Private Equity
It’s too soon to tell whether investing in the social food category is a recipe for success, but the sector is filling up with more competitors
8 min read · 01 April 2011
Investing in a music-related startup might sound cool. But most VCs have avoided the music industry and its checkered past—until recently—even though the biggest knock against music startups has been that they simply can’t generate venture-scale returns
10 min read · 01 March 2011
Chinese VC-backed companies dominated the IPO landscape in 2010, rivaling the number of U.S. startups going public. And more Chinese tech companies are lining up to go public in 2010
10 min read · 01 February 2011
It was another monster year for the Internet, thanks in large measure to the growth of Groupon and other social shopping sites
5 min read · 01 January 2011
Only about 5% of the African population is connected to the Internet, but the numbers are growing as a new wave of Internet services and applications are created specifically for the African market
4 min read · 01 January 2011
When Todd Rideman first heard about Groupon, he figured he could do it, too. After all, what's so hard about putting up a Website, offering a few deals each day from local merchants -- like $20 worth of cupcakes for $10 -- and then watching the cash roll in? So Rideman poured $100,000 of his hard-earned money into his own daily deal site and, at the beginning of the year, launched WowWhatSavings, targeting the Boston area. He quickly learned, however, that building a profitable Groupon clone isn't as easy it looks. "I was able to get the local merchants, but getting people to come to the site was costing a fortune," said Rideman. After six months, he had just a few thousand people on his distribution list. He has since morphed his business into a deal site for restaurants only, and has seen sales perk up. WowWhatSavings, based in Waltham, Mass., is one of more than 130 Websites that offer daily deals like Groupon, according to Yipit, which aggregates the deals. Now, with the New York Times reporting that Google is negotiating to buy Groupon for up to $6 billion, the space is likely to grow even more crowded.
4 min read · 01 December 2010
Despite Groupon’s dominant market share and continued growth, clones of the group buying site continue to spring up and attract venture capital
8 min read · 01 December 2010
As he celebrates his first anniversary as a venture capitalist, Reid Hoffman opens up about why he gave up angel investing, the first question he asks of every entrepreneur and why he does business meetings on Sundays
10 min read · 01 November 2010
Late stage returns have outpaced early stage returns by close to 4x in the past five years. No wonder so many VCs are getting into the growth game.
10 min read · 01 October 2010
Many VCs remain wary of bionics, but others believe they can’t go wrong betting on technologies already been proven to restore vision, hearing and the ability to walk.
8 min read · 01 September 2010
