Private Equity
If you're not one of the supposedly 48 million people who listen to and explore some of the 700,000 songs on Pandora, probably the last time you tuned into the company was in July 2009. That's when the Oakland, Calif.-based company. which develops music recommendation technology and provides other music-streaming services, raised $35 million in funding, led by Greylock Partners. Pandora, f.k.a. Savage Beast, has now raised about $65 million from Crosslink Capital, DBL Investors, Hearst Corp., Labrador Ventures, Selby Venture Partners and WaldenVC. Dan wrote about the recent funding in a previous post. Earlier this week, the New York Times wrote about the company and its growth. Though the company gave the standard line that it is focused on growth, not a public offering, the
1 min read · 10 March 2010
It's been nearly six months since we last wrote about Jesse Draper, the daughter of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper (and granddaughter of Bill). So I figured it was my turn to pick up the relay baton and revisit what the younger Draper was up to with her Web show, "The Valley Girl," in which she interviews local VCs and entrepreneurs. One recent show had her sitting down with Ted Barnett, co-founder and CEO of SuperSecret, a San Francisco-based developer of online social games for tweens. The company has raised $10 million in Series A funding from Opus Capital and other investors. At about the 3:10 mark of the video, something unusual happens. Draper has Barnett put on a pair of bunny ears--which were pink, of course--as he goes on an egg hunt, which is reminiscent of the website's activities.
1 min read · 04 March 2010
1 min read · 03 March 2010
“It’s not as sexy as cleantech or social networking, but it is an active space and comes and goes in cycles.” That’s what Ray Rothrock, partner of Venrock, said to me last week about security-related investments, in advance of the week-long RSA Conference that kicks off today in San Francisco. Rothrock knows a thing or two about security deals. Having joined Venrock in 1988, he’s participated in 14 of the firm’s 16 security deals, with his first being in CheckPoint Software more than a decade ago.
2 min read · 01 March 2010
A lot of ideas are bandied about in coffee shop, and then forgotten. But Mark Bowles and his business partners took their recycling brainchild, which they came up with while consuming caffeinated drinks in a Starbucks, and put it into action. As Bowles recalls, the derivation for ecoATM began in late 2008 at a Starbucks in Del Mar, Calif., where he met daily for two months with Michael Librizzi and Pieter van Rooyen. Bowles, who previously co-founded Staccato Communications and a host of other tech startups, according to his LinkedIn profile, says the three of them together have launched numerous companies over the past 20 years in the wireless, mobile and chip industries. “We would sip coffee and contemplate ideas for our next venture. Surrounding us at other tables were other groups of unemployed techies who also were carefully scheming their next moves in the wavering economy of 2008,” Bowles says.
1 min read · 25 February 2010
Top private equity dealmaker Edd Hendee died while skiing at Stratton Mountain in Southern Vermont
2 min read · 22 February 2010
Today, at the first PaidContent conference taking place in New York, stakeholders in the content industry have gathered to debate the latest business models for digital content. Of course, many of these new media models will get launched thanks to venture backing, so I thought I’d ask four veteran investors the question: In today's volatile media environment, which models are working, and why? Ammar Hanafi, general partner of Alloy Ventures: When we look back, 2009 will be seen as a watershed year for the U.S. media industry. The economic downturn created enormous pressure for traditional media models, and the increase in online audiences pushed every type of media organization to the Web. What was “new media” is now simply "the media."
4 min read · 19 February 2010
2 min read · 17 February 2010
2 min read · 11 February 2010
3 min read · 04 February 2010
