Private Equity
Austin Ventures and Bob Carter, who is the co-founder of National Financial Partners, formed a life insurance distribution company. Austin Ventures invested $5 million and committed another $45 million in support of the newly created business that will provide exclusive ownership opportunities for the nation's leading independent insurance producers.
3 min read · 31 August 2010
4 min read · 31 August 2010
Convincing online gamers to buy more hearts of romaine lettuce might sound like a tall order, but that’s what 7-year-old Loyalty Lab recently managed for client General Mills, through a partnership with social gaming giant Zynga. How? By smacking “Free Farm Cash” stickers on participating packages of General Mill’s Green Giant Fresh produce -- stickers that can be redeemed by Farmville users for five units of the game’s virtual cash currency. Indeed, in the promotion’s first five weeks, more than $100,000 of the units were redeemed by customers, who cashed in two coupons apiece on average. (The companies have limited the redemptions to three per user.)
3 min read · 30 August 2010
2 min read · 29 August 2010
When Andreessen Horowitz raised $300 million for its debut fund last year, I suggested that it was too much money. Actually, I said the original $250 million target was too large – particularly for a two-partner firm that said initial investment sizes would average around $500k. And my argument still makes sense to me. At least in theory. The reality, however, is that AH has already invested most of its stash -- including a giant check for the Skype carve-out -- and added staff. Moreover, Marc Andreessen has become even more influential in Silicon Valley, while Ben Horowitz has emerged from his famous partner’s shadow by penning one of the smartest VC blogs around. All of this adds up to AH becoming the hottest VC firm this side of Sequoia.
2 min read · 25 August 2010
OriGene Technologies, a Rockville, Md.-based developer of monoclonal antibodies, has acquired Blue Heron Biotechnology Inc., a Bothell, Wash.-based provider of gene synthesis services. No financial terms were disclosed. OriGene has raised over $16 million in VC funding, from IDG-Accel, SBI & TH Venture Capital Enterprise, Zero2IPO, Morningside Venture Investments and President International Development Corp. Blue Heron had raised around $9 million, from Crabtree Ventures, Integra Ventures and Invitrogen Corp
2 min read · 16 August 2010
The "platform for new journalism," as the company called itself, debuted in March as part of Y Combinator's winter crop of startups and was shut down in June. Co-founder Paul Biggar, who now works on the Javascript team at Mozilla, says he's not ready to talk about the situation yet, but will write his own blog post on NewsLabs soon. Perhaps because it was about journalism, and thus attracted attention from journalists, NewsLabs launched with quite a splash.
3 min read · 11 August 2010
Gobi Partners and Singapore's Media Development Authority have formed a $74 million VC fund focused on digital media and IT startups in China and Singapore.
7 min read · 09 August 2010
Each summer, advertising firm Deutsch Inc. has dozens of interns scurrying around its Manhattan offices. Most are in their early 20s, unpaid and (so far) relatively unaccomplished. But two years ago, the group also included a 34 year-old whose bank account would dwarf that of firm boss Donny Deutsch. That intern was Steve Nash, the future basketball Hall of Famer who still slings passes for the Phoenix Suns. His boss that summer was Mike Duda, Deutsch's chief strategy officer (and occasional peHUB contributor). The pair kept in touch after the internship ended, and late last year began discussing the creation of a new type of firm: One that would meld brand consulting with venture capital. The result is Consigliere, a New York-based group that has been meeting with potential investors and partners for the past several months (it also was the answer to a recent blind item). "There are a lot of guys who finish playing and then have no idea what to do with themselves," Nash told me during a recent phone call. "I'm not done yet but, when I am, I do not want to become one of them."
2 min read · 09 August 2010
1 min read · 06 August 2010
