-------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Newsgator STATUS: Draft ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/03/2006 08:15:51 AM ----- BODY: Compettior to Bloglines, and then Yahoo and a host of others.... • NewsGator Seals $7M Series D From Insiders By Clancy Nolan 8/3/2006 NewsGator Technologies Inc., a developer of tools to help people receive syndicated news feeds directly to their Outlook folders and mobile devices, has raised $7 million in Series D financing, according to a regulatory filing. Existing investors Masthead Venture Partners and Mobius Venture Capital were listed as investors in the filing. The company declined to talk about the round, and representatives from the two venture capital firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment. NewsGator previously inked more than $10 million from the investors across three rounds. Founded in 2003, NewsGator retrieves real-simple syndication, or RSS, feeds and organizes and delivers them to subscribers, who are then able to customize the delivery, destination and presentation of those feeds based on their own preferences. The NewsGator Online platform is designed to work across multiple devices, including mobile phones, televisions and email clients such as Microsoft Outlook. The Denver-based company has added a host of features in the past few months, including a new version of its enterprise server aggregation platform. In late July, NewsGator also added an RSS plug-in for Yahoo Messenger that is designed to enable users to access audio and video podcasts through an IM interface. NewsGator has been acquisitive in the past year, buying up NetNewsWire, a news reader for the Mac OS X system, and acquiring Bradbury Software LLC, maker of the FeedDemon, a Windows-based desktop aggregator ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Skyrider gets $8M to launch new sort of search engine: of peer-to-peer STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/03/2006 09:06:23 AM ----- BODY:
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Skyrider, a Mountain View start-up, is developing technology that will be able to search peer-to-peer traffic, in order to help media and other companies become more profitable. The two-year old company has raised $8 million from Silicon Valley's top VC firm Sequoia Capital, along with Charles River Ventures. The company's product will be announced in fall, the company told us last night. (Here is their release.) ----- EXTENDED BODY: The company aims to "monetize" popular peer-to-peer networks, which have emerged to help circulate large files such as video. Since that's where the information is, that's where to do the best mining. And the company is working on a search platform that spans across P2P platforms. The company is led by chief executive Ed Kozel, who among other positions was former chief technology officer at Cisco. It was co-founded by Ori Cohen and Stas Khirman, the guys behind Narus (a company that inspects internet protocol packet information, and thus provides relevant experience) and previously, VDOnet (which in the mid-1990s, was already in the business of transmitting video over the Internet). They want to do three things: 1) Keyword-based search marketing (there are as many as tens of millions of unique users per day, conducting hundreds of millions of searches, the company says); 2) Unrestricted access to content (a P2P search can poll millions of network computers simultaneously at effectively no cost, they say); 3) New software and applications (once businesses reach P2P users, they can build upon the "decentralized, dynamic and community" nature of P2P technology, they say). ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Skyrider, Ori+Cohen, Ed+Kozel, Sequoia+Capital, Charles+River+Ventures, peer-to-peer ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Meebome may do fine without eBay STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/03/2006 11:03:49 AM ----- BODY:
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Meebo is reporting that about 7,500 Meebome instant messaging widgets were created within twelve hours of being launched yesterday. An unrelenting barrage of people hit our site yesterday and chatted with us via our Meebome button. Peoples' overwhelming response was one word: "Cool!" So cool, perhaps, that "Meebome" looked to eBay more like an "amoeba," the fast-growing penetrative parasite that takes over large bodies. Thus the Meebome on eBay has been taken down. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- PING: TITLE: Roundup: Last Google Jet hearing, VC China wars, Capton, Vysr, Wablet, more URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/11/roundup_last_google_jet_hearing_vc_china_wars_capton_vysr_wablet_more.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/11/2006 08:19:02 AM Google co-founders have settled with the guy who spilled beans on the secretive Google Jet -- A final hearing is scheduled for Aug. 29. Details here in the Mercury News story today. Draper Fisher Jurvetson reappears in China -- After a rocky period in... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: BusinessWeek on Digg: Crash, Sizzle, Pop! STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/03/2006 05:28:27 PM ----- BODY: Updated
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Here's an entertaining, if bubbly story about the Digg guy Kevin Rose and how he embodies the new Silicon Valley elite: ...Rose had given every last piece of himself to the project -- all his time, all his cash, and even his girlfriend, who fought with him after he poured his savings into Digg instead of a downpayment on a house. Today, Digg, Version 3, the one that would go beyond tech news to include politics, gossip, business, and videos, was going live. At 29, Rose was on his way either to a cool $60 million or to total failure... (Minor quibble: Story uses Alexa stats -- which are very unreliable -- to say Digg is nipping at the New York Times' popularity) (Update: More from Techdirt, on BusinessWeek's speculative reference to $200 million as the going value for Digg, citing "people in the know." TechDirt's Joe says: BusinessWeek has written the ultimate Web2.0 hype piece without the slightest hint of skepticism about the numbers that it throws around. Our sentiments exactly.) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: SearchEngines EMAIL: dhtml1@go.com IP: 64.59.48.226 URL: http://digg.com/users/SearchEngines/homepage DATE: 08/03/2006 10:22:28 PM It seems so-o inevitable that... Digg - YouTube and MySpace will ultimately partner oneday - and produce the ultimate Web 2.0 UGC site.......and will create their own unique Search Engine to match Google ....perhaps Murdoch will own them all ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Gary Bourgeault (thealphamarketer.com) EMAIL: gbourgeaul@comcast.net IP: 68.52.235.16 URL: http://thealphamarketer.com DATE: 08/03/2006 10:35:02 PM Good Story. Yet, it does sound almost a little too much like 2000 to me; at least it was written like that. The comment made that Digg is only a news "aggregator" was pretty stupid, as anyone that follows the "old" media knows, they are overall, news aggregators also. Even in the last couple of days companies are asking citizen journalists to make contributions that will be included in their broadcasts. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: D. Afarian (Mousepad.com) EMAIL: kesabsy@hotmail.com IP: 216.165.241.34 URL: http://www.Mousepad.com DATE: 08/04/2006 07:25:41 AM As far as news aggregators go, I saw a demo of a site that will launch called BlueGrind.com that will rock. I think it is going to be a free service??? This site will actually read in the news from I think it was Yahoo or Google in text format and convert it to audio MP3. So I can download it and take it with me to listen to only the news that I want while driving to work. Neat!! ----- PING: TITLE: The Business Week article on Digg, continued URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/07/the_business_week_article_on_digg_continued.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/07/2006 06:01:11 AM We got an email from an old gym friend. Our schedules have varied, and we haven't seen each other for months. He wanted to get in touch, he told us, because he'd just read Business Week's story on Digg: "...the story on Kevin Rose and it is inspiring ... ----- PING: TITLE: Crash URL: http://www.slantautos.info/crash/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Crash DATE: 08/09/2006 05:22:16 PM Includes archives of FEA models, animation results, plus information about the center and Crash is rated NC 17, and is bas... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Secretive hydrogen fuel company, Ion America , raises $103M STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 06:27:41 AM ----- BODY:
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Ion America, the secretive Silicon Valley (Moffett Field) start-up apparently developing a fuel cell to produce hydrogen and electricity to power cars and trucks, has raised $103 million in its latest equity financing, its fourth round. That is a lot of money, and we are not surprised, because the hand of Silicon Valley firm New Enterprise Associates is behind this one -- and the firm, fresh from raising one of the largest venture funds ever, is getting aggressive in pushing investments in green technologies. (It is a hot sector right now, and it is one that can absorb a lot of cash, because presumably factories will be built down the line). Ion America filed a statement about the financing at the Securities & Exchange Commission, and VentureWire reported on it this morning (subscription required). ----- EXTENDED BODY: Investors in the company include NEA, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mobius Venture Capital. The total funding is now $165 million. Until now, if you have asked some of these folks about Ion America, they have declined to acknowledge its existence -- though that may change now. There is clear evidence on the Web of what the company is doing. It has successfully passed field tests in Sunnyvale and at the Alternative Energy Lab at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (see page five). Click on the image here to enlarge and see a diagram of what Ion America is up to. Ion America's fuel cell generates hydrogen and electricity. We have written about Ion America several times before, including a mention of management change. Kleiner Partner John Doerr, Mobius Managing Director Greg Galanos, and New Enterprise Associates General Partner Scott Sandell are board members. Sandell, you should now, is the guy who invested in SolFocus, a solar company in Palo Alto. He went in to SolFocus aggressively, and bid up the price several times higher than other bidders had offered -- which we will write about soon. Over the past few months, VentureWire notes, the Ion America has been granted patents for solid oxide regenerative fuel cell, the application of its fuel cell technology to airships, and the textured electrolyte component of its solid oxide fuel cell. (PS. Something that is bothering us, in describing the hydrogen angle of this company, is that Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr downplayed the feasibility of hydrogen as a major source of energy a few months ago. Since no one is talking about Ion America, it is difficult to know what they are really doing, and whether it jibes with Doerr's view on hydrogen or not). (Update: We double checked this with a few people, and there's no dis-connect in Doerr's stance. In downplaying hydrogen, Doerr was probably referring to compressed hydrogen, which is used as a storage medium in many fuel cell companies. This is the technology behind "the hydrogen economy" so often talked about in Washington, DC -- as a way to potentially power cars. It has its limitations, because it requires so much energy input to create hydrogen in the first place. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells such as Ion America's, however, can use any hydrocarbon as the fuel -- gasoline, ethanol, methane, propane, butane, etc. There's no need to store compressed hydrogen. Rather, hydrogen is produced as an output, and there is a ready market for it for "industrial uses," as the above diagram suggests. The experts we talked with say they agree with Doerr's skepticism about the hydrogen economy; indeed, the real dis-connect right now may be the one between investors and Washington policy.) ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Ion+America, Kleiner+Perkins, NEA, Scott+Sandell, Mobius, Greg+Galanos, John+Doerr ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: DS EMAIL: dsakarya@juno.com IP: 141.153.239.206 URL: DATE: 08/06/2006 09:53:59 PM Smoke & mirrors. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Jim Pierobon EMAIL: jim.pierobon@yahoo.com IP: 68.55.18.178 URL: DATE: 08/07/2006 02:50:47 PM Thank you Matt for your reporting not only on these hefty VC deals but helping your readers parse the truth about the real potential, or lack thereof, of politicos and their "hydrogen economy." Very few, if any, independent minds take that seriously. There is so much that can be done more prudently with efficiency initiatives and established renewables that the hydrogen economy is beyond the broken-record phase. ----- PING: TITLE: Hydrogen URL: http://www.foodzen.info/hydrogen/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Hydrogen DATE: 08/08/2006 12:14:27 AM Anyone interested in helping us beta test can check out the leading H 2 websites in Only problem is that, according to their website, t... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Misc STATUS: Draft ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 06:43:23 AM ----- BODY: ((New Enterprise Associates has held a $105 million first close of its newly formed India fund, VentureWire has learned, joining a growing number of top-tier funds devoting capital to Indian start-ups. Bangalore-based NEA IndoUS Ventures is targeting $150 million for a final close either later this year or in early 2007, according to a person close to the fund. While NEA has moved steadily into late stage deals, the India fund will stick to early-stage investments across a wide range of technologies - from semiconductors to communications. NEA will contribute about 20% of the targeted $150 million IndoUs fund, pulling capital from its twelfth and largest fund, which closed this summer with $2.5 billion.)) The rest of the capital will come from undisclosed limited partners, mostly investors in NEA's previous funds. Like many venture firms, NEA has been active in China and India over the past few years. The firm, which is based in Baltimore and has offices in Reston, Va., and Menlo Park, Calif., plans to commit as much as 10% of its $2.5 billion twelfth fund to those markets, said General Partner Mark Perry. Earlier this summer, the fund joined Greylock Partners and a handful of other institutional LPs in a $88 million first close for China-based Northern Light Partners LP. The firm has also invested in Cybernaut, a China-focused vehicle started by WebEx founder Min Zhu. "[India and China] are both going to be significant economic forces and it behooves us to think collectively about how to grow the economy," said Dick Kramlich, NEA co-founder and general partner. ((IndoUS Ventures will be managed by Silicon Valley-based entrepreneurs Vinod Dham and Vani Kola. Dham, known in technology circles for his groundbreaking work on Intel Corp.'s Pentium chip, has worked with NEA for years. The firm backed his semiconductor company Silicon Spice Inc., and scored when Broadcom bought it in 2000 for $1.2 billion. Dham switched to venture investing, launching NewPath Ventures LLC in 2001, whose $40 million pool of capital was earmarked for the creation of "crossborder" companies in the U.S. and India. NEA has invested alongside NewPath in companies such as Nevis Networks Inc. )) called CEO and COO to confirm. no answer. no vmail either. To: jpaczkowski@knightridder.com Sent: 8/3/2006 11:08 AM Subject: hot tip InFreeDA, the 411-Metro.com free phone directory assistance startup, is shutting down at noon today. Vacating the offices. Total shutdown. They were unable to get the second round of funding. WE called, and they said wasn't shutting down, just major reorgnaizaation.... Kola previously started financial compliance start-up Certus and RightWorks, the developer of a Web-based corporate procurement system that was acquired by Dallas-based i2 Technologies in 2001. Two India-based partners will likely join Dham and Kola to help deploy the fund. NEA is one of a growing number of U.S. firms setting up dedicated funds for India. This week Waltham, Mass.-based Matrix Partners announced Matrix India Fund, which closed in late July with $150 million. Matrix's Mumbai-based fund will focus primarily on consumer technology investments in Internet-related technology and mobile services. The two firms are among the only U.S. venture capital firms to strike on their own in India, without partnering with local firms there. Earlier this year, Sequoia Capital joined forces with Westbridge Capital Partners to source deals in the area. And Redwood Shores Calif.-based Woodside Fund joined with Helion Venture Partners, a new $120 million India fund started by Woodside Venture Partner Ashish Gupta, for deals in the subcontinent. http://professional.venturewire.com/story.asp?sid=IJKHOKNQJJI ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: adify STATUS: Draft ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 06:58:47 AM ----- BODY: Newly formed Adify Corp. has sealed $8 million in Series A financing to help bolster sales and marketing of its online advertising platform, VentureWire has learned. Venrock Associates led the round with $4 million, and was joined by undisclosed individuals, said Chief Executive Lawrence Braitman. He declined to discuss the firm's stake in the round. Adify's advertising platform, released in June, is designed to create direct relationships between Web publishers and online advertisers, taking online ad networks out of the equation. Using the company's platform, publishers can create hosted "storefronts" where they provide information to advertisers. Adify provides the back-end infrastructure and a range of services, including management, billing, payment and various reporting functions. The San Bruno, Calif.-based company has also developed a vertically focused platform where advertisers and publishers can come together around specific sectors. The company has launched one such platform around bicycling, and plans to launch more platforms this fall, Braitman said. Adify was formed late last year by Braitman and Richard Thompson, co-founders of Web advertising management company Flycast Communications, and by Russell Fradin and Steven Heyman, both early executives at Flycast. Formed in 1996, Flycast inked venture rounds from Charles River Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners and was acquired by CMGI in 1999. http://www.adify.com ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Evernote raises $6 million to save all kinds of notes STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 07:00:07 AM ----- BODY:
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EverNote, a Sunnyvale start-up that wants to let you save all aspects of your online and offline life, has raised $6 million from individuals, the company told us yesterday. There's increasing competition in this sector. So it wants to differ from the others by offering the kitchen sink, letting you save everything that goes on around you and to have it everywhere you go. By letting you save photo-shots, but also web pages, it wants to co-opt other players like ScanR, which lets you capture (via camera) and share images, and the ilk of Kaboodle, Google Notebook and Microsoft's OneNote and others which have services to let you save Web pages and other computer documents. ----- EXTENDED BODY: Evernote has developed imaging technology that recognizes handwriting in a "jpeg" file, for example, so that you can take a photo of scribbles on napkin, and save it for review later -- and thus be able to search it for certain words. And you'll be able to tag the file, so that you can search for those tags later too. We weren't able to really kick the tires. ScanR lets you take photos of your offline activities, from business cards to scribble on whiteboards, and then allows you to email them to your storage place of choice, and is doing much of the same "search" stuff that Evernote talks of. So we asked Evernote chief executive Tom Garland about this. He said the market is big enough for both companies. Evernote, though, provides a storage place so that you can save ScanR files and carry them with you. Evernote will also let you save everything on the Web directly from your browser. Garland said technology pundit Esther Dyson and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin have joined the company's board. This Fall, the company will release a mobile and a Web-based version of its software, which currently is a downloadable software for your computer. It is currently free. Garland wouldn't say what sort of traction the company has had, but confirmed the downloads so far have been in the "thousands," helped by a review by the WSJ's Walt Mossberg last year. ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Evernote, Tom+Garland, Esther+Dyson, Max+Levchin ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Lee Courtney EMAIL: lee_courtney@acm.org IP: 147.11.45.219 URL: http://www.linkedin.com/in/leecourtney DATE: 08/04/2006 10:06:11 AM Will be interesting to see if this or other similar can be successfully applied to Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits project (http://research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx). ----- PING: TITLE: Saving URL: http://www.easybankingzone.info/saving/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Saving DATE: 08/08/2006 01:29:28 AM on the last Sunday of October.History of daylight saving time and how we use it to save energy.Saving P... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Kapor starts new Foxmarks: cross between Google & Wikipedia STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 08:07:30 AM ----- BODY:
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Mitch Kapor, co-founder of Lotus 1-2-3 and more recently of the personal info manager product Chandler, has started a new search start-up, called Foxmarks (no Web site yet). Mitch says merely that it will intersect search and social production -- think cross between Google and Wikipedia. Co-founder is Todd Agulnick.
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Kapor
Not much else is known, but Richard MacManus has the full scoop plus links to Mitch's blog post about it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Mitch+Kapor, Foxmarks, Todd+Agulnick ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Woz drives to South Pole in a Hummer STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 10:04:23 AM ----- BODY:
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Eric Savitz, of Barrons has a precious piece about Woz, who confided his summer plans to Savitz at the recent AlwaysOn conference.
The Woz said he plans to drive to the South Pole in a Hummer in 2007. He said that in passing, and it seemed so absurd that I had to find out more. So after his talk, I went up and asked. Woz explained that he was participating in an expedition planned for December 2007 in which a group will drive Hummers running on hydrogen powered fuel cells from McMurdo Station to the South Pole. Woz said his particular vehicle would be co-piloted by Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon in 1969. The expedition is to be filmed in 3D for the director James Cameorn. Woz said that the group has received important advice on the project from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authroity, which has been running some hydrogen fuel-cell powered buses.
 Wait, wasn't Woz supposed to be running a publicly traded shell company, looking for new ideas? Or maybe this is it? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Steve+Wozniak, Hummer, South+Pole ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Joe Tonis EMAIL: jrandom@mit.edu IP: 24.6.226.62 URL: DATE: 08/04/2006 02:38:03 PM Good for him, just try not to squash any penguins... ----- PING: TITLE: South URL: http://www.eventplanningplace.info/south/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: South DATE: 08/11/2006 05:39:26 AM For practical trip planning information, such as accommodations, maps and dining/shopping opportunities, visit... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Silicon Valley ad veterans launch start-up, Adify; raise $8million STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 06:29:09 PM ----- BODY:
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Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. So it is with Larry Braitman and Richard Thompson, the guys who formed Flycast Communications a decade ago, to create an online advertising network that served smaller Web sites. It enjoyed a $500 million IPO and then, in the frothy year of 1999, was acquired by CMGI for $2.3 billion. They are trying it again with a new start-up, Adify, and are looking to aggressively undercut rivals.
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Braitman
Flycast had created the first "blind" advertising network, where a network of advertisers served ads to participating Web sites, and there was little negotiation. Times have changed, and now the pair are starting Adify with almost the opposite approach. ----- EXTENDED BODY: They've just raised $8 million, in a first round led by Venrock, and including individuals. This time, Adify's network allows transparency -- and thus may be more enticing for site owners and advertisers. The Belmont company allows advertisers to contact bloggers or other Web publishers directly. It gives advertisers a form -- run on the back-end by Adify -- where they can request a particular ad space on the site. It allows a publisher to negotiate ad rates, and to reject an advertiser if wanted. Adify is only taking 20 percent of what the advertiser pays to the publisher. That's considerably less than what many other ad companies charge, for example Adbrite, which takes 50 30 percent. For that 20 percent, the publisher gets a lot. It includes Adify's support for serving both graphic and text ads, all billing and collections (including eating any credit card fees), ad management, tracking and reporting. The site launched in June. We asked Larry yesterday whether he is purposefully undercutting competition. He said "that's where the market is headed, and potentially lower." Adify allows bloggers or like-minded sites to create their own network -- as FM Publishing has done with tech bloggers -- in order to make things simpler for advertisers who are looking for a one-stop shop. For example, Adify has formed a network for publishing sites covering the cycling industry. It is called Clip-Ins. This also creates a referral network: If one blog or Web site snags an advertiser on behalf of the network, that Web site gets a 10 percent commission for generating the deal. We asked Larry how he intends to develop the expertise to go after these particular niche networks, since ideally this demands a lot of pavement pounding to schmooze advertisers to advertise in those niches. He said he was not prepared to answer that question; it is still early. He has no intent to manage campaigns on behalf of advertisers, he said. ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Adify, Venrock ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: David Ulevitch EMAIL: david@ulevitch.com IP: 38.99.14.57 URL: http://david.ulevitch.com/ DATE: 08/04/2006 09:50:28 PM Where does it say anywhere that AdBrite takes 50% of the revshare? Also, most folks don't use the term "50 percent of the advertiser's spend" -- unless you're talking about something different than publisher revshare. -david ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 24.6.111.104 URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com DATE: 08/04/2006 11:46:28 PM I'll double check this, now that you ask. I remember, somewhat vividly, that Adbrite was taking a 50 percent cut, but just went to their site to check, and it's not plainly disclosed anywhere. I see a reference on Google to a page from last year, saying Adbrite was taking 25 percent, which is still higher than Adify, but lower than 50 percent...but the page is old. Stay tuned. Anyone else know? I'll check with the company, and presumably will have an answer on Monday. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/05/2006 07:54:21 AM I tried sending an email to adbrite's pr folks (pr@adbrite.com), from two different email accounts, and both bounced back. Don't know what is up over there, but now looks like answer won't come until Monday. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Adam EMAIL: adam.bruce@vidiac.com IP: 68.209.115.207 URL: http://www.vidiac.com DATE: 08/05/2006 02:58:37 PM We used them in 2005, and their commission rate was 25%. We since went to Tribal Fusion, Casale and others that take a 55% comp because they get higher quality and more volume...that is, even if Tribal pays a lower eCPM, you get more money because you have far fewer defaults and much more fullfilment.... AdBrite eCPM just wasn't as high as a Yahoo Publisher or Google AdWords campaign. Now I will say that as a Publisher I *LOVED* working with AdBrite, they have a fantastic idea, they just lack a strong enough portfolio of advertisers. Now that we're serving millions of page views a day though, we've moved to our own ad servers and sales force and are working our way off the Ad Networks. (when you do our Volume, AdNetwork commission rates quickly cover the cost of a whole department of headcount).... ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Adam EMAIL: adam.bruce@vidiac.com IP: 68.209.115.207 URL: http://www.vidiac.com DATE: 08/05/2006 03:04:35 PM Oh, forgot to Ad, Adfly sounds like a god idea, but here is what *I* need, and if someone builds it I'll pay for it. I need an inexpensive ad server (like < $0.02CPM) (like AdSpeed.com) where I can manage geotargeting, frequency capping, etc etc,...AND...be able to pul from an intergrated Ad network. That is I want to be abel tuse a system three ways. 1.) Ad Server (I get my own ads, and billing) 2.) Ad server + Billing (Reasonable money handling fee) 3.) Ad Server + Ad Network (like Google Ad words only I can balance it out with other campaigns from other ad servers). So the ability to mix and match 1, 2 and 3 is key for us. We would probably only ever use 1 & 2, but for those people just starting out I can see them start with 3, then work up to 2, then finally get to 1. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/06/2006 11:02:30 PM Just heard back from the Adbrite folks. The current revenue split is 30 percent. Apologies. I've corrected. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Pat McCarthy EMAIL: pmccarthy@rightmedia.com IP: 208.49.251.250 URL: http://direct.rightmedia.com/ DATE: 08/08/2006 12:52:59 PM Adam, We've just released into private beta what you're looking for. It's called RMX Direct and it allows you directly work with and apply with eight ad networks on the Right Media Exchange, as well as add in your own deals like Adsense, etc. http://direct.rightmedia.com/ ----- PING: TITLE: Raise URL: http://www.careergrab.info/raise/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Raise DATE: 08/09/2006 04:46:11 AM CanWest Global Foundations charitable registration The book has its own web site from which complete specif... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: OpenDNS STATUS: Draft ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 07:54:59 PM ----- BODY: but he (Halsey Minor) did fund it. Halsey Minor funds OpenDNS, a SF start-up that wants to eliminate the bad guys on the Web by blocking phishing sites and decreasing the chances of identity theft. It also corrects spelling errors in URLs on the fly and makes (at least my) Internet connections noticeably faster – introducing choice where choice did not previously exist. And it's free. J Right now, they make money through advertising, though that may change. the founder of CNET The company is run by 24 year-old do-gooder David Ulevitch. -------------- Top venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins invested in Menlo Park-based startup Aggregate Knowledge (our post on them is here). The closing occurred in June 2006, and Kleiner partner Randy Komisar has taken a board seat. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Roundup: The elitist Facebook copycat, NEA climbs wave to Bangalore, InFreeDA belly up? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/04/2006 07:58:42 PM ----- BODY:
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An elitist Facebook look-alike launches -- Hmmm, this new company, called Top20Network.com is only for Harvard, Princeton, Yale, U. of Pennsylvania, Duke, MIT, Stanford, Cal. Tech., Columbia, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Wash. U., Brown, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, U. of Chicago, Rice, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Emory. Keeps out riff-raff. Here's the release which floated in yesterday. The site locked us out, because we're not a student at one of those schools. Interesting logo: A tall building with what looks like a Deutsche Bank logo on it.
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Dham
NEA ventures to India -- New Enterprise Associates has raised $105 million for a new venture capital fund dedicated for India investments, joining the frantic rush by VCs to firmly plant their flags in that virgin territory for start-up investments. The fund will have offices in Bangalore, and is called NEA IndoUS. News began leaking in Indian papers a few days ago, when it emerged that NEA had tapped Silicon Valley's Vinod Dham -- known as "father of the pentium" chip -- for the effort. Vinod said he couldn't talk about it yet. Word is (VentureWire), NEA is targeting $150 million in total wants to make early-stage investments, but we'll believe that when we see it. NEA is swimming in cash, and is putting many millions of dollars to work per deal (which is hard to call early stage).
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Kola
Silicon Valley's Vani Kola is also part of the new fund. Vani's first start-up, RightWorks, was acquired in 2000 by Internet Capital Group (ICG) for $657 million. Vinod wouldn't tell us what will happen to his current firm, NewPath Ventures. InFreeDA, the 411-Metro.com phone service, belly up? -- Not quite. We got reports yesteday the free phone directory assistance startup was shutting down, and that offices had already been vacated. We'd we mentioned the company here in January, right after the company had gotten seed funding from Hummer Winblad. It had 15 full-time workers at the time, and was planning to employ a whopping 100 people by the end of this year -- making us scratch our head at the time. But could it really be closing so soon? One of our colleagues double checked for us, and turns out the firm couldn't raise a second round. So it is going through a major reorganization, not shutting down. News-reader NewsGator, raises $7M -- Newsgator, the competitor to Bloglines, Yahoo and a host of others competitors seeking to allow for easy RSS feed-reading (NewsGator permits it from wherever, including mobile phones, email platforms, etc), got the cash from existing investors Masthead Venture Partners and Mobius Venture Capital. That adds to more than $10 million previously raised. Simple Star, a SF start-up that does the back-end technology for photo slide-shows, strikes deal with Time Warner -- Simple Star already handles the photo slide-show technology for photo sites like Snapfish, Flickr, Shutterfly, and has a distribution deal with Walgreens. Now it has partnered with Time Warner, to offer the nation's first television program dedicated to slide-shows, it says. The company won more than $6 million from venture firm Venrock last year, and it is now looking to raise another round. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: NEA, InFreeDa, Top20Network, NewsGator, Simple+Star ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: DS EMAIL: dsjunk@gmail.com IP: 68.127.160.6 URL: DATE: 08/05/2006 03:32:02 PM Recall the starting point for the wonderchild of Web 1.0 social networks, The Globe? Not much different here. Does that still exist? It should. Now there's a plan I'd fund! ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: johnny seed EMAIL: johnny_seed37@yahoo.com IP: 68.121.163.222 URL: DATE: 08/08/2006 05:33:09 PM Actually, InFreeDA is going belly up - they'll be dissolved this Friday, August 11. Wait and see... ----- PING: TITLE: Johns Hopkins URL: http://www.basketballstar.info/johns-hopkins/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Johns Hopkins DATE: 08/17/2006 05:55:12 PM Johns Hopkins has stood at the forefront of modern medicine, speeding the transfer of new knowledge ... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: AOL Research exposes data; we've got a little sick feeling STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/06/2006 05:47:47 AM ----- BODY: (AOL has responded, saying they screwed up, and have taken the data down. More at update here).
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Here are some excerpts from a post from Adam D'Angelo, over at CalTech, about AOL Research's efforts to engage with the research community. Does anyone else think they've gone over the line with this? AOL just released the logs of all searches done by 500,000 of their users over the course of three months earlier this year. That means that if you happened to be randomly chosen as one of these users, everything you searched for from March to May (2006) is now public information on the internet. ...The data is "anonymized", which to AOL means that each screenname was replaced with a unique number. "It is still a research question how much information needs to be anonymized to protect users," says Abdur from AOL. Here are some examples of what you can find in the data: Among user 545605's searches are "shore hills park mays landing nj", "frank william sindoni md", "ceramic ashtrays", "transfer money to china", and "capital gains on sale of house"....I'm leaving out the worst of it - searches for names of specific people, addresses, telephone numbers, illegal drugs, and more. There is no question that law enforcement, employers, or friends could figure out who some of these people are....I hope others can find more examples in the data, which is up for download over here (scroll down to the 500Kusers.tgz file). If you go to the site, there's a person even thanking AOL for this info in comments. We haven't looked at this very closely yet, and haven't talked with AOL. But so far, we're cringing. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: AOL+Research, privacy ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Search Engines WEB EMAIL: seoptimization@lycos.com IP: 172.136.133.245 URL: http://seoptimization.blog.com/ DATE: 08/06/2006 09:31:46 PM http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/RFPs/Search_2006_RFP.aspx a few months ago - Microsoft lauched an analogous project ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: breakingranks EMAIL: elisa.cooper@breakingranks.net IP: 71.132.216.155 URL: DATE: 08/06/2006 10:59:48 PM I dare you to compare this to the HIPAA standard of "de-identified" information that health organizations are now using as the standard to release data. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: daniel EMAIL: dhparkpark@gmail.com IP: 165.123.181.171 URL: http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com DATE: 08/08/2006 12:29:20 AM if you don't want to download 2 gigs and grep your way through, here's a site that'll let you search from a database: http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com . ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Bob EMAIL: hornet919owner@yahoo.com IP: 71.197.67.56 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 08:13:38 PM search engine proxies have been around for a least a few years. Why dont people start using them? heres a free one. http://www.blackboxsearch.com ----- PING: TITLE: Does AOL’s search data compromise privacy? URL: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2006/08/06/does-aols-search-data-compromise-privacy/ IP: 130.85.34.22 BLOG NAME: UMBC eBiquity DATE: 08/06/2006 05:41:47 PM ... ----- PING: TITLE: AOL Blows It: Releases Search Data on 500,000 Users! URL: http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/security/investigator/archives/aol-blows-it-releases-search-data-on-500000-users-10942 IP: 66.179.234.44 BLOG NAME: A Day in the Life of an Information Security Investigator DATE: 08/06/2006 10:38:41 PM AOL, what the %#$@$@ were you thinking? You provide a 440MB file of search queries from 500,000 of your customers for anyone to download? Your idea of 'de-identifying' the data is to replace the screen name with an arbitrary number?... ----- PING: TITLE: AOL discloses 650,000 AOL users' search data URL: http://www.fredshouse.net/2006/08/aol_discloses_650000_aol_users.html IP: 208.113.140.6 BLOG NAME: fredshouse DATE: 08/07/2006 01:23:21 AM Well this isn't going to help AOL's image. Over the weekend, AOL researchers posted a 400MB+ tarball of the raw search query data of some 650K AOL users over the period from March 1, 2006 to May 30, 2006. While... ----- PING: TITLE: AOL responds to data leak. They screwed up. URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/07/aol_responds_to_data_leak_they_screwed_up.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/07/2006 08:52:18 AM John Battelle has gotten an early response from AOL about the data leak that we posted about early yesterday. Here's the summary: This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it. It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic c... ----- PING: TITLE: AOL Just Did the Unthinkable - Boycott AOL? URL: http://www.zoliblog.com/blog/_archives/2006/8/6/2204969.html IP: 216.40.34.103 BLOG NAME: Zoli's Blog DATE: 08/07/2006 11:46:36 AM

(Updated)
Thank you, Google for resisting the DOJ's effort to obtain user search data. You put up a good fight to protect our privacy, and NickDouglas.jpgby Scott Beale/Laughing SquidHere's the Mercury News story on Valleywag author, Nick Douglas. When news broke that Nick Douglas, a.k.a. the writer behind the online gossip site Valleywag, was mugged last month in downtown San Francisco, it struck some as fitting. ``The muggers got to him first,'' joked Marc Canter, an entrepreneur and frequent victim of Valleywag's acerbic wit. ``His whole body demeanor asks to be punched.''... He's becoming known simply as "the Punk," and to be profiled by him is to "be punked." ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Valleywag, Nick+Douglas ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Louis Gray EMAIL: louisgray@mac.com IP: 24.6.250.255 URL: http://www.louisgray.com/live/ DATE: 08/06/2006 07:55:27 PM As odd and uncomfortable as it may be for the Silicon Valley elite to be featured in ValleyWag, it is de riguer in just about any other high-profile business, whether you're a professional athlete, or in Hollywood. Those folks have been used to rumors and gossip as part of their jobs. With money and prestige also comes a downside. As a reader, I find ValleyWag very amusing. He's not always covering everything I want, but there's enough substance to keep it as a must-follow site. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Wai Yip Tung EMAIL: wy@tungwaiyip.info IP: 63.251.108.100 URL: http://tungwaiyip.info/ DATE: 08/07/2006 11:53:04 AM I read it infrequently and find it mostly funny. When you are immersed in high flying business' optimistic stories all day long, it is just a good Dilbert fix. We have the guilty pleasure while he take all the risk to ridicule a company or personality. In anycase it is an entirely different beast from f*edcompany.com, which is just venomous. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Nick Douglas EMAIL: nick@valleywag.com IP: 67.188.209.81 URL: http://valleywag.com DATE: 08/07/2006 05:49:32 PM Louis, pop me an e-mail if you know any areas Valleywag needs to cover. We're looking for a second writer, so soon we can double our coverage. Then maybe the NEW writer can get awkwardly profiled by the Mercury News. ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: The VC bidding wars, and how SolFocus more than doubled its money STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/06/2006 06:13:52 AM ----- BODY:
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SolFocus is a start-up in Palo Alto developing technology that uses mirrors to concentrate the sun on solar cells, effectively squeezing more energy out of less silicon. Below is an account of the bidding war at SolFocus. It is part of a larger story about clean-tech investing in the Mercury News this morning: ----- EXTENDED BODY: San Francisco firm Nth Power has been active in clean technology investments for several years, and was among the many firms jockeying to invest in the company, valuing it in the single-digit or low teens of millions of dollars. Other firms were doing the same.
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Scott Sandell
But then Menlo Park's New Enterprise Associates swooped in last month, led by partner Scott Sandell. Sandell, one of the leaders of the big, generalist venture firm, offered to value the company at $70 million, or about seven times what some other firms had wanted to pay -- and that after only a brief review of the deal. NEA did not respond to several requests for comment. One existing investor was venture firm NGEN, which had given seed money a few months earlier. It got squeezed, because the money it had invested in that initial was converted to the value of last month's round, meaning that NGEN too was paying a high price to invest in SolFocus, even though it had put in months of sweat equity. "It went from being a great deal for NGEN to a good deal for NGEN," said Rob Koch, who is southern California-based NGEN's point person here in Silicon Valley. "Would we rather be on the sidelines?" he asks, rhetorically. "No. Without a doubt, we'd rather be in this deal at a higher valuation." The end result is that SolFocus, which had set out to raise only $12.5 million, finished with $32 million in the bank. That sounds good, right? Well, looked at another way, SolFocus is going to have to make a whole lot more money now to produce the returns demanded by eager investors. It is the latest aggressive move by NEA, and we expect to see more. ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: SolFocus, Scott+Sandell, New+Enterprise+Associates, Nth+Power, NGEN, Rob+Koch ----- PING: TITLE: Boing raises $65M; The bulging pockets of New Enterprise Associates URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/17/boing_raises_65m_the_bulging_pockets_of_new_enterprise_associates.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/17/2006 11:47:10 AM Boingo, the southern California company that provides high-speed wireless access to hotel, airports and other public locales, has raised $65 million in a third round of funding. This is apparently a case of investment creep. Just last month, the compa... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Top VC firm Sequoia adds another partner, Chris Olsen STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 05:18:44 AM ----- BODY:
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Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley's top venture capital firm, has quietly added another partner, Chris Olsen. He jumps there from Technology Crossover Ventures. At TCV, he focused on investments in financial and other companies, serving on the boards of eBags, Oak Pacific Interactive Corp, Whitepages.com, and Claria, the controversial ad network company-turned-homepage-organizer. Chris will now focus on "software and services," according to his Sequoia profile. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Chris+Olsen ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: vc watcher EMAIL: abc@abc.com IP: 38.114.132.5 URL: DATE: 08/07/2006 02:30:35 PM i really doubt that he's a partner. according to linkedin, he just graduated from college a couple years ago. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 72.244.55.218 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/07/2006 02:34:49 PM You mean, general partner? I didn't say he was. As for "partner," that term can pretty much mean anything. ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: The Business Week article on Digg, continued STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 05:59:20 AM ----- BODY:
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We got an email from an old gym friend. Our schedules have varied, and we haven't seen each other for months. He wanted to get back in touch, he told us, because he'd just read Business Week's story on Digg: "...the story on Kevin Rose and it is inspiring me to think about my project again. I have thought of it before, but because it has been so hard for me to find the right job lately I've been thinking about it more and more...." He went on to ask for advice about how to get back into the game. Now, the Business Week article was pretty hyped, as we've mentioned. But it tells a tale that certainly inspires, and will create a new wave of dot-com jihadists wanting to make their $60 million in 18 months. We asked ourselves, what do we tell him? Follow your dreams, go for it! Or, do we splash cold water all over him? We've decided to counsel him on the middle way. Find an idea he is passionate about, read about it and talk about it as much as he can, stake out a small business around it, and grow it slowly. See what happens... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Business+Week, Kevin+Rose, Digg ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Dharmesh Shah EMAIL: dshah@onstartups.com IP: 24.62.63.245 URL: http://onstartups.com DATE: 08/07/2006 10:08:28 AM Just what I was afraid of. First, we have people extrapolating from a limited number of data points (like MySpace) to determine the value of the Web 2.0 lottery. Now, entrepreneurs are going to start using data points that are not even data points (the $60 million number is pure fabrication). ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Kevin Burton EMAIL: burtonator@gmail.com IP: 69.233.233.245 URL: http://tailrank.com DATE: 08/07/2006 06:48:04 PM Don't do it for the money.... if you do you're going to burn out. Do something you LOVE and can't get enough of..... good things will happen.. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: SVEntrepreneurIntheMaking EMAIL: PlayboyGene@yahoo.com IP: 66.169.234.168 URL: DATE: 08/08/2006 01:07:44 PM Kevin, As a college student finishing up his senior year, that tidbit is helpful. I got to keep reminding myself. -Gene ----- PING: TITLE: Healthcare IPOs rock on -- are you in the wrong business? URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/09/healthcare_ipos_rock_on_are_you_in_the_wrong_business.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/09/2006 06:40:45 AM When was the last time a West Coast Internet/Web 2.0 company went public? Xtent, a Silicon Valley firm that develops a new kind of medical stent, has filed for a $103.5 million initial public offering of stock, and it would be the third largest IPO in... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Watch out for low flying pigeons in Silicon Valley STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 07:23:13 AM ----- BODY: Gotta love this place, Silicon Valley. The latest is a flock of pigeons, outfitted with designer cell phone backpacks, taking to the sky over the region this week. They'll be equipped with sensors that collect pollution data, which will be related to a blog at www.pigeonblog.mapyourcity.net. The flights occur at 6:30pm. Tuesday and Saturday. At least we hope they'll fly. We're sure they've been tested out, but we're looking at the size of the backpack (click on image to enlarge), and wondering how much of a runway they'll need. Our colleague John Boudreau has a piece today in the Merc about this project, which is run by someone who admits they are "not trained as a scientist." The device apparently weighs 37 grams, which is lighter than a cell phone (we'd hope so). They're equipped with mobile phone circuit boards, sensors, GPS antennas... (Photo is courtesy of Beatriz Da Costa, who is helping run the project). ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: pigeons, Silicon+Valley ----- PING: TITLE: Lowest URL: http://www.webphoneservices.info/lowest/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Lowest DATE: 08/08/2006 11:46:12 PM Make sure youre getting the refunds you deserve from Low Price Guarantees!Every hotel reservation booked thr... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Google's grab for videos STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 08:14:05 AM ----- BODY:
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Google Video is now paying MTV's parent, Viacom, for video content, according to this AP story. This is significant because Google is the biggest online advertising network, and if you follow the logic, it will therefore most likely to be able to "monetize" these videos. If so, would this spill over to the masses of other amateurs, where Google would steal them from upstarts like YouTube with the promise that Google may help them make some cash. You'd think so, but Google has yet to prove itself as a great "community" site, and so the jury will be out for a while. In a further reach for online video, Google Inc. will begin distributing clips from MTV Networks' shows to other Web sites through its budding video service in a model that offers content creators a new source of distribution and revenue. The deal announced Sunday will begin as a test later this month, offering 100 hours of programming from clips of "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," "SpongeBob SquarePants" and MTV's Video Music Awards. The partnership will expand video through Google's advertising network to a variety of sites and is likely to spawn further such deals, making video a far more integral element of online advertising... (Via Battelle) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Google+Video, YouTube ----- PING: TITLE: Clips URL: http://www.animefever.info/clips/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Clips DATE: 08/10/2006 09:06:18 AM Check these clips out today! Available to cable systems nationwide.Scrapbook slide clips and paperclips for your scr... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: AOL responds to data leak. They screwed up. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 08:40:44 AM ----- BODY:
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John Battelle has gotten an early response from AOL about the data leak that we posted about early yesterday. Here's the summary: This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it. It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant. Although there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize. We've launched an internal investigation into what happened, and we are taking steps to ensure that this type of thing never happens again. Here was what was mistakenly released: * Search data for roughly 612,000 anonymized users over a three month period from March to May.... Sorry, but we still have that sick feeling. That's 612,000 burned people. And now we're checking out Google's recent release of data too, with more details here. Just another thanks to Adam D'Angelo, who was up at 2am when he first emailed us Sunday morning about all this, and then still up at 6am to answer questions. And AOL has taken the data down, all this in barely 24 hours on a slow weekend. Adam just graduated as undergrad and is taking some time off before grad school. What a way to take time off. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: AOL+Research, Adam+D'Angelo ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Search Engine WEB ♣ EMAIL: searchengines@searchengines.cjb.net IP: 64.59.48.226 URL: http://search-engines-web.com/ DATE: 08/08/2006 01:37:55 AM www.aolsearchdatabase.com/ if you do not wish to download the data - someone has created an online Search Service ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Mal EMAIL: malcolmord@talktalk.net IP: 86.131.223.137 URL: http://www.vwdforum.com DATE: 08/09/2006 12:44:38 PM Great info thanks for letting me know ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: head EMAIL: stupidmarketinghead@yahoo.com IP: 69.107.106.185 URL: DATE: 08/12/2006 03:27:51 AM Yes.. also, try out the random feature here to see the AOL log. Some of the search are very interesting. Hours of fun because of AOL screwed up. http://data.aolsearchlogs.com/log/random.cgi ----- PING: TITLE: AOL Research exposes data; we've got a little sick feeling URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/06/aol_research_exposes_data_weve_got_a_little_sick_feeling.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/07/2006 09:00:10 AM (AOL has responded, saying they screwed up, and have taken the data down. More at update here). Here are some excerpts from a post from Adam D'Angelo, over at CalTech, about AOL Research's efforts to engage with the research community. Does anyone else... ----- PING: TITLE: AOL Just Did the Unthinkable - Boycott AOL? URL: http://www.zoliblog.com/blog/_archives/2006/8/6/2204969.html IP: 216.40.34.103 BLOG NAME: Zoli's Blog DATE: 08/07/2006 11:46:30 AM

(Updated)
Thank you, Google for resisting the DOJ's effort to obtain user search data. You put up a good fight to protect our privacy, and forbesbono.bmpBy NYTElevation Partners, the Silicon Valley private equity firm run by industry Roger McNamee and U2's Bono, among others, has acquired a minority position in Forbes Media LLC, publisher of Forbes magazine, the New York Times reported. Forbes Media includes Forbes.com and other business media properties. No financial terms were disclosed, but the NYT reported "some people said that the deal gave Elevation a stake of more than 40 percent at a cost of $250 million to $300 million." Steve Forbes told the NYT that Forbes' business model had been "blasted by the Web." So makes sense that a West Coast group like Elevation, which was founded as the first private equity firms to go after the new media content and entertainment sector, would be the one to buy into this. The NYT has a good discussion of the challenges for Forbes, and rightly points out that Elevation, despite its focus, doesn't have any experience with an outfit that has its origin in the print world. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Forbes.com, Forbes+Media, Bono, Elevation, Roger+McNamee ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Mr.Rehab EMAIL: rehabsavedmylife@gmail.com IP: 86.124.88.157 URL: http://www.cirquelodge.com/ DATE: 08/07/2006 01:36:48 PM Leslie E. Bider, the former Chairman and CEO of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc has joined the Elevation Partners as an Executive-in-Residence in may. ----- PING: TITLE: HuffingtonPost.com raises $5 million, but East Coast money URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/07/huffingtonpostcom_raises_5_million_but_east_coast_money.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/08/2006 08:15:42 AM Updated HuffingtonPost.com, the online news site and group blog focused on politics, just announced that it has raised a $5 million round led by venture capital firm SoftBank Capital. East Coast's Alan Patricof's Greycroft Partners also invested in the... ----- PING: TITLE: Bono & McNamee chose Forbes for "tech central" over....Mercury News URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/11/bono_mcnamee_chose_forbes_for_tech_central_overmercury_news.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/11/2006 08:35:26 AM That's right. Earlier this year, when Mercury News parent Knight Ridder, the nation's second largest newspaper company, was on the block, we began hearing names of people who were interested. McClatchy eventually prevailed in the deal, and MediaNews s... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: HuffingtonPost.com raises $5 million, but East Coast money STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 09:53:58 AM ----- BODY: Updated
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HuffingtonPost.com, the online news site and group blog focused on politics, just announced that it has raised a $5 million round led by venture capital firm SoftBank Capital. East Coast's Alan Patricof's Greycroft Partners also invested in the round. The media landscape is changing by the minute. Unlike business and tech, which is drawing interest by West Coast firms like Elevation, the politics stuff is attracting the East Coast folks, which makes sense. We have no idea how Huffington is going to return money on this very large investment, but there are some suggestions given in the press release (we're searching for a link), including -- surprise -- video: "The HuffingtonPost has just introduced video blogs and will soon be launching web video newscasts..." Update: More on back-story about how this came about: Eric Hippeau at Softbank Capital, former chief executive at Ziff Davis, was looking for a news investment. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: HuffingtonPost.com, SoftBank+Capital, Greycroft+Partners, Alan+Patricof ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: whenwego EMAIL: when@wego.com IP: 216.86.205.161 URL: DATE: 08/07/2006 04:05:52 PM Well, if you count visits and ad revenue, HuffPo is a bargain at $5M for 30% of the company... ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Ed Kohler EMAIL: edkohler@technologyevangelist.com IP: 65.25.241.97 URL: http://www.technologyevangelist.com DATE: 08/07/2006 08:35:28 PM I can't figure out why someone with her money and friends with money would go to a VC firm. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/07/2006 09:17:31 PM Ed, why is it so difficult to understand. If it is true she's only giving away 30 percent, she's not giving up control -- and at the same time, she's getting $5 million in cash, a great deal and something she could probably only do in this bubbly environment. Take the money! ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: STATUS: Draft ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 04:41:27 PM ----- BODY: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: News Corp scores $900M from Google, a coup STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/07/2006 10:07:35 PM ----- BODY: Updated
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Google will pay the parent of social networking company MySpace.com at least $900 million in shared advertising revenue over the next three and a half years, and become the exclusive search engine for the site. This is significant because News Corp paid $580 million for Intermix Media, which owned MySpace, last year. This deal means that News Corp will have already gotten that much in revenue, and more, from the income its gets from Google. Then you add the $350 million in revenue MySpace is reportedly making per year, you realize NewsCorp may soon be getting close to the black on this deal already ($350M revenue does not mean profit, so we'll have to know more, as reader points out in comment). And to top it off, News Corp going forward will still own one the most promising sites on the Web and everything that comes with it. It is good for Google because it will apparently kill off any aspirations by MySpace to develop a search technology of its own (though we don't know if the terms actually rule that out). More importantly, it prevents MySpace from allying with Yahoo or Microsoft. The jury is out on whether Google will actually make money off this. It depends on whether MySpace users decide to use the search bar to buy things. Our hunch is they probably are only searching for friends, because that's all we've used the MySpace search for. (After all, everyone knows you can switch over to Google if you want to buy things. This just makes it easier to search Google from within the MySpace page, but according to the deal, "a majority" of the resulting search revenue is going to News Corp!). News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit will add Google search boxes to MySpace and other sites, likely by the end of the year. Google will provide search results and keyword ads targeted to people's search terms. Google will also get first rights to sell any display ads not sold by Fox directly. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: M EMAIL: blogcomm@gmail.com IP: 67.127.54.209 URL: DATE: 08/07/2006 10:12:31 PM Uh, I think you mean "billion," not "million." C'mon Matt, let's not get into the habit of readers actually thinking that bloggers NEED editors... ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/07/2006 10:54:49 PM No, that wouldn't be good. Unedited bloggers unite! I've updated. Thanks. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Ben Rattray EMAIL: brattray@gmail.com IP: 69.181.31.157 URL: DATE: 08/08/2006 01:09:24 AM Every report I've read said News Corp paid $580 million for MySpace, not $1.2 billion. Can you confirm either way? ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: dave EMAIL: davidram@gmail.com IP: 192.115.17.82 URL: DATE: 08/08/2006 03:39:05 AM It was $580m and it was not for myspace - but for a Intermix media that owns myspace, among other properties. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/08/2006 05:12:56 AM Updated to make clearer. Thx. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Elan EMAIL: elan_nov@yahoo.com IP: 166.84.160.251 URL: DATE: 08/08/2006 08:02:28 AM Let's not confuse profits with revenues and let's not forget about Finance 101: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Fox's IRR will be the discounted value of $900MM + the present value of the future cash flows from MySpace, which will be based on MySpace's profitability...Not $900MM + $350MM as you point out. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Dan EMAIL: fake@example.com IP: 216.205.224.64 URL: DATE: 08/08/2006 10:02:08 AM I thought all of Intermix, including MySpace was $580M. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/08/2006 10:22:28 AM Ok, the confusion stems from my link to the AP story, which used the $1.2 billion number (which includes the IGn deal), and so that is what I was referring to. I've updated it now, and hope it is finally clear. Sorry about that. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Jon Gales EMAIL: jon@mobiletracker.net IP: 72.184.14.200 URL: http://www.mobiletracker.net DATE: 08/08/2006 11:08:48 AM 'It depends on whether MySpace users decide to use the search bar to buy things. Our hunch is they probably are only searching for friends, because that's all we've used the MySpace search for.' I'm sure the Google execs took a look at the current search volume and ad clicks... Currently it's powered by Overture. This is a minimum revenue guarantee too, so it's likely the real amount will be more (especially if MySpace keeps up some growth). Murdoch is looking really smart right now. Making all his money back in a few years. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Dan EMAIL: dholman@mba2003.hbs.edu IP: 66.88.17.58 URL: DATE: 08/08/2006 03:38:41 PM So, what does this mean for other VC-backed upstarts like YouTube and Facebook? ----- PING: TITLE: News URL: http://www.efinancialplanning.info/news/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: News DATE: 08/12/2006 04:36:28 AM As well as ABC television show informationDaily news and full coverage of current issues. ItUs the top site for IT managers and tech ... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Wireless company Trapeze raises $30M -- stays on the trapeze STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/08/2006 05:24:54 AM ----- BODY:
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Trapeze Networks, the Pleasanton start-up that provides equipment to build WiFi local area networks, has raised $30 million in a fourth round of funding, apparently with the help of Juniper Networks. This is signficant because Trapeze early last year looked like it had "fallen off the trapeze," as Battery investor Tom Crotty put it to us. ----- EXTENDED BODY: At the time, Crotty was savoring the acquisition of Airespace, which was sold last year to Cisco for $450 million. A competitor to Trapeze, Airespace returned an early profit for Battery, and enabled Cisco to keep the lead in the so-called WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) sector. The networks are sold to help companies to help them connect all their equipment, from phones to computers. Another company Silicon Valley competitor, Aruba, seemed to be getting more traction, and some say it is now considering going public. VentureWire (sub required) wrote a story about the Juniper investment in Trapeze this morning. According to that report, Redpoint Ventures, Oak Investment, Motorola and Nortel Networks all participated. Founded in 2002, the company has raised a total of $97.5 million. The sector has been revived lately with all the action surrounding WiFi, specifically the ability to route phone calls through such networks, including the use of VoIP -- and thus saving companies money. Trapeze has been helped by this trend, and has worked with new networking players like DiVitas. ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Trapeze, Cisco, Juniper+Networks, Aruba, Airespace, Oak, Motorola, Redpoint ----- PING: TITLE: Trapeze secures $30 million D round URL: http://www.wlanblog.com/?p=203 IP: 69.106.99.172 BLOG NAME: wlanblog.com DATE: 08/08/2006 09:08:15 AM Wow. Their $30 million dollar D round brings the grand total to $97 million in funding thus far. To be honest, I rarely if ever ran across Trapeze in competitive deals when I was at Cisco. I always wrote them off as a non-player despite their larger ... ----- PING: TITLE: Wireless URL: http://www.webphoneservices.info/wireless/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Wireless DATE: 08/20/2006 03:32:28 AM Here39;s a glimpse into how our friends in the Salt Lake City valley access their residentialThe Wireless Camera Hunter may ... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Top VC firm Kleiner Perkins adds Jessica Owens STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/08/2006 10:03:04 PM ----- BODY:
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Jessica Owns
We've been labeled "Kleinerologists," that is, students of Silicon Valley's top venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Living up to that label, we point out the firm has just added Jessica Owens to its team, to work on investments in pandemic preparedness and bio-defense. ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jessica did research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which resulted in the discovery of genetic shift among "Hantavirus" strains. She also worked at Genentech, did corporate finance on the life science team at investment bank Robertson Stephens and diagnostic research at Thomas Weisel Partners. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS from the Department of Cancer Biology at Stanford University. Personnel moves like this are significant because it shows where the high-profile firm (it backed Google, Amazon, Netscape, Sun, to name just a few) is going. John Doerr, the firm's leader, says he's spending half his time on clean-tech, and half on investments in the pandemic/health area. The firm has made a series of hires in this health area, and Owens is just the latest example. We're wondering, if Larry and Sergey of Google were looking for cash now, instead of in 1999, whether they'd approach Kleiner. The firm has been relatively quiet on the whole Web 2.0 phenom. ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Jessica+Owens, Kleiner+Perkins ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: niti bhan EMAIL: niti@nitibhan.com IP: 67.174.224.35 URL: http://www.nitibhan.com DATE: 08/08/2006 11:39:48 PM "The firm has been relatively quiet on the whole Web 2.0 phenom." Your choice of words, imho, answers your question - 'phenom'. From reading your blog regularly, it seems to me that Kleiner Perkins has shifted to a far longer term view of the world and thus, where technologies are going. 'Phenom's are, by virtue of their nature, short lived, whereas the pattern shown by clean-tech, green-tech, healthcare, particularly pandemics, point towards a more sustainable direction, or, in the worst case case scenario, utter disaster. Either way, KP will be ready and prepared. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiiconBeat.com DATE: 08/08/2006 11:44:22 PM that's fair. that wasn't intended to be critical. just an observation. you see sequoia investing in companies like YouTube, Meebo, and you're just not seeing Kliener as active. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: RYK EMAIL: rehan@india.com IP: 61.8.137.98 URL: http://bombaycurry.blogspot.com DATE: 08/09/2006 12:52:33 AM KPCB who? ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Peter Mills EMAIL: pmills4471z@hotmail.com IP: 70.134.105.38 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 12:54:47 AM too much time spent talking about kleiner perkins. remember go, onsale, @home, excite, and friendster? all kleiner perkins. not perfect batters by any means. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Houdini EMAIL: mw3eng@gmail.com IP: 65.214.154.131 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 10:27:17 AM I think "Jessica will be a great pandemic" .... Now if someone could tell me about the results from recent less publicized results of recent CDC testing indicating that cross fertilizing of the dangerous H5N1 with mammalian viruses resulted in NO human transmissible variants ( ie H5N1 passive genetic mutation did not result in the predicted scary pandemic virus variant ... YET ). OK it still is possible, but it looks far less likely than the fearmongers indicate... ie more mutations are needed than trivially attainable in a short time. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Omar EMAIL: omarseyal@gmail.com IP: 12.162.30.178 URL: http://omarseyal.blogspot.com DATE: 08/09/2006 01:53:35 PM Did you mean to write "Jessica Owens" in the title of the post? ... or perhaps you meant "Jessica Pwns"? ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/09/2006 02:16:35 PM Hmm, maybe I do need an editor. I've corrected. ----- PING: TITLE: Healthcare IPOs rock on -- are you in the wrong business? URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/09/healthcare_ipos_rock_on_are_you_in_the_wrong_business.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/09/2006 06:40:39 AM When was the last time a West Coast Internet/Web 2.0 company went public? Xtent, a Silicon Valley firm that develops a new kind of medical stent, has filed for a $103.5 million initial public offering of stock, and it would be the third largest IPO in... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Palm and Yelp partner on local mobile search for Treo STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/08/2006 10:38:29 PM ----- BODY:
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Yelp, the company that provides reviews of restaurants, bars and other locales in different cities, has teamed up with Palm to offer a useful local mobile search. We mention this because Yelp has profiled lots of San Francisco Bay Area locales, and this can be helpful for on-the-go yuppies with Treos. We tried it out, and it worked easily and simply in Fremont, when we were looking for pizza this evening. We went to Yelp Mobile (http://mobile.yelp.com) on our Treo 650 phone, put in our city and zip code, and chose pizza. First on the resulting list was Mission Pizza -- because it has thirteen raving reviews, and thus is the favored place in the region. Clearly marked, after the star-rating (1-5), number of reviews, address and phone number, was the mileage. Mission Pizza is 1.88 miles away, and isn't the closest. We zipped down and list, and the next pizza place is only a half mile away, but doesn't have great reviews. We were happy with this ordering. There's also a link to maps, which came up easily and without hitches. Nice execution. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Yelp, Palm, Treo ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Miss Megan EMAIL: 2megan@gmail.com IP: 24.215.238.20 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 04:53:45 PM Tried it on my TREO and it works like a charm! Probably going to save me from picking a bad place when I'm traveling. Nice tip! ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Huh? EMAIL: cmoldow@yahoo.com IP: 71.139.4.51 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 09:50:02 PM Worked great when I tried Indian in Mtn View. Then I tried Indian in Westport, CT and it said I was only .8 miles away from the closest spot. Not sure what it is using as the location of my phone, but it does not seem to be working too well. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: wade EMAIL: wagh33@hotmail.com IP: 24.82.171.252 URL: DATE: 08/15/2006 12:16:55 PM I was wondering if there is such a thing as a wifi card that I can use on my tro 650. Thanks, W. ----- PING: TITLE: Local URL: http://www.basketballstar.info/local/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Local DATE: 08/14/2006 08:56:40 AM users Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan is raising new LOCAL NEWSThousands of local residents endured a warm, humid F... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Healthcare IPOs rock on -- are you in the wrong business? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 06:39:14 AM ----- BODY:
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When was the last time a West Coast Internet/Web 2.0 company went public? Xtent, a Silicon Valley firm that develops a new kind of medical stent, has filed for a $103.5 million initial public offering of stock, and it would be the third largest IPO in life sciences this year, after Northstar of Seattle and Altus, of the East Coast. Silicon Valley venture firms, or at least firms with offices here, have invested in all of these, and are looking pretty smart. And comments to our last post that to appear to write off Kleiner Perkins' caution on Web 2.0 investing may be misplaced. When was last Web 2.0 IPO? ----- EXTENDED BODY: Xtent, of Menlo Park, seeks to raise up to $103 million in the IPO. Moreover, the company has not generated any revenue. It reported a net loss of $14 million in 2005, so it's not really that different from Web 2.0. ;-) Many of us chasing Web 2.0 may be in the right business. There are lots of little sales going on, as start-ups are gobbled up by folks like Yahoo, Google and News Corp. But being acquired has become like winning a lottery ticket. Think long and hard about where you want to work, because there's a lot of hype right now, and Silicon Valley is an echo chamber. Put another way, if you are not a tech geek, an awesome programmer or engineer, and you are in this game to work hard and make some good cash, you may be better off kicking the tires on a healthcare company -- check out its investors, read the literature -- because the less-sexy bet is often the better one. ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Web+2.0, Xtent, echo+chamber, Silicon+Valley ----- PING: TITLE: Roundup: Google's adult videos, Microsoft's "YouTube of gaming" initiative, and more URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/14/roundup_googles_adult_videos_microsofts_youtube_of_gaming_initiative_and_more.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/14/2006 01:24:21 PM Here's the latest news important for Silicon Valley: Google Checkout problems -- Google's new feature, which lets you pay with a virtual wallet similar to PayPal, isn't working too smoothly, with people complaining of week-long delays for payments to b... ----- PING: TITLE: Rock URL: http://www.musiczen.info/rock/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Rock DATE: 08/17/2006 10:21:13 AM News, interviews, audio, photos, message board, classifieds, and guestbook.2006 Chris Rock EnterprisesSee Seven S... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: AOL to offer free personalized email domains, on day when user's identity is exposed STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 08:54:48 AM ----- BODY:
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AOL today announced it is offering personalized email domains, which would be an interesting sell -- if it weren't for AOL's major screw-up on privacy lately. No thanks for now, AOL.
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Arnold (by NTY)
When AOL Research released the search entries of thousands of supposed anonymous users this past weekend, indie programmers went to work to parse the data and match it data with real people. Now the NYT has run a story about AOL Searcher No. 4417749, who it has discovered is a Georgian widow Thelma Arnold (see picture). You may think it is sick for the NYT to write the story -- for outing the poor person. We link to it only because the woman comes off maintaining her respect (she's revealed as a well-rounded, conscientious person). The NYT at least did a decent job of selecting who it was going to pick on. If this sort of disaster doesn't get out to the mainstream immediately, the privacy time-bomb will only get more dangerous. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: AOL+Research, Thelma+Arnold, AOL ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Emily Cyr EMAIL: emy_the_good_girl@hotmail.com IP: 74.106.100.237 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 05:27:41 PM Put AOL to the garbage and use Vazigo.com to keep your privacy!! Just a little problem, this search engin it's only in french for the moment.. ----- PING: TITLE: Roundup: EFF files complaint against AOL, Wiki.com sold for $3M, Segway URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/14/roundup_eff_files_complaint_against_aol_wikicom_sold_for_3m_segway.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/15/2006 10:14:02 AM AOL, by EFFSan Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation files complaint against AOL -- The complaint accuses AOL of breaking a promise to protect its subscribers' privacy when it posted about 19 million search requests made by 660,000 subscribers dur... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Bix, the online karaoke/dance competition site, launches STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 09:10:02 AM ----- BODY:
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Bix is a Palo Alto start-up that wants to feed off the popularity of American Idol. It has just launched. We mentioned it here when it was still in testing mode. It lets people compete in online karaoke, dance, and other contests. It kicks off with a $50,000 prize. The company says the idea is to let other companies sponsor these competitions, thereby building their brands within what Bix hopes will be a young, attractive user base. But as you may expect from a start-up, it launches this first $50,000 competition without a sponsor. One notable development at some of these recent Silicon Valley companies is how much experience they can draw on from local employees. In a press release (sorry, no link), the company boasts industry "veterans" from eBay, Symantec, AOL Netscape, BEA, Epinions, There.com, Intuit, Logitech, E*trade, A9 and Electronic Arts. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Nick EMAIL: nick@eslink.org IP: 129.215.164.114 URL: DATE: 08/11/2006 03:03:42 AM Have you seen the rights grab these guys want? Bix can exploit anything you send in - photos, songs, video etc for as long as they want, and any way they want. I suggest anyone thinking of entering any of their competitions read their T&Cs VERY carefully... ----- PING: TITLE: Competition URL: http://www.emartialarts.info/competition/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Competition DATE: 08/15/2006 08:13:48 AM and Canada. Entries will be screened by ISC and the finalists will be reviewed by wellknown professional judges.Academic Decathlon practice tests, ne... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Local engineers find way to lower computer network costs: DC power STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 10:01:58 AM ----- BODY:
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Data Center power
Engineers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and some technology company partners have demonstrated that DC power distribution in computer data centers can save up to 15 percent or more on energy consumption and cost. Better yet, it can be done with commonly available products. Could it be an example of what Silicon Valley venture capitalist Rob Day says here is the sort of business that could and should be done now? In other words, one that will help lower energy costs and do good by mitigating global warming? Rob says it again here this morning (he is practicing what he is preaching, judging from his latest investment). ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: DC+Power, Rob+Day ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Kevin Burton EMAIL: burtonator@gmail.com IP: 67.120.92.166 URL: http://tailrank.com DATE: 08/10/2006 04:03:14 AM DC power is a bit like the rotary engine. A great idea but you pretty much have to have a GOOD reason to use it. This is Rackable System's claim to fame. They can fit more machines in a rack if they use DC and save power. The problem is that NO ONE has DC... you seriously limit your choice of hardware if you use DC. Its becoming a problem though so maybe more people will install DC power... ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Thomas Edison EMAIL: te@ge.com IP: 67.161.39.16 URL: http://ge.com DATE: 08/10/2006 05:51:41 PM I've been saying this all along, DC is superior to AC. ----- PING: TITLE: Computer URL: http://www.accountingzone.info/computer/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Computer DATE: 08/13/2006 11:08:36 AM of video, 2.5 COMPUTER.COMCompaq offerings include Presario notebooks & laptops, desktops, monitors and computer accessories. Apple Video iPod 30G... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Is Bay Partners falling apart? Maybe, maybe not STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 10:36:01 AM ----- BODY:
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There is a story by Private Equity Week today that says Bay Partners, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has invested in companies like Riya, Wallop and Xactly, has lost half its six partners. It says the firm's investors, the "limited partners," or large institutions and universities which provide the firm with its money, are taking a "wait-and-see" approach to the developments. The story suggests investors may pull their money. However, the story does not quote any LPs, so we aren't able to confirm this. In fact, a few weeks ago we'd asked one of the partners who remains about rumors of the departing partners. He said everything was fine. One source close to the firm told us last night that the departing partners were under-performers, and that is why they left -- it is the brutal reality of venture capital. In which case, limited partners may support these measures. So perhaps the LPs are fine with this. We just don't know. Nothing confirmed yet. Bay's 2001 vintage fund, which it began investing after the Internet bubble burst, is in the red, but it still is holding several investments on its books, and it is too early to tell how it will do. And the firm's appointed leader is still in place. So it may have had only one, or two strikes so far... stay tuned. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Bay+Partners ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Kwoods EMAIL: kwoods@netboost.co IP: 63.192.132.250 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 11:58:44 AM Very interesting. Not surprising Neal is in denial about Noble's exit. I was in senior management and worked with Neal Dempsey from Bay and Mike Orsak from Worldview. Striking similarities in how companies were endangered by their capricious, manipulative actions. Companies poised for success found themselves in a hole; those already in a hole found it deepening. A welcome change: LPs are meeting directly with significant common shareholders of portfolio companies (entrepreneurs, CEOs, management) and the VC partnership every six or twelve months. They gain first-hand knowledge of partnership dynamics and the GPs performance and relationship with portfolio companies and management. Closer scrutiny of financial and professional performance. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/09/2006 12:10:10 PM Hey folks, I'm thinking seriously of removing comments that attack people with words like "capricious" and "manipulative," in particular when they have no backing. Comments are so much more powerful, and constructive, if they are rooted in fact. I'm all about us having a good discussion here, if it informs entrepreneurs and VCs about what practices or strategies are good and bad, but when the discussion degenerates into personal vendettas against people, it becomes pretty useless chatter. One or two facts emerged from the comments on the earlier post about WorldView: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/07/26/vc_firm_worldview_technology_partners_closes_shop_the_three_strikes_rule.html , but the personal junk made it almost impossible for people to weed out. Thanks. Let's make this a great site for discussion! ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Mojo EMAIL: mojo@intel.com IP: 63.192.132.250 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 12:45:11 PM I worked at NetBoost, a Bay Partners-funded company. It was a lucky profit for Bay as company would have gone under if Intel hadn't acquired us during the bubble. My colleagues had a negative experience for factual reasons hard to explain quickly. The usual tricks found in many other situations too: VC recaps, forced financings on coercive terms, washing out other shareholders, acceleration and guaranteed payouts for select executives and everyone else gets pennies, more. Some VCs do this more than others and it might seem they are being picked on when this is discussed. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: JB EMAIL: jb@gmail.com IP: 63.192.132.250 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 05:15:44 PM Succession at venture firms is seldom successful. Sequoia and KP seemed to have managed well one transition where IVP, Asset Mgt, Weiss,Peck&Greer failed. Vanguard Ventures has a storied history. The founder Mr Gill retired. Poor IRRs, difficulty raising their next fund aside (they've been at it for over a year now) makes it likely they won't make it. There's a story there about VCs unable to practice what they expect of their portfolio companies. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: CerealEnterpreneur EMAIL: cerealoats@hotmail.com IP: 71.130.227.50 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 10:11:28 AM Matt, Kinda ironic that you are asking people to refrain from making personal comments; after all it was you sometime ago that blogged the Joanna Rees story sometime ago while making pointed remarks about "the need to know such information" for investors and entrepreneurs alike, wasn't it :-) ? While I agree with you on the point that people should generally refrain from making personal attacks, one would say there is also a need to know the general opinion/perception of people that have dealt with these venture folks.... ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Some Concerned LPs EMAIL: lps@gmail.com IP: 63.192.132.250 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 01:01:33 PM Negative comments about a partner seem adequately balanced by the positive comments about partners from those same firms. Seems sufficient proof SiliconBeat articles and the comments they draw are balanced and fair. It'll be sad if SiliconBeat becomes a shill for venture firm/partner PR demanding supportive facts and alleging "personal vendetta" if comments are negative and assuming positive comments are fact, don't need supportive data, and (patently evident) self-serving agendas are to be ignored. Here are some voices saying: sunshine is the best disinfectant so please, no changes! SiliconValley (entrepreneurs, employees, limited partners) benefit from the valuable insights SiliconBeat and the comments provide into the world of venture capital ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/10/2006 01:19:15 PM Guys, perhaps I wasn't clear. Criticism is fine, but why not back it up with some real specifics so we can understand what you mean by "capricious" or "malicious"? If these actions endangered companies, can you tell us which companies, and how? I'm trying to say that those facts are much more helpful and constructive than vague blanket character assasination. And I hope you will see a difference between that, and the reporting referred to above about VSP and the Joanna Rees. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: AJ EMAIL: aj74@gmail.com IP: 66.122.34.11 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 01:54:24 PM Matt, Can you find out the impact of lawsuit against Crescendo by its current LP Starling International Management for gross negligence and misrepresentation? It is a fact and the question is will it be strike 4 against the firm for its upcoming fund raise? ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Some Concerned LPs EMAIL: lps@gmail.com IP: 63.192.132.250 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 02:14:18 PM Matt, prior comments to your articles on Worldview and Bay Partners from us and others contain the details you request: names of some companies endangered by a partner's actions, specific acts involved, outcome. E.g., cram-downs, wash-outs, engineered crises and ousters of founders/executives to force financing and recapitalizations, carve-outs and guaranteed payouts for compliant executives that in any society will be considered a bribe, etc. There are plenty more tricks used and they will emerge over time as more LPs note the effect of these practices and pull back their support to certain firms/partners that seem predisposed to these practices, and entrepreneurs and employees learn more about the track record of the firm/partner. Hopefully SiliconBeat will continue to provide the forum to discuss these though in some cases, as with VSP and maybe some other firms/partners, it might be the court of law. LPs for over two+ decades we like and continue to support firms where the GPs are partners to us and the startups, through the ups and downs of the economy. We stand by this and earlier comments. We'll not hesitate to pull back from those firms/partners that hurt our returns, screw up companies, and expect management fees to support inadequate, sub-standard performance. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/10/2006 02:22:14 PM Dear "Some Concerned LPs," I agree with a lot of that, and trust me, I think there needs to be more sunlight. For example, I've called and emailed Washington state, and Oak Investment, four times each, asking why Washington decided to invest in Oak despite the fact that the firm is the red on its recent funds. Not a single response. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Some Concerned LPs EMAIL: lps@gmail.com IP: 63.192.132.250 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 03:13:28 PM Matt: Reasuring to hear SiliconBeat will continue to provide the forum for comments about the venture world, critical as well as positive. The clubby VC world is opening up and over time, as public scrutiny increases with good journalism, you'll find LPs loosening up and talking to you. We'll also suggest you speak to the entreprenurs, founding employees/management, and early investors of startups. LPs are beginning to do that and find a high degree of correlation between their comments about GPs and firms and LPs' own observations, experience, and IRRs. Reliable early warning signals, excellent predictors of partner/fund/firm performance, and more valuable if the startups encountered business crises highlighting the GP's code of professional conduct. We wish we performed that background diligence earlier and regularly, as it'd have revealed what we found and know now: partner dysfunctionality at Worldview and the predatory conduct of one partner there that hurt our returns, risked the companies, and endangered the firm. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: RK EMAIL: rk_mazda@hotmail.com IP: 71.131.40.191 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 06:10:18 PM Matt, Based on all the input you are getting on VC's, It is probably good idea to start a sort of rating system on each VC firm & partners. This will help entrepreneurs to stay clear of Enron grade of VC's... ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Matt Marshall EMAIL: mmarshall@mercurynews.com IP: 63.80.159.129 URL: http://www.SiliconBeat.com DATE: 08/10/2006 06:35:57 PM RK, I've been thinking about that. If anyone out there would like to help me do this (I'm pretty, ahem, short-staffed), shoot me a note! Matt ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Some Concerned LPs EMAIL: lps@gmail.com IP: 63.192.132.250 URL: DATE: 08/10/2006 08:13:49 PM A JD Powers-like rank-and-grade of the quality of partners and firms. What a good idea! It'll be useful to LPs and entrepreneurs while limiting Enron or Worldcom-like crimes of omission and commission in the venture world. Shareholders (employees, investors) of Worldview portfolio companies affected by a partner's actions and exploring legal recourse have our strong support. We'll share our information and experience, including the partner's misrepresentations and other breaches of fiduciary duties, with them for justice. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Startups.in EMAIL: mail@jdoe.net IP: 69.228.237.222 URL: http://Startups.in DATE: 08/13/2006 04:06:06 PM Probably this pointer can be of some help to get started. http://vcratings.thedealblogs.com/ NagB /at/ Startups.in ----- -------- AUTHOR: Michael Bazeley TITLE: Do you code? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 12:30:54 PM ----- BODY: We interrupt this news blog...The Mercury News is looking for a programmer/web developer who can do ongoing, periodic contract work with us, everything from quickie jobs to more involved projects. The right person is familiar with XML and the usual LAMP stuff - ie: MySQL, PHP and, in this case, Python. Bonus points if they're familiar with Django and WordPress. We'd prefer someone in the SF Bay Area. There's a chance it could turn into full-time work down the road. If you, or someone you know, is interested, shoot an email to Mike Bazeley at code@mercextra.com. (Note: Please don't leave contact info in the comments section. Thanks.) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Jason Schramm EMAIL: jason.schramm@gmail.com IP: 68.38.123.176 URL: http://www.jasonblogs.com DATE: 08/09/2006 01:11:40 PM I'm very interested, unfortunately I'm not currently located in California. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Aaron Brazell EMAIL: aaron@technosailor.com IP: 68.55.221.250 URL: http://www.technosailor.com DATE: 08/09/2006 01:55:02 PM Heh. Will work for relocation expenses. :p ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: alan smithee EMAIL: loser@loser.com IP: 198.205.32.94 URL: DATE: 08/09/2006 03:39:46 PM so, if i can't follow simple directions, will you still hire me? ----- PING: TITLE: Code URL: http://www.onlinecollegegrad.info/code/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Code DATE: 08/13/2006 06:13:35 AM Go to " My plyalists choose your playlist and click " Copy to clipboard " button.Lawrence Lessigs views on how the a... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Harvard pulls plug on ITU Ventures STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 04:48:15 PM ----- BODY:
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Continuing the story on venture capital woes, we've just found out that Harvard University has pulled the plug on another venture fund, this time ITU Ventures III. The firm raised its $120 million third fund last year to invest in technology companies. But Harvard saw three people leave, and decided it was "strike three." Harvard, the lead investor in the fund, has sent an email to other investors about its decision to pull out, and so some of these others also seem to be pulling out. We may be sitting at the center of the venture capital universe here in Silicon Valley, but elite East Coast universities such as Harvard and Yale make many of the life and death decisions about venture firms. The pressure by big investors on venture firms is largely an unwritten story. If you are pitching a VC, and his eyes look shifty, don't take it personally. Realize he may be under even more pressure than you are! We reached co-founder Chad Brownstein, who said the firm itself will remain open, but that he couldn't comment on the status of the third fund for confidentiality reasons. "Everyone's happy," he said. "The firm is doing great, we're moving along." ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- PING: TITLE: Crescendo's two strikes, and why it matters URL: http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/08/16/crescendos_two_strikes_and_why_it_matters.html IP: 63.247.138.14 BLOG NAME: SiliconBeat DATE: 08/16/2006 08:28:28 PM Crescendo Ventures is another struggling Silicon Valley venture firm. Some are asking whether Crescendo should bother even trying to raise a new fund of money to invest. In our assessment, the firm has got two strikes against it. The third pitch is co... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Viacom scoops up Atom for $200M -- finally STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/09/2006 06:39:14 PM ----- BODY:
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Viacom, the giant media company that was left chomping at the bit when rival News Corp gobbled up MySpace, is instead buying the lower-profile San Francisco company, Atom Entertainment. (Update: Here is the Mercury News story about the deal.) Atom will become part of Viacom's MTV Networks. Atom is a holding of four online properties for casual games, short films and video (Atom films, Shockwave.com, etc), formerly known as AtomShockwave. It was formed in 2001, with the merger of Atom and Shockwave. And there is a lesson here. The company fired 120 of its employees back in the gloomy days of 2001, and closed most of its offices. The remaining 50 employees fought on. The cycles change, just as the sun will always come up, and now finally someone is interested in them. Finally there is an "exit" for these guys. The backers of these companies included Intel Capital, J.P. Morgan Entertainment Partners, Macromedia Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Transcosmos. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Kelly Smith EMAIL: kelly@curiousoffice.com IP: 67.160.84.56 URL: http://www.curiousoffice.com DATE: 08/09/2006 11:12:30 PM Great job Mika! Persistance pays! ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Top VC firm Sequoia adds Carter, Harrison -- going late stage STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/10/2006 06:19:26 AM ----- BODY:
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Carter
Sequoia Capital remains one of the best, if not the best performing Silicon Valley venture firm. It was an early backer of Google, Yahoo and many more big hits. So we are "Sequoia-ologists," students of Sequoia's every move -- just as we are Kleinerologists. Thus, we report that Sequoia Capital has added two new partners from Boston-based investment firm Summit Partners: Scott Carter, who prior to Summit was an ibanker at JPMorgan and staffer at the U.S. Senate, and Alexander Harrison, who prior to Summit, was also an ibanker, doing research at Goldman, Sachs & Co. covering communication chip companies. ----- EXTENDED BODY: Both Carter and Harrison will focus on software and services investments.
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Harrison
There is a common thread in these recent hires. Between Sequoia's recent addition of former UBS ibanker Chris Olsen, and Kleiner Perkins' addition of Jessica Owens , a former ibanker at Robertson Stephens, they all are investment bankers. So what does that tell us? Well, VentureWire reported (subscription required) this morning that Carter and Harrison were brought on to help find deals for Sequoia's $861M later stage fund, Capital Growth Fund III -- and the firm's largest ever. Investing in more mature companies requires different skills. It requires more focus on deal-structuring and term-setting -- traits of bankers. These new young hires are not former entrepreneurs, which is a trait many early stage VC firms search for. Are these firms going later stage, or are they trying to do both? Kleiner Perkins' focus on "pandemic" investments even resulted in Kleiner's investment in public companies. Late-stage is a nice place to be, financially -- if you do well. The firm has to put more money to work (because investments in more mature companies demand it), which means investors will give the firm more money to invest. And ideally, it means larger fees and profits in the venture capitalists' pockets. Which is why this area is hot right now, and why even U2's Bono trying his hand over at Elevation Partners. At least this time the firms are hiring people to help. Remember, Sequoia's first go-round with this strategy didn't work out too well. ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: Sequoia, Alexander+Harrison, Scott+Carter, Jessica+Owens, Chris+Olsen, Kleiner+Perkins ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Traveller EMAIL: traveller@manidatravel.com IP: 86.124.102.41 URL: http://www.manidatravel.com/tlbdir/index.php DATE: 08/10/2006 10:57:10 AM Great acquisitions for Sequoia, Carter and Harrison will be very important for the firm's future business for sure. ----- PING: TITLE: Best URL: http://www.computersandhardware.info/best/ IP: 67.15.76.52 BLOG NAME: Best DATE: 08/13/2006 07:15:42 PM Best Buys online source for electronics, televisions, DVD players, home audio, car audio, computers, French defenders rarely fi... ----- -------- AUTHOR: Matt Marshall TITLE: Web stats are broken -- so you'd better have brass knuckles STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 1 DATE: 08/10/2006 10:30:30 AM ----- BODY:
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Juggling statistics
Statistics on the Internet is like water for a flower. You need them for much of the Web to survive. But independent third-party tracking of traffic to Web sites, and of user clicks on Web page links, is deeply flawed, developments this week at Google and elsewhere underscored. There doesn't seem to be any remedy in sight. ----- EXTENDED BODY: Web sites that rely on advertising -- including some the most poplar, such as Google, Yahoo, MySpace and YouTube -- get paid based on the amount of traffic to their site and the number click-throughs on their ads. Without accurate data, advertisers have no idea how much they should be paying. The only reason the system isn't breaking down, and advertisers aren't pulling out, is because they have no choice but to play. They are taking informed guesses, based on the shoddy statistics available. And Google et al. are using every strategy they can find to deal with this problem. We were reading TechCrunch's wobbly efforts to pinpoint whether traffic to bookmarking company Del.icio.us is climbing, flattening, or plunging. In the end, TechCrunch had to give up. One seeming reliable statistics vendor Comscore is trumped by another, Hitwise. (Update: Here's a