Private Equity
2 min read · 25 March 2009
Venture-backed LimeLife has bought the assets of TapaTap Inc. in what apparently amounts to a shutdown of VC-backed TapaTap. You can read the full story here, which has also posted Tuesday’s press release announcing the transaction by LimeLife. LimeLife is not hiring TapaTap’s seven employees, according to the news report. San Mateo, Calif.-based TapaTap, which developed Web applications for its women-oriented mobile sites, had raised more than $2.5 million from Gabriel Venture Partners since 2007. Menlo Park, Calif.-based LimeLife, which develops mobile phone games and lifestyle applications for women, has raised more than $26 million from U.S. Venture Partners, i-Hatch Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners, Core Capital Partners and Monitor Venture Management, according to Thomson Reuters.
2 min read · 24 March 2009
1 min read · 20 March 2009
VC-backed Tesla Motors opened its Chicago store this month, the company’s first outside California and its third store overall, after Los Angeles and Menlo Park. But that’s not why you’re gonna hear a lot more about Tesla over the next week. Tesla—which has raised more than $87 million in funding from mid-2006 to late 2008 from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, VantangePoint Venture Partners and individual investors such as Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page—is set to debut its Telsa Motor's Model S sedan on March 26.
2 min read · 18 March 2009
Tom Barton says that his firm likes to go after early stage deals that are "Under the radar." That description is an apt one for Barton's firm, too. Barton is one of two founding general partners of Broken Arrow Venture Capital, a venture firm based in Los Altos, Calif. (a few miles southwest of Sand Hill Road) that has so far invested in five companies, three of which are disclosed on Broken Arrow’s website. One of those disclosed investments was announced last week when Broken Arrow revealed it took part in the $4.5 million Series A funding for Conveneer, a Swedish company with a Palo Alto, Calif., locale. Conveneer provides mobile technology so that users can access their cell phones
2 min read · 11 March 2009
With the economy in a tailspin and thousands of jobs being axed daily, should fostering innovation really be a priority? Don’t dare ask that question of Pascal Levensohn, founder and managing partner of Levensohn Venture Partners in San Francisco. Earlier today, Levensohn was in Washington, D.C. to deliver a 30-minute keynote address at the Cybersecurity Applications and Technologies Conference for Homeland Security. “Everything is connected and linked together,” Levensohn told me via cell phone after his keynote. “If we don’t pay attention and address innovation, then things are going to get worse. A comparative situation is the debt crisis. We had decades of people not paying attention. Then the situation exploded.”
1 min read · 04 March 2009
2 min read · 25 February 2009
2 min read · 25 February 2009
Times are tough all over, especially for consumer-oriented websites. So I was little surprised and intrigued when I saw a release go out earlier this week for San Francisco-based Moxsie Inc., which operates an online marketplace for independent fashion, and is looking to reach out worldwide. I wanted to see what makes an e-tailer tick in a recession, so I hooked up with Moxsie’s Catalina Girald, founder and creative director of the company who also goes by the title Fashionista-in-Chief.
6 min read · 18 February 2009
Earlier this week, President Obama said that he’d like to see the economic stimulus package include more education funding. "I'll be honest with you, the Senate version cut a lot of these education dollars. I would like to see some of them restored," he said.
2 min read · 11 February 2009
