Private Equity
6 min read · 10 October 2008
Last month I suggested it was about time for a new song to replace "The Risk Master" as Tim Draper's Silicon Valley anthem. The song's origin was a long-kept secret, thanks to a hush-clause the writer demanded. But two years ago, the Venture Capital Journal was the first to report that the song's writer was Don Henley. I'll confess that I had to ask someone over 40 who that was, but my editors thought he was cool. But an inside source recently leaked video footage that suggests Draper may have hired 33-year-old will.i.am to liven up his increasingly tired sound. The front man of the Black Eyed Peas is known for his sense of style (he studied at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising here in LA) and for his increasing political involvement. Most recently, will.i.am wrote music to the words of a speech
1 min read · 06 October 2008
2 min read · 24 September 2008
3 min read · 23 September 2008
Harvard Business School spun itself into a tizzy after reading Philip Delves Broughton’s account of his two years at the school in the recently published “Ahead of the Curve.” Delves Broughton’s criticisms of the school itself are minor (only professors with experience running companies should teach entrepreneurship, grades should be abolished, etc…). His real beef is with the capitalistic strivings of the school’s graduates who can’t seem to hold their marriages together, call their children “strangers” and work 100 hour weeks with regularity. Harvard Business School is a “factory for unhappy people,” Broughton writes, albeit an efficient and well run factory. As an insider’s view inside an American institution, the book delivers and may be entertaining to any graduate of the school. There are several amusing vignettes in the book, ranging from an account of cross-dressing at the annual Pricilla Ball (recent grads better scrub those pics out of their Facebook profiles, ahem.), the labyrinthine hiring process at Google and the barrage of personality tests the school encouraged students to take. Venture capitalists will likely chuckle on hearing of Delves Broughton’s Harvard-sponsored trip to Silicon Valley. First there is the careful and sympathetic recounting of a meeting with KP’s Russell Seligman . The investor spoke to HBSers about how many people saw VC as a fast track route to riches, but how it wasn’t really.
3 min read · 23 September 2008
1 min read · 18 September 2008
1 min read · 18 September 2008
2 min read · 11 September 2008
News that GlaxoSmithKline signed a $1.5 billion anti-inflammatory drug development deal with Germany-based Cellzome AG should be music to venture capital ears. Cellzome raised around $113 million in VC funding since 2000, from firms like Atlas Venture, SV Life Sciences, Advent International and Index Ventures -- and is one of a burgeoning number of pain-oriented pharmaceutical startups. Investment peaked last year, with VCs investing more than $720 million in 49 companies addressing pain, the largest amount they’ve invested in at least 10 years, according to Thomson Reuters (publisher of VCJ). Startups developing pain-relieving drugs make up the bulk of the fundings (21 such companies attracted more than $400 million last year), with device makers and others rounding out the total. The payoff could be huge
2 min read · 11 September 2008
1 min read · 10 September 2008
