Ribbit Capital has closed a new $100 million investment fund, the venture firm announced today.

Ribbit will focus its investments on startups that are building financial services related to lending, payments, insurance, accounting, tax preparation, personal financial management, and more.

The fund will invest about $2 million to $15 million into early-stage, disruptive financial services. Ribbit plans to invest in 15 services over the lifetime of the new fund, according to the firm.

“Banks have proven to be difficult environments for innovation to flourish, resulting in an antiquated financial services industry that remains relatively untouched by the technology-driven evolution transforming other markets ranging from social media sharing to professional enterprise services,” said Ribbit Capital founder Meyer “Micky” Malka in a statement. “The technology to unlock this innovation is in place, and there are entrepreneurs around the world with groundbreaking ideas that have the potential to turn this industry on its head. What’s lacking is the investment, will and expertise to develop and make them reality.”

The firm has already invested in four financial startups, including personal assets lender Borro, U.S.-based payments company Fuze Networks, Brazil-based SaaS accounting and invoicing service ContaAzul, and U.S.-based non-bank lender service Capital Access Networks (CAN).

Founded in 2012, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm’s founder is the sole general partner of the new fund. Ribbit Capital’s investors include multinational Spanish banking group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, Silicon Valley Bank, and others.

Money photo via adirekjob/Shutterstock

What were you doing at 7 a.m. this beautiful Saturday morning?

If you were one of the 12 construction workers building Apple’s new “prototype” store in Palo Alto, Calif., you were working hard as the sun came up. Seven workers were pouring concrete, and another five were working on the roof.

Since hiring construction workers to be on the job early Saturday usually means paying them double time (or at least time and a half), that suggests that the contractor is in a big hurry to get the job done before a hard deadline. That could be October, when Apple is rumored to be planning another major announcement — perhaps for the iPad mini, but also possible for a new TV product from Apple.

Apple hasn’t officially acknowledged that this store belongs to it. But many details, including the store’s design, strongly suggest that it is a new Silicon Valley flagship location for the consumer electronics giant. In addition, the store’s location puts it directly adjacent to two of the highest-bandwidth Internet connection points in the Valley: the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) and a big AT&T switching facility. The store includes direct connections to both of these facilities, which suggests that it has an unusually high need for fast, low-latency Internet connectivity.

In short, it’s a fantastic location for a showcase of streaming video and Internet TV products.

It’s circumstantial evidence. But it’s another strong suggestion that Apple is planning to unveil a new TV product in October.

The photo above show the storefront as it appears today. Below, planning documents show what the storefront will soon look like.

Top photo: VentureBeat. Bottom image: Via Palo Alto Online.

Apple is building a new store in the heart of Silicon Valley with an extremely high-bandwidth connection to one of the Internet’s major hubs.

With the 16,600-square-foot, two-story store, Apple will be trying out a “new prototype” of its retail environment, according to documents filed with the architectural review board in Palo Alto, Calif., where the store is located. Along with the familiar all-glass storefront and the prominent use of stone, the new store will include interior trees and a skylight.

It will also be linked to one of the busiest and highest-capacity access points on the Internet, the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX), which will give Apple the ability to demonstrate bandwidth-hungry services — such as live, streaming video — to hundreds of individual customers at a time.

Photographs of the building site at 340 University Ave. in Palo Alto, as well as construction documents filed with the city of Palo Alto, strongly suggest the company’s plans. None of the public documents name Apple, and the storefront does not yet carry the company’s name, but multiple strands of evidence point towards the site’s ultimate tenant being Apple.

• The architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which submitted the architectural review for the site in 2010, has designed many Apple stores around the world.
• At the time of the architectural review, Palo Alto city officials were convinced Apple would be the store’s ultimate tenant, based on the details of the application. “It was clear, when they said where the sign was going to go and when they talked about the project details, who the tenant would be,” an architectural review board member said, according to Palo Alto Online in 2010. “It was just really obvious.”
• The construction firm overseeing the remodel of the site is DPR Construction, which also built Apple’s flagship store in downtown San Francisco.

As for the location, it’s just one block from the current Palo Alto Apple store. But the new location is just around the corner from PAIX, on Bryant Street. Located in the old “Telephone Co. Building,” PAIX is an interconnection point for Internet service providers including Equinix, Bell Telephone Canada, and others. Although crowded, this site still offers massive pipes for anyone who needs to send and receive a lot of data and wants to get its equipment close to the Internet’s major backbones. For instance, Facebook is a PAIX tenant.

PAIX is a high-security facility, whose windows have been replaced with opaque barriers. Guards and surveillance cameras guard the site. Behind PAIX and adjacent to the new retail storefront is a large private switching facility for AT&T.

Notably, the current construction connects the Apple store (or whatever it is) with both PAIX and the AT&T building. Plans filed with the city of Palo Alto call for a pedestrian tunnel, presumably leading between the Apple store and the telco facilities next to it.

Why would Apple need such high-bandwidth neighbors for its “prototype” store? Well, one explanation is that it wants to give the best possible showing to new video services, such as a revamped Apple TV. The company was recently reported to be negotiating with cable companies to offer them an Apple-made set-top box that would work with cable services, and it’s reportedly building a Apple TV that will blur the distinction between live and on-demand video.

But what if Apple decided to offer an Apple TV that worked with its own internet service, bypassing the cable providers that have so far rebuffed it? It certainly has the data centers and high-bandwidth server centers capable of delivering live video; it’s long been a leader in streaming video over the internet.

If you were showing off video services to an eager public, you’d want to make extra sure that your storefront had the best, most reliable, highest-bandwidth connections to the Internet. In other words, you’d want to make those connections as close to major interconnection points as possible.

340 University Ave. would be a very good location indeed.

Image credits: VentureBeat, Google Maps, Palo Alto Online

In yet another case of San Francisco “stealing the show” from Silicon Valley, visual interest site Pinterest has just moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to San Francisco’s South-of-Market (SoMa) neighborhood.

It was only in May that venture firm Benchmark Capital made a similar long-term move into the city, on the premise that two-thirds of its recent deals were based there anyway. While Benchmark’s office are north of SoMa, Pinterest’s more immediate neighbors will include social gaming dynamo Zynga and online room rental startup AirBnB, all cozied into the repurposed warehouses and lofts that define the district.

Pinterest has skyrocketed to success in the past year, becoming the fastest standalone website to hit 10 million users, according to comScore. With that momentum, it’s raised $100 million in 2012 from Andreesen Horowitz, Rankuten, FirstMark Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who has a Pinterest page of his own, has indicated that Pinterest will be in the city for the long-term. But the company has thus far only signed a short-term lease on 572 7^th Street, a space that’s just large enough for Pinterest’s current workforce, estimated to be near 40 people (their team page, which lists 29, is outdated).

The company has been mum on long-term plans, declining our request for comments. The owner of the property however has been marketing the space as one property with the adjacent 808 Brannan, a much larger space that’s still being prepared for occupancy, according to this Planning Department document. Both buildings combined have about 55,000 square feet of office space that could accommodate nearly 200 employees. It’s likely that Pinterest is currently negotiating the lease on the latter property, making sure it can sublease the space (or parts of it) as it uses its newfound war-chest to expand its own staff and grow into the office.

Justin Bedecarre, who advises startups on office space for real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, reckons that moving to San Francisco makes sense for a number of reasons, including access to a wider pool of Bay Area tech talent, more vibrant neighborhoods for employees to live in, a greater inventory of creative office spaces, and more transit options than the peninsula.

Pinterest is hardly alone in deciding to escape Palo Alto’s high rents and low vacancy. San Francisco is now home to a raft of popular companies, including Alphonso Labs, Twitter, One Kings Lane, Yammer, and ZenDesk, to name a few. Bedecarre says that rents in Downtown Palo Alto are “still 30-50% higher over San Francisco’s SoMa district,” with certain firms like data mining and security company Palantir placing a chokehold on the surrounding real estate with all the space it’s leased.

Yes, there’s something in it for VentureBeat. We’re on the prowl to find the most exciting products to write about (eventually, when your product is ready), and also to invite to launch our upcoming DEMO conference. The next DEMO takes place April 17-19 in Silicon Valley.

And yes, there’s something in it for the venture capital firms: They get to establish relationships with smart, ambitious entrepreneurs early on in the history of their companies, without the pressure of a full-on money pitch.

And there’s something certainly in it for you: If you’re an entrepreneur based in the Boulder area and think you’re building the next big disruptive tech company, or you’re here in Silicon Valley trying to do the same, we’re going to be brutally honest with you about what we think. We want to give you quick, helpful advice on your your technology, your business model and your go-to-market strategy, so that you can get to the next step. In many sessions, to be honest, we encourage companies to pivot completely, to find a better way.

COLORADO: Feb 8

So if you’re based in Colorado, join us on February 8 for a private feedback session in Boulder, with Foundry Group, one of the best venture capital  firms in town. As previously reported, we’re inviting ten companies who plan to launch products soon to pitch their ideas to key partners at Foundry as well as to me (as DEMO Executive Producer, I select the companies to present at DEMO).

If you’re interested in this, please fill out this form. We’ll also be co-hosting a party with AARP at the T-Zero Lounge from 6-8pm that evening, and the drinks will be on us (for that, register to attend here). Indeed, AARP is also sponsoring full scholarships for three companies focused on products which also serve the 50+ year-old market, to launch DEMO Spring in April. If interested in that opportunity, apply here)

SF BAY AREA: Feb 9

Or if you’re based in the SF Bay Area, join us and one of the city’s most respected venture capital groups, Kleiner Perkins on February 9  (please fill out this form). We’ll also be throwing a party sponsored by AARP that night from 6 to 8 at the Dutch Goose for entrepreneurs interested in coming (register to attend here).

Looking forward to seeing you!

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Kleiner has offered to give feedback to your idea before it comes to market, including on your technology, business model and go-to-market strategy. And if there’s a fit, we can also discuss your launching opportunities at DEMO Spring (April 17-19).

Taking place in Palo Alto on February 9, this will be a great opportunity to receive insight from a Kleiner Perkins partner and myself . Obviously, if you’ve got an interesting idea, we’d like to cover your story on VentureBeat at some point, but for now, the meeting can be considered off-record.

As executive producer of DEMO, I’m also looking to invite the best companies from around the world to launch products at the big Silicon Valley event. Over 21 years, DEMO has proven itself an amazing launch platform for startups, mid-level companies, and fully developed, publicly traded corporations — basically, any company that wants to show off their new tech products to the leading technology media.

Also, we’ve made some changes to keep DEMO the best place for launching products. The DEMO Scholarship Partner Program, which effectively makes DEMO free for many early stage companies, is one more way to ensure we keep attracting the best, even those cool new two-person companies that have very few resources. So like every other company there, you’ll get the same access to pitch counseling, social media help, PR help and more.

Big-name DEMO alum include Fusion-io, which recently went public and is breaking records with a billion input-output commands per second, and SuccessFactors, which was just sold to SAP for $3.4 billion. Other alum include Palm, Salesforce, E*Trade, TiVo, WebEx and VMWare, Sun (Java) and Adobe (Acrobat). Now you have the opportunity to join the club.

If you’re interested in presenting at this meeting on February 9, please fill out this form. If you’re chosen, we’ll get in touch immediately to provide further details and instructions. We’ll also be throwing a party sponsored by AARP that night from 6 to 8 at the Dutch Goose for anyone interested in coming. More details on that to come shortly!

Looking forward to seeing you Menlo Park!

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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That’s why we’re seeing so many tech startups focus in on two of the Bay Area’s hottest commercial real-estate markets — San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) District and Silicon Valley’s Palo Alto. The prices might be high, but many tech startups are willing to pay the premium to be close to the action.

Palo Alto and SoMa landlords couldn’t be happier with this tech boom. Vacancy has plummeted in these two markets. Palo Alto, which is more supply constrained than its northern counterpart, has 5% vacancy, and landlords collect as much as $70 a square foot per year ($6 per square foot per month). The South of Market district is growing faster than any other market in San Francisco, demanding rates that surpass rates in some Class A buildings in the Financial District at $40 per square foot per year on the high end.

Many of my clients want to be close to the action and will pay a premium to be there, but startups can manage the expense by staying lean.

Naval Ravikant, of AngelList and Venture Hacks, says keeping your startup small gives you the ability to locate in SoMa and Palo Alto at a higher rate per square foot. “I think the nature of the market is such that (a) most of these new companies are smaller than they used to be and (b) recruiting is the hardest and most important thing for them. Therefore, they’ll pay a premium for pretty small spaces close to other startups, BART, and Caltrain, and will be less price sensitive, per square foot, than companies have been historically.”

Krutal Desai, founder of Sponge, a question-and-answer service for businesses including Mint.com, opened his first office on 2nd Street in SoMa and says he wants to stay there even as rents go up. He cites the close proximity to his venture partners and fellow startup founders. While many of his employees come from the East Bay, he wanted them to experience the environment of SoMa and feed off the competition and work ethic of the other startups.

There are many startups with offices in the area, which makes it easy for out-of-town investors, business partners, media and recruits to visit several companies in one trip. Also, as some startups fail or contract, the talent pool will constantly replenish.

Although opportunities abound in nearby markets to South of Market and Palo Alto, technology-based companies have in large part been reticent to venture out of these areas. For instance, while Palo Alto’s vacancy hovers around 5% on a direct and sublease basis, Mountain View has a 15.9% overall vacancy and San Jose’s Central Business District has more than a 26% overall vacancy.

Similarly, although less polarized, the South of Market Financial District has less vacancy than its North of Market counterpart, 10% and 15% respectively. The red-hot South Beach and Rincon Hill sub-markets of SoMa (near the ballpark) is 12.1% overall vacancy and shrinking every quarter.
Tech tenants have yet to significantly penetrate North of Market. Landlords in the Financial District, Union Square, Civic Center and Jackson Square hope to court tech tenants to their spaces with generous improvement packages and cheaper rents.

Granted, some companies are capitalizing on the cheaper deals in Union Square and North of Market in San Francisco. One of my clients, Ryan Merket, CEO of AppBistro, the biggest online marketplace for Facebook apps, just opened his headquarters in Union Square. “We have a great space with hardwood floors, large open area, conference rooms, tons of natural light and the amenities are great. We looked at countless spaces in the city, and we are paying a fraction of what we would be paying in SoMa.”

I can’t speak to the exact terms of the deal, but the same space in South Beach would have cost 40% to 50% more.

However, 2011 will be a big growth period in the tech sector, and the tremendous activity in South of Market and Palo Alto will begin spilling out into their neighboring markets soon.

Justin Bedecarré is a real estate advisor for technology and media companies at Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate firm covering the Bay Area. He has represented firms from Fortune 100 to startups in media and technology, including Broadcom, Thomson Reuters, AKQA, and Hearst Corporation, to name a few. He writes a blog on the intersection of technology and commercial real estate at http://www.BayAreaComRE.com. He can be reached via email at justin.bedecarre@cushwake.com or at About.me,@jtbed on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Quora.

[Image credit: Scott Shiller]