt and other non-venture financings. That’s a significant 45 percent growth in 2007, and a more robust level than earlier expected.
The data comes from the new MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers released this morning. The report finds investment levels in cleantech are at [...]

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The Maker’s Faire is a yearly event that descends on San Mateo, Calif., bringing together crafters, engineers, hobbyists, welders, pyromaniacs and a motley assortment of other fringe entrepreneurs to show off their handiwork. VentureBeat’s Chris Morrison visited the Faire this weekend, returning with a little commentary and a lot more pictures of this unique Bay [...]

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Sidewalks used to be so much nicer, before the Segway Personal Transporter started hitting the streets. Remember being able to walk peacefully along, happy on the two legs God gave us? Then Dean Kamen brought us the Segway, and suddenly you couldn’t step outside without one whizzing by. Everyone and their neighbor bought one, making [...]

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The environmental movement, increasingly fed by the specter of global warming, is causing a lot of side effects. Trademarks including words like “eco”, “earth”, “environment” and “organic”, for instance, have exploded in popularity. One specific trend that’s seeing venture investment is environmentally-friendly drinks. Just three days ago we reported that Adina For Life raised [...]

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Split Rock Partners, a venture capital firm based in Minneapolis with offices in Menlo Park, Calif., has raised a $300 million second fund for investment in healthcare, software and Internet companies. Split Rock first raised funds in 2005, picking up $275 for its inaugural fund. It reports that all investors in that fund returned [...]

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Passing by its target of $60 million, new Israeli venture firm Israel Cleantech Ventures has raised $75 million for its official first fund from backers including Robeco and Piper Jaffray. Claiming to be Israel’s first cleantech-focused fund, the firm already has bets on some companies, and is planning on investments across most of the [...]

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YouTube doesn’t quite fit the Christian ideal of humbleness, now does it? Offering a dose of higher power — and, we hope, more inspired acting — than can be found on YouTube, GodTube is reaching out to the world’s two billion or so Christians. Given that market size, the $30 million funding that paidContent [...]

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San Francisco-based organic and fair trade drink maker Adina for Life has raised $6.6 million in a second round of funding to leap into what one of its financiers calls a “perfect marketing storm”. The company makes juice drinks, coffee and tea, emphasizing sustainability and fairness to small farmers — providing for the aforementioned [...]

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