Mark Zuckerberg, top VCs drop off Forbes’ billionaire list

Mark Zuckerberg, top VCs drop off Forbes’ billionaire list

Financially, it’s been a tough year for almost everyone, even the absurdly rich. Some of the tech world’s richest men are billionaires no more, according to Forbes’ new list of the world’s billionaires. Among the most notable dropoffs (for VentureBeat readers) are Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz and venture capital pioneer Arthur Rock.

Last year, Zuckerberg (then 23) was estimated to be worth $1.5 billion, making him the world’s youngest billionaire. Now he’s lost… Continue Reading

Meet the new Midas List, same as the old list

Meet the new Midas List, same as the old list

Forbes has released the latest edition of its Midas List ranking of the top investors, and it’s full of familiar faces. The top four spots are literally identical to last year’s list, with Google backers John Doerr (of Kleiner Perkins), Michael Moritz (of Sequoia Capital), Ram Shiram (of Sherpalo), and Stanford Prof. David Cheriton holding on to their titles as the titans of venture capital. The lack of movement isn’t too surprising, since VCs didn’t… Continue Reading

The ‘titans’ of venture capital: Entrepreneurs, we’re here to serve you

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 for the top spot on Forbes’ annual Midas List — Moritz (pictured, below) topped the list in 2007, with Doerr (pictured, above) at number two, but this year, their positions… Continue Reading

Google invests $1M in Chinese social networking company

Google invests $1M in Chinese social networking company

Google has invested $1 million in Comsenz, a Chinese provider of social network software. It’s yet another move by Google to gain a foothold in China.

The investment occurred in July as part of Comsenz’s second round of venture funding, and it was recently revealed in a regulatory filing (see p. 39). Rumors about the investment previously pegged Google’s portion at $5 million. The news follows a report that Google is preparing to launch a joint… Continue Reading

Mahalo.com emerges as yet another search engine

Mahalo.com emerges as yet another search engine

updated

Mahalo.com, the latest company from entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, launched, with a stripped-down search engine designed to handle only the most popular requests in widely appealing categories.

Focused on areas such as travel, music, television, movies, cars, food, health, news and sports — and filtered with the help of a team of 40 employees in Santa Monica, Calif. — the limited results are meant to avoid the spam and other junk results that clog up the other… Continue Reading

Yahoo China to file aggressive suit against Qihoo nemesis

Updated

Alibaba, the large Chinese company that owns Yahoo China, is preparing to file another hard-hitting suit against competitor Qihoo and its leader, Zhou Hongyi (pictured above).

Yahoo China has already filed one suit against Qihoo, saying the search engine start-up’s software notifies users that Yahoo’s toolbar is malware and prompts deinstallation, and that it’s hurt Yahoo’s market share.

The coming suit, which VentureBeat learned about early this week, will go much further. It will attempt to take… Continue Reading

Sequoia reportedly invests in SF blog for women, Sugar Publishing

Sequoia reportedly invests in SF blog for women, Sugar Publishing

Michael Moritz (pictured below), venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital, and backer of Google and Yahoo, is apparently funding a blog company called Sugar Publishing, which runs four popular blogs, including flagship PopSugar, that caters to young, hip women.

The San Francisco start-up, which has a social networking component, says it is already getting 13 million monthly page views (or so it said in August), and 1.5 million unique visitors.

Rumor of the investment appeared here… Continue Reading