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Posts Tagged “

Venture Capital

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silicon valley users guide

VC advice: The best way to ask for money is to actually ask for money

After reading a long email from a wantrepreneur who never gets around to asking for funding, VC blogger Fred Wilson relays the following advice from a friend on how to close a deal:
The best advice my old man gave, and the advice he drilled most emphatically and repeatedly was, ASK FOR THE ORDER. You'd be amazed how many people talk to customers forever and never actually say ask for the order.
Fellow VC blogger and Half.com founder Josh Kopelman, advises, however, that "the way you ask is just as important as asking." Kopelman's anecdotal advice in 100 words: More »

7:00 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
845 views, 4 comments

Latest by matto: I had no idea RHI was into online advertising. more »

venture capital

Spot Runner raises $51 million for "war chest"

Spot Runner, the Los Angeles-based TV-advertising startup, is just the latest to follow past rounds of fundraising with another quick grab for money. The company has raised $51 million from a group of international media investors — not the Sand Hill Road club, but corporate names like Grupo Televisa and LVMH. Why raise more money now? None of the entrepreneurs raising outsized rounds are uncouth enough to say that they are raising money simply because they can. Spot Runner CEO Nick Grouf says the company is "raising a war chest." Sure, Google may eventually stop fumbling around and find an approach to brokering television ads that works. But one has to think Grouf is less concerned with an all-out battle against the armies of Mountain View, and more with making hay while the sun shines. (Photo by Glenn Koenig/Los Angeles Times)

1:07 AM on Wed May 7 2008
By Owen Thomas
878 views, 1 comment

Latest by random_play: Well, we do have a nuclear winter coming. more »

rumormonger

Report: LinkedIn seeks funding to set value at $1 billion

LinkedIn has hired investment bank Allen & Co. to help it raise a round of funding that would set the company's value at $1 billion. Last fall, LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye said the company would sell itself outright only for a "a lot more" than $1 billion. In January, he told a reporter "an IPO is by far and away the most likely outcome." But that was January. While the public markets are rough, private equity remains flush, making it a safer bet for raising money. We hear LinkedIn takes a tidy profit, selling advertisers on its 41-year-old, six-figure-making average user and earning $45 CPMs on ads in the process.

8:40 AM on Tue May 6 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
475 views, Comment

LinkedIn board raising more cash At careerist social network LinkedIn, a marathon board meeting has sparked speculation about a new financing round. LinkedIn, often mentioned as an IPO candidate, has raised $27.5 million to date. [VentureBeat]

1 comment

venture capital

Private equity fees up 83 percent since 2003

Private equity management fees, the percentage these fancy financiers charge merely to hold onto the riches' money, reached $33 billion in 2007, up 83 percent from $18 billion in 2003. Venture funds charged investors $6.8 billion during the year. These fees do not, of course, include the fund managers' share of profits. They're just a nice slice of a very large compensatory pie. London-based Private Equity Intelligence says the fees leave investors irked — 80 percent of them have turned down deals due to high fees, they say. But it doesn't take a Stanford MBA to tell you 83 percent growth indicates there's more demand than supply for what these people sell.

1:20 PM on Mon May 5 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
180 views, 3 comments

Latest by yahoogler: "The rapid growth of private equity assets under management has pushed fees higher." The writer does not cite the value of assets under management in 2003 vs the value of assets under management today, so there's not much context here... But, yeah, more »

death of print

Forbes reporter leaves to join VC firm

In the newsrooms of Silicon Valley, they call it "going native." In New York, media is a semirespectable profession, and the skyscraper snobs of the world's leading infotainment conglomerates assume that those who drop out for lesser arts like PR just couldn't cut it. Not so here. Erika Brown, who covered venture capital for Forbes, is leaving the magazine to join Matrix Partners as the VC firm's director of marketing and business development. (Biz dev? I can't picture Brown, a snappy dresser, in blue shirts and pleated khakis.) Did Brown parlay her contacts from reporting into a new job? It's hard to imagine she didn't. And one can hardly blame her. The death of magazines may or may not be imminent. But serving time in a distant bureau of a magazine which is mostly diffident about the Valley is a career killer. Brown's note to friends: More »

10:20 AM on Fri May 2 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,540 views, 9 comments

Latest by eric starkman: Owen,FYI: Erika Brown worked in PR before going into journalism. I will let your readers decide whether her career has been on an upward or downward trajectory. more »

Kleiner Perkins closes $500 million green growth fund John Doerr has closed a half-billion dollars in capital for the new Kleiner Perkins cleantech growth fund, with buddy Al Gore kicking in some dough from his Generation Investment deal. [CNet] (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Comment

venture capital

Time Warner follows Bebo buy with Meebo stake, rhyming dictionary in hand

Instant messaging service Meebo will today announce $25 million in funding from JAFCO Ventures, KTB Ventures and Time Warner, which spent $850 million to buy social network Bebo in March. Meebo founder Seth Sternberg only began looking for more funding that same month, hiring Montgomery & Co and hoping to raise $25 million to $30 million to set the company's value at $250 million. Today's funding round values the company at $200 million, the WSJ reports. Last year, funding valued Meebo at $90 million. But the real question is, how exactly does anyone expect to make money with instant messaging?

8:00 AM on Thu May 1 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
261 views, 4 comments

Latest by random_play: Meebo, meebo, bo-bebo banana-fana fo-feebo fee-fi-mo-eebo Meebo! + Watch video more »

social networks

Chinese Facebook clone Xiaonei raises more funding than Facebook

Masayoshi Son is the kingmaker of the Asian Internet. His latest coronation: Xiaonei, a Chinese social network whose name translates to "on campus" and whose look and feel closely mirrors Facebook's. Son's Softbank and other investors have put $430 million into Xiaonei's parent, Oak Pacific Interactive, in a deal which values OPI at more than $1 billion. This has to worry executives at Facebook, which has raised less money — albeit while selling far less of the company to investors than Xiaonei has. More »

5:00 PM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,019 views, 12 comments

Latest by Fidel on the Roof: So what if it is a complete copy. Same crap as it brings the same utility (or lack thereof) to the user. Not an original idea. Good for them! more »

rumormonger

Viacom offers $10 million to buy music blog aggregator Hype Machine?

A tipster tells us Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin has a "$10 million Viacom offer floating around." Hype Machine, a website which aggregates music uploaded to blogs, has grown 125 percent in the last year, with 127,000 monthly visitors, according to Compete.com. Another source familiar with Volodkin's plans for Hype Machine can't confirm Viacom's offer, but said an acquisition would be the next logical step. Volodkin has been very careful to avoid taking venture capital, "despite VCs going hard after him," this second source tells us. Update: A third source says Hype Machine has been sold, but not for $10 million and not to Viacom. Whoever the buyer is, the sale rumor, if true, captures a frustrating state of affairs for technology's financiers. More »

3:20 PM on Tue Apr 29 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
2,527 views, 11 comments

Latest by jasonoliver: all about the meta meta in web 2.0 more »

ipo

Rackspace applies for a $400 million IPO

Managed-hosting service Rackspace has filed with the New York Stock Exchange to raise $400 million in an initial public offering. Investors Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and company chairman Graham Weston stand to profit from the exit. Rackspace reported $18 million in 2007 profits on $362 million revenues. We called the IPO in January, but we're not sold on its merits. More »

2:00 PM on Tue Apr 29 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
599 views, 3 comments

clips

VCs tell founders how not to get fired

In today's Tech Ticker episode, venture capitalists Sharon Wienbar and Pascal Levensohn explain to Sarah Lacy how entrepreneurs can avoid getting fired during a downturn. We watched and took notes. Below, the clip and notes on the VCs' six essential points: More »

8:40 AM on Tue Apr 29 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
2,370 views, 18 comments

nerdfight

Sarah Lacy's Twitter snit

Having made her name on a cover story about Digg's Kevin Rose and a $60 million fortune he has yet to make, tech columnist Sarah Lacy has paused to sniff dismissively at (questionably accurate) reports that Twitter has raised $20 million in venture capital. Lacy has a point: It should not surprise anyone that Twitter is raising venture capital; there are few obvious companies which can use the money, and Twitter, whose microblogging service is growing in popularity but not, measurably, in revenues, is one of them. More »

2:40 PM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,479 views, 8 comments

Latest by BobDope: yo unless she fails out of her bra I ain't interested more »

venture capital

SaysMe latest startup to flirt with the curse of Ashton Kutcher

Startup SaysMe, which will produce generic, re-brandable commercial video spots for local businesses and small-town politicians, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a group of venture firms, including Katalyst Films, home of male model-turned-VC Ashton Kutcher, as well as Intel and Prime Capital's funds. SaysMe's most direct competitor is Spot Runner, another production house which makes stock ads, customized to feature small businesses and placed on network and cable television. It can't possibly have a worse business plan than VOIP hardware maker Ooma, another startup anointed by Kutcher, can it?

10:40 AM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By Jackson West
644 views, Comment

comebacks

Razorfish founder Jeff Dachis returns, trading New York for Texas

New York entrepreneur Jeff Dachis has landed $50 million from Austin Ventures to fund a comeback — but not as a New York entrepreneur. He's trading a 212 office line for one in the 512, to launch a new company promising to bring the Web 2.0 revolution to businesses. Despite the change in venue, and the new version number, that sounds eerily like the premise of Razorfish a decade ago — the digital consultancy which Dachis launched, and whose value he watched plummet from $5.5 billion at the height of the 2000 bubble to $8.2 million in a 2002 fire sale. So what is Dachis's company, if not simply Razorfish 2.0? More »

9:40 AM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,579 views, 19 comments

Latest by jeffdachis: @Tiltawhorl: Actually, I was thinking more like Langston Hughes meets H.G. Wells. more »

venture capital

While wantrepreneurs worry about a recession, it's a great time to be a VC

During an economic downturn, Scale Venture Partners' Sharon Wienbar explains to Sarah Lacy in this excerpt from a Yahoo Tech Ticker interview, "the strong get stronger, the weak get weaker, the strong buy the weak." Which means that while founding developers are off waiting for their $300 economic stimulus check and trying figuring out a way to make $.92 CPMs on ads on their Facebook apps, life is totally awesome right now for venture capitalists. Another VC, Pascal Levensohn, agrees: "The risk premium is coming back. This is a great time. It imposes discipline on entrepreneurs." In case you needed a translation, "discipline" is VCspeak for "getting ripped off."

9:00 AM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
357 views, 3 comments

Latest by Rick: This is the most nonsense I've seen in a while. Now isn't a good time to be a VC and even if it were, these two nobodies are so shitty that it wouldn't make much of a difference. 100% wishful thinking more »

lightspeed venture partners

VC invests $4 million to get into $0.92 CPM Facebook-app business

Serious Business founders Siqi Chen and Alex Le created the Facebook application Friends For Sale, which has over 550,000 daily active users. On Friday, the pair announced they'd landed $4 million in a first round of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. The investment gave the company a "healthy double-digit" valuation, according to Inside Facebook's Justin Smith. (For Chen and Le's sake, we hope there are another six digits after those two.) "We're already profitable, and the investment is going to help us get a head start," Le told Smith. Impressive, if true. Smith recently compiled a list of the CPMs, or cost to display an ad 1,000 times, Facebook developers earn on their applications. The average came in at $0.92. One app earns as much as $4.78 per thousand views and another just $.04.

8:00 AM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
541 views, 4 comments

Latest by Figaro: >One app earns as much as $4.78 per thousand views This must be a guaranteed revenue source... or a scam of some sort. No way that they can be making that much off facebook. Not even facebook makes that much! more »