debbiegage

Azure Made No Investments For Over A Year

It was between February of 2008 and May of 2009 that the venture firm completely pulled back, according to a couple of the partners -- not because they'd stopped looking for investments, but because the valuations on the companies they did see were too "frothy," and they couldn't reach agreements with the entrepreneurs. Remember it was during this period that Sequoia summoned its portfolio companies for a stern lecture on conserving cash and its "R.I.P. Good Times" presentation, illustrated with a headstone and a somewhat graphic picture of a butcher knife stuck in a pig's carcass in case anyone didn't get the point. When I first met Azure's Mike Kwatinetz, however -- in May of 2008, over four months before the Sequoia meeting -- he was the only VC I knew who was saying publicly that there was a bubble and that startups were over-valued and that they were spending too much money. That's not to say he was the only VC saying it, just the only one I knew.

Car Salesman Puts Entire 401K In Clean Tech

Grant Williams is the sales manager for a Chevy dealer. He noticed that his customers were looking for hybrid cars. So he invested his entire 401K, which was $10,000, in A123, the lithium-ion battery maker and clean-tech darling that went public on September 24. So far his investment is under water -- he bought the stock at $23 and it's trading now at around $19. But that's OK, at least for now, because his other 401K -- $300,000 in all -- is in solar stocks, some of them Chinese solar stocks, which he felt "had a better opportunity for growth." All of those investments are up since last spring, some by over 100%. On paper he's made $100,000 so far, but he says he's invested for the long term. "I've put it all on number one to win," he said. "I'll either do well or be in trouble."

Want To Sell Your Company?

Corporate development managers from three of the tech industry’s biggest acquirers – Microsoft, Cisco and Google – were at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus tonight, along with Accel’s Rich Wong. They talked about how they shop for companies, what they look for, and what they expect to see happen next year. Here are some highlights. Think of this as a live blog -- except posted after the event. (Sponsor was the Churchill Club).

Transcript Of Supreme Court Hearing On Sarbox

The court's hearing was on the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which was created by Congress as part of Sarbanes-Oxley to audit public companies in the wake of the dot-com financial scandals. The board is controlled by the SEC, but the plaintiffs in this case say it should be controlled by the President. Why should you care? If the Justices agree that the board is unconstitutional (decision expected in June), Sarbanes-Oxley may be scaled back. Many investors worried about taking small companies public would be very happy about that. Here's the transcript (courtesy of the Footnoted blog). Enjoy.

Bill Gurley's Stock Speech

Ever since his infamous blog post in August -- when he warned how LPs, having been burned in the downturn, were pulling back on their venture investments and predicted the industry would shrink by 50% -- Gurley has been seen as a wise man in Silicon Valley because much of what he's said so far has come true. Now he's working the conference circuit, and he did it again today at AlwaysOn on Sand Hill Road in front of a standing room only crowd. Venture capitalists, many of whom work within walking distance of this conference, held at Stanford's Rosewood hotel, spilled out into the hallway to hear Gurley talk about what he called "the unprecedented changes" in the venture industry. "Top venture funds are being remarketed by Stanford University," he said, referring to Stanford's billion-dollar secondary sale. "We're on Stanford property now. I don't think anyone ever expected this would happen."

White House Serious About Green Jobs

So says David Lincoln from Element Partners, the other VC who got invited to the White House Jobs Summit last week. Lincoln said he was in a breakout group on climate, energy and green jobs with professors from Harvard and Columbia, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and the CEOs from Disney, Home Depot and Dow Chemical. President Obama spent half an hour talking with the group and asking questions, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel also stopped by. One job-creating idea that came out of the summit is cash for caulkers, but with a twist -- Lincoln said the White House is talking about encouraging entire communities to retrofit buildings and save energy through mass discounts and tax incentives from window manufacturers, insulation companies, and other service provders and retailers.

Ideeli Raises $20 Million For Private Shopping

Invitations to online sales of last year's luxury goods are a hot category right now -- witness Kleiner Perkin's investment today, amount undisclosed, in a purveyor of home decor called One Kings Lane. Ideeli, however, has been in business for over two years, has 1.3 million members and expects to do over $100 million in revenue next year selling heavily discounted designer clothes, according to co-founder and CEO Paul Hurley. Ideeli will also be opening a home business soon to compete with One Kings Lane. Scale matters in online sales, Hurley said, and so far there are three startups in the luxury category that are significantly bigger than the others -- Gilt (raised $48 million, according to Thomson Reuters), RueLaLa (sold in October to GSI Commerce for $350 million) and Ideeli, which has now raised around $30 million.

Follow The FTC's Privacy Roundtable

Today in Washington, the Federal Trade Commission is exploring the "privacy challenges" raised by social networks, cloud computing, mobile marketing, behavior-tracking advertising and other 21st century technologies to see if any regulation is in order.In addition to academics, privacy experts, and some big tech and retail companies -- Microsoft, Intel, Google, Walmart and Intuit are all there -- are a couple of venture-backed startups: Blue Kai, funded by Battery and Redpoint, which claims to be building "the world's largest data exchange" of online behavior to help its partners target ads at consumers; and Simulmedia, funded by Avalon and Union Square Ventures, which is helping advertisers target TV viewers.

So How Was The White House Jobs Summit?

It was "earnest," said David Jones of Chrysalis Ventures, who got himself invited to the DC meeting yesterday, and extremely well organized. It also appeared to be crash-proof -- not like the state dinner for the Indian prime minister last month that was crashed by the couple from Virginia who wanted to meet President Obama. Jones said he was asked for his driver's license at the gate to the White House and had no opportunity to try to talk his way in. Jones found Obama "extremely impressive and magnetic," projecting a sense of calm, competence and confidence, as he would expect a politician at that level to do. What will result from the summit, though, is hard to say. Education and cash for caulking -- rewarding people for having energy efficient homes -- were popular topics, and Jones expects to see more programs to boost jobs, such as offering tax credits to small businesses that hire people. But the concerns of the venture capital industry -- excessive regulation on companies that go public,

Denver Keiretsu Forum To Integrate With Pacific Northwest

Fifty people showed up at a meeting in Denver yesterday to ask that the Denver chapter stay open, according to Keiretsu founder Randy Williams. Todd Dean, who heads the Pacific Northwest chapter, will become interim president of Denver until new leadership can be found. Membership in the Denver forum, which is three years old, had dropped to 10, and former president Steve Murchie said last week he was leaving to become a clean tech investor because the presidency of Denver Keireitsu had become "a 20-to-40-hour-a-week unpaid job."