portfolio companies
Kleiner Perkins Debuts First Engineering Fellows Class
techcrunch.com
Last year, venture firm Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm’s portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored (and have the prestige of Kleiner Perkins on their resume)...
Startup steroids: Pinterest feels the burn of Facebook's Open Graph
www.theverge.com
A packed room of more than 200 founders, VCs and internet bankers took a moment to look up from their iPhones and listen in hushed reverence as one of Silicon Valley’s top investors explained what he looks for when choosing the next hot startup. "For us, it’s all about...
TCTV: In the Studio, Bain Capital Ventures is California Dreaming
techcrunch.com
Editor’s note: TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah currently works at Votizen and lives in Palo Alto; you can follow him on twitter @semil “In the Studio” at TechCrunch TV this week welcomes a former California resident and current investor back to the west coast, where he and his partners have embarked on a new journey to build out...
Startup Labs launches a fund for entrepreneurs in emerging markets [video]
thenextweb.com
Startup Weekend has been instrumental in inspiring entrepreneurs all over the world to build and launch thousands of startups. But what happens when the weekend comes to an end? Do the startups continue to grow or do they fizzle out into oblivion? Cue Startup Labs, a seed-stage fund started by...
Investor confidence up after a dismal 2011, survey says
venturebeat.com
In the first quarter of 2012, investor confidence rose to the highest point it’s been in more than a year. The latest Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index — which measures how much statup investing confidence VCs have — shows a significant jump in confidence over the fourth quarter of 2011....
Another Super Angel Levels Up: Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures Closes $70M
techcrunch.com
What happens when a super angel gets its wings? You become a boutique fund. Or at least that’s how Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures is putting it with a fresh fund worth about $70 million. That’s up from the firm’s previous $41 million fund and Senkut’s early dabbling in angel investing...
Fab.com plans to be big — Amazon big, says CEO
venturebeat.com
When Fab.com won a Crunchie for best shopping app, no one was more surprised than the startup’s CEO, Jason Goldberg (pictured). “To be honest, I didn’t think we were going to win, mostly because Fab isn’t very much integrated into the whole tech scene… We’re definitely mainstream.” Being mainstream can...
The Management Team - Guest Post From Joel Spolsky
www.avc.com
Today's guest blogger needs no introduction. Joel Spolsky one of the best bloggers out there. He also runs one of our portfolio companies, Stack. And his approach to management is unorthodox at times but amazingly effective. I asked him to tell us a little about how he does it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------...
Heads up, Berlin startups: Earlybird raises $100m for its target $200m fund
thenextweb.com
Earlybird Venture Capital, the aptly named pan-European early-stage VC firm based in Berlin, has raised $100 million for its fourth venture fund – only half of its target $200 million fund. The investment firm has now raised over $700 million since its founding in 1997, and has backed companies like...
Pinterest Co-Founder Paul Sciarra Is Now EIR At Andreessen Horowitz
techcrunch.com
More developments for Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra, who we reported yesterday was leaving Pinterest as Ben Silbermann officially took helm as CEO. Sciarra is going VC and joining Andreessen Horowitz as entrepreneur-in-residence. The move follows the bigger trend of startup execs/founders getting snapped up by the VC firms, to help them...
An Extremely Rational Bubble
techcrunch.com
It just makes sense that the failure of Facebook to spectacularly IPO would affect all markets public and private right? But especially the companies, public or private, that are contingent upon, tethered to, Facebook … like well Zynga, and Quora and Fab and most social Consumer Internet startups really. So,...
As rivals get bought, social marketing software startup Shoutlet lands $15m
thenextweb.com
Shoutlet, a startup that enables brands to create and manage social marketing campaigns through a self-serve cloud platform, has secured $15 million in Series C funding from FTV Capital. The round brings total capital raised to $24.2 million. The investment comes at a time when Shoutlet’s biggest rivals are getting...
One Year On Passion Capital Proves Its Mettle As A Go-To Seed VC In Europe
techcrunch.com
Although it’s a year this week since Passion Capital appeared on the tech scene in London, it feels like they have been around a lot longer. It was in July 2009 I sat on the sun-kissed roof of what became known as their White Bear Yard base in London’s Clerkenwell,...
FACEBOOK FALLOUT: Y-Combinator's Paul Graham Just Emailed Portfolio Companies Warning Of 'Bad Times' In Silicon Valley
www.businessinsider.com
Facebook has flopped on the public markets, and now we have vivid evidence of how badly Silicon Valley is reeling in the fallout. Paul Graham, cofounder of Silicon Valley's most important startup incubator, Y-Combinator, has sent an email to portfolio companies warning them "bad times" may be ahead. He warns:...
FACEBOOK FALLOUT: Y-Combinator's Paul Graham Just Emailed Portfolio Companies Warning Of 'Bad Times' In Silicon Valley
The Gossip On LivingSocial: The Window Is Closing For An IPO, It Will Be Forced To Sell (GRPN)
www.businessinsider.com
At our Social Commerce Summit yesterday, we were schmoozing with VCs and entrepreneurs, and one thing that caught us off guard was the negativity around LivingSocial. LivingSocial is in a rough spot, said gossipy investors. (And, it's worth noting here that these people love to talk smack, especially about...
The VCs at Earlybird raise $100M for their fourth fund
venturebeat.com
Earlybird Venture Capital, a Berlin-based VC firm, has just raised $100 million for its fourth fund. That’s half the amount the firm hopes to raise, and it brings all Earlybird fundraising to date to $700 million. The firm is focusing on “disruptive global consumer and enterprise internet and technology...
Charles River Ventures Raises $375 Million For Its 15th Fund
techcrunch.com
Veteran VC firm Charles River Ventures is announcing its 15th fund today, increasing its fund size from $325 million in its last raise to $375 million in its latest “heavily oversubscribed” round. Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary tells me that the firm, which has 42 years of investment behind...
Why Niklas Zennstrom thinks Brazil’s startups are hot
gigaom.com
Sao Paulo, Brazil — Niklas Zennstrom, the founder of Skype and Kazaa and the founding partner of investment firm Atomico, has been spending a significant amount of time in Brazil looking for and meeting with Brazilian entrepreneurs. He first noticed how big the Brazilian market was when Brazil emerged as...
Help Gratefully Received: On-Screen Web Guidance System WalkMe Picks Up $1M+ From Mangrove
techcrunch.com
Microsoft has Clippy to help confused users make their way around Word, and a startup from Israel called WalkMe earlier this month launched a service that offers the equivalent for the web: an interactive, on-screen guide that helps users get around complicated web pages. And just two weeks out in...
10 Things You Need To Know This Morning
www.businessinsider.com
Good morning! Here's the news: Paul Graham, the cofounder of Silicon Valley's most important startup incubator, just emailed portfolio companies warning them that "bad times" may be ahead after the "bad performance of the Facebook IPO." More bad news for Facebook: A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that the ads aren't...
Bootstrapping
www.avc.com
With all the talk of massive amounts of cash sloshing around the web/mobile startup ecosystem (including things I've said recently), you would think that nobody bootstraps anymore. But that is not true at all. Last week my partner Albert blogged about our most recent investment in Behance. Behance was bootstrapped...
MBA Mondays: Retaining Your Employees
www.avc.com
I hate to see employees leave our portfolio companies for many reasons, among them the loss of continuity and camaraderie and the knowledge of how hard everyone will have to work to replace them. Many people see churn of employees in and out of companies as a given and build...
Inside AnyVivo, The YC Startup That Wants To Be The Amazon.com For Pets And Plants [TCTV]
techcrunch.com
AnyVivo, a startup that launched this spring out of Y Combinator’s Winter 2012 program, has a pretty big mission: It wants to be the e-commerce hub for all living things. You might think that Amazon sells everything, and you’re almost right — but AnyVivo wants to pick up exactly...
Russia’s VTB leads $18m round for Internet startup incubator Fast Lane Ventures
thenextweb.com
VTB Capital Venture Business (VTB), a leading institutional investment firm in the Russian and CIS markets, has partnered with and invested in Fast Lane Ventures, the prolific Internet Russian startup incubator and accelerator. In an email, VTB confirmed that it has led a $18 million Series C round for Fast...
Cloning Successful Startups
www.avc.com
Jeff Leventhal, the CEO of our portfolio company WorkMarket, emailed me yesterday. He said: i would love to see an avc post about copycats like samwer bros. what do u think of this form of entrepreneurs, etc? I looked back over my archives and I guess I've never addressed this...
Why This VC Firm Designed Its New Office To Look Like A Living Room
www.businessinsider.com
Aydin Senkut's early stage investment firm, Felicis Ventures, just moved into a bigger office last week, for more room to bring in founders of his portfolio companies. Senkut's firm was an early investor in Rovio, and it's clear the firm is proud of its investment from the number of...
Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool
www.realdanlyons.com
It’s tough being a journalist, especially if you’re covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you’re stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What’s worse is that all these people...
Paul Graham's Letter Is Wrong: The Facebook IPO Will Make Startup Investing MORE Frothy (FB)
www.businessinsider.com
Y-Combinator cofounder Paul Graham sent out a letter to all the CEOs in his portfolio companies, warning them that because of the poor performance of the Facebook IPO, "bad times" may be ahead. He said that it could make fundraising harder, and that it will cause some spend-happy startups to...
InVision Raises $1.5M For Beautiful, Interactive Prototypes
techcrunch.com
New York City startup InVision has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to help companies answers an important question: Are we building something that people will actually want to use? The funding comes from FirstMark Capital. Managing director Amish Jani says he was excited to invest because, for one thing,...
A Good Idea: Y Combinator Now Lets Founders Apply Without One
techcrunch.com
Venture firms like to pull in experienced founders to become entrepreneurs in residence — people who typically come in without a clear idea of what they want to do, and may simply be tasked with thinking up a new company. Y Combinator is now bringing this type of free-form entrepreneurialism to...
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