Private Equity
You have to say this about Lloyd Chapman: He doesn’t sit on his hands. The president of the 100,000 member American Small Business League has been sending out a flurry of releases that condemn President Obama’s selection of venture capitalist Karen Mills as the new head of the Small Business Administration. (She’s still awaiting her Senate confirmation hearing.) “On day one she needs to start solving the SBA’s number one problem, which is the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants,” Chapman told the Long Island Business News a couple of days ago. “We’re concerned Mills, a venture capitalist, will support policies that will divert even more small business contracts to companies owned by venture capitalists.” It’s a new approach for Chapman, who until lately, has railed instead against the government’s Small Business Innovation Research program, which is up for retooling in March, when authorization
4 min read · 03 February 2009
2 min read · 02 February 2009
This is interesting. It was just posted by John Hanke, the director of Google Earth and Maps: "As you read this, I am at the beautiful California Academy of Sciences, announcing the launch of the newest version of Google Earth. This launch is particularly special to me because it marks the moment when Google Earth becomes much more complete — it now has an ocean. Didn't Google Earth always have an ocean? Technically, yes, well, sort of. We have always
2 min read · 02 February 2009
2 min read · 02 February 2009
Al Waxman has an agenda. The founder of Psilos Group -- an 11-year-old healthcare-focused venture capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Santa Fe, and New York -- wants more VCs to forget about backing Web startups and electric cars and start focusing instead on finding startups that can meaningfully improve the nation’s disastrous healthcare system. Waxman isn’t interested in drug discovery. As he says, “that’s not our thing.” Instead, he says there are plenty of opportunities to create efficiencies around retiree health benefits, medical records and the like, and that it’s only American to start chasing them down -- now. For what it’s worth, Psilos’s biggest hit to date has been Active Health Management, a company that advised businesses and public health organizations on how to improve healthcare based on the
5 min read · 02 February 2009
3 min read · 30 January 2009
1 min read · 30 January 2009
1 min read · 29 January 2009
According to Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, venture capitalist Scott Murphy, a managing director atventure fund network Advantage Capital, is among a small pool of contenders for the Congressional seat of Kirsten Gillibrand, New York's junior Senator as of earlier today. Evidently, the rural upstate seat is in a traditionally Republican-leaning district, but a Republican candidate would be far from a shoo-in after an election cycle that’s left the party reeling. New York Governor David Paterson is expected to call a special election, one that will likely fall in early March.
2 min read · 28 January 2009
1 min read · 27 January 2009
