Valleywag: Schadenfreude

Party at Larry's house!

Owen Thomas — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:00:00 PDT

We hear there's some kind of party happening tonight at the Pacific Heights mansionette of Larry Ellison, Oracle's multibillionaire CEO. He's not in town, so it should really be a rager. The occasion: The 10th anniversary of NetSuite's founding. Our invite was lost in the mail, but we're glad to hear Ellison's still doing his part for the local economy — especially considering how he just lost $6.6 billion in the stock market — more than any other tech CEO, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Friendster founder still pretty bitter

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:40:00 PDT

I like how New York Times reporter Brad Stone ends his doom-and-gloom trend piece in today's paper — with a quote from a man who has more reason to be paranoid and jaded than most, failed Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams. Abrams, who now runs a six-person startup called Socializr, says he's prepared to “hunker down if things go bad," a scenario he's certainly familiar with. Then like some man on the corner wearing a sandwich board, Abrams rails against all what Stone describes as the "uninspired, copycat entrepreneurs" of Silicon Valley who are "obsessed with the internal gossip and minutiae of the industry."

“The economy is tanking and people are arguing about whether they should go to Demo or TechCrunch,” Abrams told the Times. “Few companies sound like they are breaking new ground. It’s like, ‘Here is Twitter for dogs.’ And people still think they are going to get rich by being a blogger.” Hm. Twitter for dogs does sound pretty lame. But then, so did "Friendster for college students."

Schwab held $85 million in bad Lehman, WaMu debt

Jackson West — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:20:00 PDT

Venerable San Francisco financial firm Charles Schwab just took an $85 million hit, writing off some debt it owned in Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. On the Old Money quarter-mile, Montgomery Street, a small electronic ticker from Schwab offers a barometer. After yesterday's 777.68 plunge, the year-to-date number from the Dow Jones index has gone from -17.1 percent when I walked by on Friday to -20.5 percent yesterday afternoon. I've updated the photo from Google Street View to correctly reflect current trends. [San Jose Mercury News]

Facebook backer Peter Thiel loses almost $1 billion in a month

Owen Thomas — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:00:00 PDT

Everyone's so gentle with Peter Thiel, the fabulously wealthy Facebook investor and hedge-fund manager. Even Bloomberg: The news service recently reported that his $7 billion firm, Clarium Capital Management, saw its funds drop 13 percent in August, thanks to a costly bet against a rallying dollar. We'll do the math, since Bloomberg was too polite: That's roughly $900 million gone in a month — a loss bigger than the paper value of his 5 percent stake in Facebook. Thiel just lost orders of magnitude more money than most of us might ever dream of making.

The loss comes after a stunning track record of the firm's biggest monthly loss, beating an 11 percent drop in March 2004. Strangely, this topic went uncovered in TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's interview of Thiel on Monday. Arrington let Thiel repeat, unchallenged, his assertion that there is no bubble in technology. To which we would add: Perhaps so. But there may be a bubble in a certain hedge fund. (Photo by VentureBeat)

Facebook insiders selling at discount prices

Paul Boutin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:20:00 PDT

Days after a Facebook plan to let employees sell some of their shares leaked out, Valley stockbroker Laurence Albukerk told BusinessWeek that "he knows of at least nine people who have sold or are trying to sell Facebook shares," and estimates dozens more. But three of them were looking to dump shares at a $5 billion valuation — one-third the $15 billion suggested by Microsoft's investment last October. Two other firms bought shares at a discount $3.75 billion valuation, below the floor supposedly set by Facebook's program. Why the discrepancy? Partly because employees have common shares, not Microsoft's preferred shares. And partly because as eager as Microsoft was to buy into the hot social network last fall, Facebookers are now eager to sell. (Photo by Tim Parkinson)

Better Business Bureau: Don't do business with Google

Owen Thomas — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:00:00 PDT

Wall Street's not the only American institution down on Google today. The Better Business Bureau rates the search giant "unsatisfactory." Why? On its record, 2 out of 331 complaints over the past three years were listed as unresolved. And for this, the BBB deems Google "unsatisfactory"? We can just imagine Googlers' complaints: "How unfair! How bureaucratic! We demand to know the algorithm that has generated this result!" Funny, they sound exactly like Google's customers.

12 things that cost more than Bear Stearns

Jordan Golson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:40:57 PDT

Late Sunday night, JP Morgan Chase agreed to buy cash-strapped investment bank Bear Stearns for $2 a share, or $236 million. Last week, the company was valued at more than $14 billion. This is one of the swiftest corporate falls in history. But just how bad was it? Here's a list of things that cost more than the century-old Bear Stearns.

The latest winning Powerball jackpot: $275 million
The salaries of the six cheapest Major League Baseball teams: $242.9 million
Microsoft's investment in Facebook: $240 million
The Houston Texans football team: $700 million
Tom Perkins's 289.1' sailing yacht Maltese Falcon: up to $300 million
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich's forthcoming 482.6' motor yacht, the Eclipse: $300 million
David Beckham's contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy: $250 million
IM startup Meebo's desired valuation: $250 million
Alex Rodriguez's contract with the New York Yankees: $275 million
A brand new Airbus A380: $319 million
The most expensive building ever sold — 666 Fifth Avenue, New York City: $1.8 billion
The divorce settlement Heather Mills wanted from Paul McCartney: $250 million (Photo by AP/Mark Lennihan)

Google layoffs a-comin'

Paul Boutin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:12:14 PDT

Buried in CEO Eric Schmidt's blog post about the company's greenlighted acquisition of DoubleClick:

As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well. We know that DoubleClick is built on the strength of its people. For this reason we'll strive to minimize the impact of this process on all of our clients and employees.

Yahoo bid costs Gates $3.8 billion, Forbes richest man title

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:20:47 PST

Forbes magazine reports that, worth $58 billion, Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest man. He's the third-richest. Although more than half of his wealth is invested outside Microsoft, Gates can likely blame the bad news on his oldest buddy. Steve Ballmer's unsolicited bid for Yahoo tanked Gates's net worth. Between the day before Ballmer announced the bid and February 11, when Forbes finished its accounting, Microsoft shares fell 15 percent. (Photo by Esparta)

Tech titans out $21.4 billion so far this year

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:00:47 PST

Missed earnings, recession fears, and dodgy deals are eviscerating the stock portfolios of tech titans like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt. Here's the damage.

Bill Gates is out $6 billion since the beginning of the year and $3 billion since Microsoft bid on Yahoo
Steve Ballmer's net worth is down $3 billion since 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has lost $400 million in six weeks.
Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are both down $5 billion so far this year.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt lost $2 billion this year.

The ironic twist? The founders of layoff-plagued takeover target Yahoo, David Filo and Jerry Yang, are having the best 2008 in the bunch, up $500 million and $350 million respectively.

Mac guy Justin Long drops his iPhone in a pool

Jordan Golson — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:19:48 PST

Justin Long, the sci-fi actor who also plays "Mac" in Apple's TV commercials, dropped his precious iPhone into a swimming pool according to celebrity blog Out All Night. "I do [have an iPhone], but it fell in a swimming pool, so it's a little broken right now," says Long. That's too bad, Justin. Maybe you and Digg founder Kevin Rose can commiserate — after all, his iPhone got a little broken too. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Googlers stranded at the airport during company trip to Disneyland

Jordan Golson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:35:52 PST

A tipster writes from the San Jose airport:

Google has taken over san jose airport as they all go to disneyland for their company trip. Everyone is in love with them. Best moment...all flights are currently delayed so naturally the quick thinking googlera are buzzing gate agents trying to jump on other flights. Thankfully the airlines are not allowing googlera to change their group assigned tickets. I LOVE watching googlers argue in earnest only to be denied by the polite agent who lets escape a wry smile after each denial, much to the pleasure of nearby nongooglers. What ... Sergey's plane is too busy running NASA experiments to help out?

Larry and Sergey lost $10 billion in less than a month

Jordan Golson — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:12:49 PST

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin collectively own 57,806,476 shares of Google stock. One month ago, Google's stock was trading at $710.84 — putting Larry and Sergey's combined holdings at $41.1 billion. That'll buy you a few party planes, right? Not so fast. In the past month, Google's stock has fallen almost every day, with the biggest drop coming today. The one-day loss for Larry and Sergey? Almost $2.5 billion, bringing their total losses to $10 billion in just under a month. I guess I won't complain about the $120 I lost at the poker tables with Jason Calacanis last month. (Photo by AP/Ben Margot)