Kleiner Perkins reaches out to new investors: “Unheard of”
Kleiner Perkins, one of the valley’s biggest name venture capital firms, is raising a so-called “annex fund,” or reserve fund it can tap to support companies it has already backed to help ensure they get through the downturn.
Kleiner has also reopened fundraising for funds it… Continue Reading
Luca shovels in $76M for coal-to-gas technology
Coal is no longer the dirty word it once was. And there’s no better indication than the $75.9 million recently pulled in by Luca Technologies, a company that engineers microbes to produce methane gas from coal. This brand of innovation could be good news all… Continue Reading
Look what iFound: iFund submissions leaked online
Are you an iPhone application maker planning to compete to get money from venture firm Kleiner Perkins’ $100 million iFund? Or maybe you’re an app maker who just wants to know what apps people are working on? Well, I’ve got some good news for you… Continue Reading
Content provider Booyah scores $4.5M from Kleiner Perkins
Mobile and web content producer Booyah announced today that it received $4.5 million from Kleiner Perkins. The two seem like a good match, considering the company’s job listings for iPhone engineers and the investor’s special iPhone developers fund.
The Silicon Valley-based startup remains in stealth mode,… Continue Reading
Leading valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins appoints COO: Eric Keller
This just in:
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s more prominent venture capital firms, said Eric J. Keller (left) will join the firm as Chief Operating Officer.
John Denniston, who formerly had the COO role, now oversees the firm’s Green Growth Fund, along with… Continue Reading
Advances Equities takes its investors on a bad trip
It’s no secret that there are plenty of cowboy outfits in the venture capital world, including scores that were started before the tech bust. But in the weightier circles of late-stage venture investment, there’s supposed to be less risk, and therefore fewer seat-of-the-pants operations. Which… Continue Reading
Google.org makes its geothermal play with investments in Altarock, Potter Drilling
[Update: Lost in the press blitz about the Google.org investment was the fact that Altarock took $26.25 million in total. Advanced Technology Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Vulcan Capital all participated.] Here’s a fact: If you go outside, wherever you are, and start drilling… Continue Reading
Like father, like offspring? Mary Doerr, daughter of legendary VC, launches Inconvenient Youth
In most cases, when a 17 year old girl wants to attempt to galvanize her generation against global warming, the end product tends to be basically nothing. Things change a bit when that girl’s father is Kleiner Perkins’ chief rainmaker, John Doerr.
The VC, who led… Continue Reading
MobileBeat 2008: “Bang or Bust” panelists bullish on more open platforms
Are new platforms such as the Apple iPhone or Google’s upcoming Android being overhyped? That’s for certain. But the “Bang or Bust” panelists at MobileBeat 2008 offered their own nuanced takes about where the opportunities are and how fast they will come as closed mobile… Continue Reading
E3 perspective: An interview with John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts
John Riccitiello has been driving a lot of change at Electronic Arts. He was president and chief operating officer of the big independent video game publisher from 1997 to 2004. Then he left to co-found Elevation Partners. He engineered a deal to invest $400 million… Continue Reading
Fast gene sequencing in two years? Investors bet $100M on Pacific BioSciences making it happen
Representing a potential medical quantum leap similar to, but even more important than the commercialization of X-ray imaging, Pacific BioSciences has taken a whopping $100 million to make it possible to affordably map out an individual’s entire genome in a matter of minutes, and for… Continue Reading
Location-based social network Whrrl launches for the iPhone
Update: Whrrl has not been snubbed by Apple. As of Friday morning, it’s now the 10th application from the top of the list on “featured” apps, if you go the AppStore from your iPhone. On the iTunes home page, Apple has put Whrrl in the… Continue Reading
The supreme reign of content at its end, top VCs back MEVIO with $15M, anyway
These days, even Wall Street analysts are acknowledging that content is no longer king, but MEVIO, formerly known as Podshow, has just received funding from some of the biggest names in the VC world. The company has raised $15 million round in funding, led by… Continue Reading
EA star leaves to start iPhone games company, Ngmoco
The iPhone’s remaking of the cell phone business is creating opportunities for new start-ups, particularly in the game field. That’s why one of the game industry’s leading executives left his job to create Ngmoco, an iPhone game start-up.
Neil Young was one of the rock star… Continue Reading
John Gage joins top VC firm Kleiner Perkins
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that backed companies like Genentech, Netscape, Amazon.com and Google, said it has hired well-known Sun scientist John Gage as partner.
Gage, an early employee at Sun Microsystems, who more recently had become that company’s chief… Continue Reading
Pelago raises $15 million to expand Whrrl both in the U.S. and abroad
Social networks built around location are a hot item, and getting hotter.
It’s one thing to have a group of contacts which you can update with words from a mobile device (think the micro-messaging service Twitter). It’s another to be able to quickly update your exact… Continue Reading
Akimbo, online video delivery company, throws in towel for good
updated
We’re hearing that Akimbo, the San Mateo, Calif. video set-top box company that raised millions of dollars in fresh funding less than three months ago to make a fresh start in a new direction, has just thrown in the towel anyway.
In February, Akimbo brought in… Continue Reading
KnowNow winds down — RSS for enterprise not as easy as it looks?
updated
KnowNow, a startup that sought to deliver RSS services to large companies, is looking to sell after failing to build a viable business.
The San Francisco company started winding down about two weeks ago, VentureBeat has learned, after three different CEOs took turns a the helm… Continue Reading
Funware’s threat to the traditional video game industry
Call it Funware. That’s the name for applications with game-like mechanics and game-like behavior that really aren’t traditional video games. And Funware just might steal the thunder from video games, which may no longer have a monopoly on either interactivity or fun.
With new places to… Continue Reading
The ‘titans’ of venture capital: Entrepreneurs, we’re here to serve you
Updated
John Doerr and Michael Moritz, the most prominent venture capitalists in the world, just squared off at the annual meeting of the National Venture Capital Association. Largely on the basis of their investments in Google, the two men have spent the last few years jockeying… Continue Reading