Connie Loizos

Fred Wilson Talks Trash About the Valley. Kinda.

At the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, venture capitalist Fred Wilson just threw down the gaunlet. According to a roundup by Wired, he told conference goers that "there's something that goes on here in New York that's different than what goes on in Silicon Valley. It's more creative, more artistic, more connected to media and advertising," Wilson said. "There will come a time when New York might be 70 or 80 percent of Silicon Valley as it relates to Internet companies." I'm sure plenty of VCs in Silicon Valley will take issue with that perspective, but you sort of have to admire Wilson's unabated optimism, especially during a week like the one that New Yorkers in particular are having.

Steve Rattner, Mel Karmazin, Think Facebook is Way Overvalued

At a breakfast discussion in New York earlier this week, Universal's Jeff Zucker, Sirius Satellite Radio's Mel Karmazin and Quadrangle's Steven Rattner offered their perspectives on the M&A market (Rattner was especially bearish, saying there's zero market for big media acquisitions right now). Rattner and Karmazin also told the moderator, Portfolio editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman, that venture-backed digital media assets have grown "way, way" overvalued, and that neither of them would pay $15 billion for Facebook, or $10 billion. Lipman didn't ask if they'd pay $5 billion, its current valuation (I wish she would have). Watch a clip after the jump.

Fluidigm: In For a Bloodbath?

Holy Sh*t: Peter Thiel Now Worth $1.3 Billion, According to Forbes

Have Overreaching VCs Blown It? More on the SBIR Program

Lehman's Venture Capital Group Not Necessarily A Goner, Too

And You Thought Investing in Russia Was Crazy

According to the IDG News Service, the Kenyan government has established a $39 million venture capital fund, with the help of some remarkably optimistic private investors in Kenya, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Hope Springs Eternal: BitTorrent Raises Another $17 Million

Peer-to-peer content delivery system BitTorrent has raised a whopping $17 million more in a third round from its venture backers on Sand Hill Road, DCM and Accel Partners, according to a new regulatory filing. The money brings the 7-year-old’s total funding to $46.4 million. DAG Ventures, a firm known for marking up the later-stage deals of influential firms like Kleiner Perkins and Accel, is also an investor in BitTorrent’s Series C. (DAG has teamed up with Kleiner on at least 51 rounds for 30 companies, according to Thomson Reuters data; it has teamed up with Accel on at least 30 rounds for 15 companies.) I hope it's not a case of good money chasing bad. Though BitTorrent today signed up two game developers that will use its technology to stream their massively multiplayer online games to customers (Aeria and IAHGames), the company is still struggling to shed its reputation as a way for people to illegally share music and video over the Web. Though it wants to be a legitimate technology through which media companies can stream videos over the Internet, its ideal business partners

Interview with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Circa 1999

Here is a great artifact: an interview with Google's founders from 1999 by Ubergizmo writer Karsten Lemm. (Thanks to ValleyWag for first pointing readers to the piece.) It's really fascinating to look back. One of the first things to jump out at me is 1999 Brin saying that, "Everybody who we talked to wanted to invest. No exceptions. Now, we get probably 5 to 10 e-mails every day . We collect their names. We’ll have to decide what we want to do." Popular Valley lore gives Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital a lot of credit

Love In the Air?

This is a very funny write-up. I've never before heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, but I'll definitely remember his name now.