2 min read · 08 June 2009
2 min read · 08 June 2009
3 min read · 08 June 2009
1 min read · 05 June 2009
Citing an email that angel investor Ron Conway sent out to friends and associates, TechCrunch reported that over the next year-and-a-half, Conway is looking to back between 40 and 50 startups that center on making money off "real time data." Although Conway's newly tight focus is interesting, even remarkable, given the pace he plans to pursue, I was almost more surprised by another part of his memo, saying that seed-stage San Francisco-based fund Baseline Ventures would no longer be taking the lead in managing his deal flow. Instead, it said, Conway was going to start doing it again directly himself -- with Brian Pokorny and David Lee, two of Baseline's three investing professionals, who've joined Conway fulltime.
1 min read · 04 June 2009
Seemingly overnight, early-stage investor Josh Kopelman has become something of a business celebrity. The attention stems partly from the fact that his venture firm, First Round Capital, continues to actively back young companies despite the recession. Partly, it owes to the several successful exits First Round has already enjoyed since opening just five years ago. Perhaps given Kopelman’s background as an entrepreneur -- he cofounded Infonautics Corp. (IPO in 1996), Half.com (bought by eBay for $312 million in stock in 2000) and TurnTide (sold for $28 million to Symantec six months after its founding) -- it’s no surprise that entrepreneurs uniformly speak highly of him, too. I caught up with Kopelman yesterday, as he commuted from New York to Philadelphia, near First Round’s West Conshohocken headquarters. Among other things, we talked about how the market looks, six months into 2009; why he helped buy back StumbleUpon from eBay; and whether or not it makes sense for entrepreneurs with no VC experience -- many of whom are now starting microcap venture vehicles like First Round’s earliest funds -- to break into the business.
7 min read · 04 June 2009
1 min read · 03 June 2009
Yikes. It’s hard to imagine the SEC being made to look worse than in the aftermath of the Bernie Madoff scandal, yet its case again Internet billionaire Mark Cuban -- and his newer countersuit against the SEC -- is starting to have that very effect. According to Bloomberg, the SEC’s inspector general is now probing claims that the agency’s staff acted improperly while compiling its insider trading case against Cuban, who was accused last year of selling his shares of Mamma.com hours after a confidential conversation with the company's CEO about a PIPE transaction that Cuban disapproved of. Though Cuban had a 6.3 percent stake in the company, his attorneys say the SEC hasn’t shown that Cuban was barred from selling his shares.
1 min read · 03 June 2009
1 min read · 02 June 2009
1 min read · 02 June 2009
