In January 2005, BusinessWeek wrote about the ouster of Carl Vogel, who had been CEO of cable TV provider Charter Communications. At the time, Vogel had just been pushed out the door by billionaire Paul Allen in an attempt to keep Allen’s controlling stake in Charter from falling further in value. Lance Conn, a member of Allen’s holding company Vulcan Capital, as well as a Charter board member, told investors immediately afterward that “the company's performance hasn't met your expectations or ours.” Fast-forward four years and Conn, who became Vulcan Capital’s president, is also losing his position of power within Allen's world.
3 min read · 15 May 2009
1 min read · 14 May 2009
1 min read · 14 May 2009
1 min read · 14 May 2009
5 min read · 08 May 2009
Software whiz Peter Norton is now trying to sell two lavish pads in Manhattan, but he's not having much luck. Norton, creator of Norton Utilities, this week lowered the price of his 4,415 square-foot, 4-bedroom, 6.5-marble-bath condo, on the 45th floor of the Trump International on New York’s Upper West Side. The price is now $17.9 million after being listed for $16.25 million back in January. What? Too small for you? Norton and his downstairs neighbor -- mogul Richard Ullman, who’s been trying to sell his own 4,415-square-foot condo for $18.5 million -- will also sell you their condos as a would-be duplex if you don’t mind coughing up $34.7 million first. Okay, and $277,068 per year in monthly maintenance charges. But think of all
2 min read · 08 May 2009
Atomico Ventures is ready for blast-off, according to a new regulatory filing. The early-stage venture capital fund spearheaded by Skype cofounders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis is looking to raise the strangely precise amount of $266 million, with the help of San Francisco placement agent Probitas Partners. The fund -- incorporated in the tax-neutral jurisdiction of Grand Cayman island -- has yet to secure any commitments, according to the filing. The team is apparently pretty confident about how quickly it will do so, though. The filing states that the offering to LPs, who are being asked for a minimum investment of $13.3 million, will be available for no longer than one year.
3 min read · 07 May 2009
Almost immediately after the Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag reported that Twitter might be in acquisition talks with Apple, everyone jumped on the rumor, from traditional media like the New Zealand Herald to United Press International to – ahem – Reuters (peHUB's parent). So did blogs like All Things Digital, Ubergizmo and Mashable. (In defense of the blogs, they mostly splashed cold water on the latest round of “late-stage negotiations” involving the microblogging startup.) I saw so much talk about the company Tuesday that I took a quick look through Google News in an attempt to measure the impact of Valleywag’s story. Know how many related news articles popped up? Fully 140, 84 of them in U.S.-based outlets. That search prompted me to conduct a few others, first on Factiva, which aggregates many -- but by no means all -- news sources, and then on Google Trends, a relatively new search index.
2 min read · 07 May 2009
2 min read · 05 May 2009
Former VP Al Gore is accustomed to vigorous heckling from the conservative right, but even he might be surprised by the attention that has focused on him since he was questioned before Congress last month about his motivation to support cap-and-trade legislation. As many readers will already know, Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn's widely watched request for “some clarity” owed to Gore’s role as a partner at the “capital firm” Kleiner Perkins, one of the most active green tech investors in the country. The position could translate into some big paydays for Gore, she noted. Gore responded by telling Blackburn that not only has he been working to raise awareness about global warming for 30 years but that “every penny” he has made from his renewable energy investments, as well as from his book and movie, both titled “An Inconvenient Truth,” have
3 min read · 05 May 2009
