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Sequoia Capital
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You're doing it wrong
LinkedIn needs to sex up its pitch if they want a Facebook-sized valuation
LinkedIn's $1 billion valuation certainly seems low only when compared to the stratospheric $15 billion Facebook is worth on paper. One reason why is because, frankly, college kids are sexy — as the VCs in the announcement infomercial prove irrefutably, business professional who use LinkedIn are not. So if you're going to announce a new round of venture capital with a video on YouTube, why not make it a music video? The kids love music videos. Hence, Valleywag presents "The Upside" featuring Jeffrey "Sand Hizzy" Glass, David "D-Cup" Sze, David "Dollar Billz" Cowan and Mark "Make Money" Kvamme over beats from EPMD. Recognize.
online video
Will Ferrell's FunnyorDie takes HBO for up to $10 million
Comedy-video startup FunnyorDie, a project cofounded by yuksters Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy with Sequoia Capital's Mark Kvamme, has sold an equity stake to HBO of less than 10 percent. (FunnyorDie was valued at $100 million after the last round of funding; the new valuation, and HBO's exact investment, wasn't disclosed — if you know, please tell us.) In exchange, HBO also gets five hours of programming from Ferrell, McKay, Henchy and recent addition Judd Apatow. More »
caption contest
Serge Faguet is not happy to see you
Remember Serge Faguet, the fired CEO of Sequoia-backed startup TokBox? He's got a startup in stealth mode, according to LinkedIn, but from the looks of this photo sent by a tipster, he's not working especially hard. (Faguet's at left, pointing, in the blue shirt.) Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments. The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: "You said there would be girls here," by our own Fake Michael Arrington.
history lessons
How Mark Zuckerberg missed his meeting with Sequoia
Sequoia Capital never invested in Facebook. But Sequoia partner Mark Kvamme said at an ad conference today that the venture firm did take a meeting with founder Mark Zuckerberg early on. Problem was, according to Kvamme, Zuckerberg had forgotten about the appointment and woke up just before it started. So Zuck showed up at the meeting and made his pitch wearing pajamas. Sequoia passed — perhaps understandably, but definitely unfortunately, Kvamme told the crowd. "You kind of have to look past those things," he said. One could say the same about Kvamme's rewriting of history. We hear it's Facebook that passed on Sequoia — mostly due to a feud between the VC firm and Facebook backer Peter Thiel. (Photo by sunshinecity)
venture capital
Sequoia's Michael Moritz: VCs need to stop with the "hot air and arrogance"
After reading our take on VC blogger Fred Wilson's advice that entrepreneurs need to learn how to "ask for the order," Persai cofounder Ted Dziuba commented: "Methinks Fred Wilson doth blog too much." We disagree, if only because Wilson is such a fruitful source. But at a venture capital conference in San Francisco last week, Sequoia Capital's Michael Moritz seemed to second the notion. "There's a lot of hot air and arrogance in the business that we all would be better off without," Moritz told the conference crowd. Moritz said he disapproved of "useless pontificating in front of entrepreneurs working harder than we are." Kleiner Perkins VC John Doerr concurred: "At Kleiner, we're trying to watch our language." This from the guy who said the Internet was underhyped — and then invested in Friendster. (Photo by b_d_solis)
online video
Happy birthday, Will Ferrell's Funny Or Die! Hope Sequoia gives you more funding as a present
After 200 million views and 30,000 video uploads, Will Ferrell's Sequoia-backed Web video venture Funny Or Die turned one year old last week. Despite early successes, however, the site seems caught in a downward trend. Compete reports it lost 6.9 percent of its audience in March and that the site's best month was its first.
mine is bigger
Fired TokBox CEO didn't need to know HTML to drive his $80,000 BMW
Early last month Sequoia Capital fired TokBox founder Serge Faguet as CEO. An engineer who spoke with Faguet for a job interview tells us his firing "comes as no surprise." The tipster, perhaps sore that his job interview didn't go so well, characterizes Faguet as "rude and arrogant" and argues that the original idea for TokBox came from cofounder Ron Hose. But mostly, our tipster objects to Faguet's car: a BMW 650i. More »
bad ideas
Sequoia clones unsuccessful search engine -- maybe Google will buy it anyway
Sequoia partner Mark Kvamme just plunked down $31 million on a company he also chairs, called Searchme. It's an image-based search engine. Search is a crowded field but Searchme CEO Randy Adams thinks there's room for innovation. "Search," he told BoomTown, "is still largely a text and list experience." True, but Snap CEO Tom McGovern told me almost the exact same thing in May 2006. Didn't work out for him. Now Snap is a site for bloggers. Below, a video demonstration of Searchme's "innovation" and another video showing two-year-old Snap doing pretty much the same things.More »
Tokbox CEO fired
Sequoia Capital is famous for firing founder CEOs. Its latest victim: Serge Faguet, who's out as CEO of TokBox, we hear. The video-chat service raised $4 million from Sequoia last year. (Photo by Noah Berger/New York Times)
deals
Plaxo torn between two lovers?
Is Plaxo going to Google, as some rumors have it? Possibly. We hear Joe Kraus, a Google executive knee-deep in its effort to catch up in social networking, skipped the company trip to Disneyland this week so he could finish a deal. But other insiders say Google's not doing a deal with Plaxo. Another plausible bidder: Comcast. More »
mine is bigger
One day left to commission portrait of "Fellowship of the VCs"
"Are you a leader in Silicon Valley who has been unfairly left out of this work of art?" asks a project proposal on Strayform."Much like patronages offered by the leaders depicted in historical works, your patronage can earn you the recognition you deserve."More »
venture capital
HealthCentral takes cash from Barry Diller, Michael Moritz
HealthCentral just announced $50 million in funding. The round included a major investment from IAC and smaller contributions from prior investors Sequoia Capital, Carlyle Group and Polaris Venture Partners. HealthCentral operates several health-related websites, including the long-troubled DrKoop.com, which was once a publicly traded company a bubble or two ago. Here's how their traffic looked last year, according to Compete. It's nice and all, but stick around for the one comparing HealthCentral to WebMD. If I used the word pwnage, I would. But I don't.More »
nerdspotting
Julia Allison canoodles with Sequoia moneyman
A tipster spotted the female half of Gawker's (and Valleywag's) favorite ex-couple, Julia Allison, leaving a CES party in Las Vegas with venture capitalist Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital. Kvamme, who was a frequent target of Valleywag emeritus Nick Denton, is responsible for Sequoia's investments in promising companies like LinkedIn. Oh, and also AdBrite.
rumormonger
Is Plaxo ready to sell to Facebook?
It's curious that rumors of a Plaxo sale exploded at the same time that Robert Scoble got his Facebook account suspended using a secret, unreleased tool for extracting data from Facebook. Curious, too, that Plaxo is so eager to milk the incident for good PR. While a battle of words takes place in public, we hear that quieter talks are happening behind the scenes: A sale of Plaxo to Facebook. A clash between the companies' backers, though — the powerful VC Michael Moritz and the rising VC star Peter Thiel — could sink any deal. More »
6:30 AM on Fri Jan 4 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,707 views,
7 comments
Latest by n/a: I'd heard a comcast acquisition of Plaxo was all but done -- that these discussions have been going on for months. more »
ipo
Kayak and Sidestep merge, plan for IPO
Travel search engines Kayak and Sidestep will merge to form a new company, according to reports. As part of the deal, Kayak raised another $196 million from current investors Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners as well as from Sidestep investors Norwest Venture Partners and Trident Capital and new investors Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. The merger will create the fifth largest online travel destination. That sad boast might make you wonder, how'd they get so many VCs on board? More »
venture capital
Will Ferrell's Funny or Die gets another $15 million
Funny or Die, the humor video site from Will Ferrell and Blades of Glory director Adam McKay, started up last April with only $17,000 from Sequoia Capital, according to a profile of the company in Portfolio. After "The Landlord" got 50 million views, Sequoia and a pair of unnamed institutional investors came back with another $15 million in funding. Though Funny Or Die expects to gross "a few million" next year, as Sequioa partner and Funny Or Die cofounder Mark Kvamme told Portfolio, prospects aren't perfectly shiny for the funny site. More »
online advertising
