Posts Tagged with ‘venture-capital’

Sequoia Capital is one of the best-known names when it comes to venture funding of startups in the Silicon Valley so everything the firm does is considered as having strong implications for the entire industry. So it is no wonder that the players in the industry are more than worried today now that Om Malik reports that Sequoia held a meeting for founders of its portfolio companies to talk about the economic crisis to them.
The CEOs and founders were [...]

At the risk of making enemies, I'm one of the only people I've seen so far today not jumping up and down with excitement at Seesmic's purchase of Twhirl. I like the idea of Seesmic, even if I'm a videophobe myself. And I love Twhirl, and use it every second that I'm online.
Here's my issue with all these exciting mergers and buyouts and why I can't hop up and down: you have a start-up that doesn't sell anything buying another [...]

Today the makers of the recently launched (yet oddly-named) Chumby internet-connected device have acquired $12.5 million in Series B funding, primarily from JK&B Capital, a new investor for the company. Chumby's other existing venture investors, including Avalon Ventures, Masthead Venture and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, were also involved in the financing, which will be used to “accelerate growth” of the San Diego-based company, as well as to expand the Chumby Network onto other screen-based web devices.
“We are pleased to receive [...]

There's been a story today that virtually every blog has been tiptoeing around but not addressing, except for Drama 2.0, but we know how much he likes to rub our noses in any possible popping of the bubble. The story, as Reuters tells it, is that venture capital into Web 2.0 start-ups is slowing down.
In the Dow Jones VentureSource report cited, they point out that VC for Web 2.0 companies only grew by 25% in 2007, from 143 to 178 [...]

I first learned about the problems with the auction rate securities market reading Fred Wilson's blog. I didn't think much of it, since I generally don't have available cash just sitting around for me to play with like that, but I was happy for his primer and the information gleaned from the New York Times article on auction-rate notes when I got to TechCrunch pointing out that up to 20% of VC-funded start-ups can't get to their money due to [...]

I followed liveblogs of the iPhone SDK announcement today (thanks to TUAW and Engadget) just for fun, to see if any new social platforms would emerge or special Web 2.0 news would come out.
Was I the only one shocked with the closing of the media event? I should have known that Jobs had something up his sleeve all along with his announcement of iFund. Apple is going to partner with KPCB in venture capital business, and I, for one, [...]

I will never understand how VCs make their decisions. Some companies that get funding seem doomed to fail, and falling under that very confusing category is last week's news that doubleTwist was funded by Index Ventures.
In theory, doubleTwist has all the Web 2.0 buzzwords that should lead to success. It's tagline is “liberate your media” and the only text other than news on their entry page is “doubleTwist desktop enables you to easily share media with friends and sync with [...]

We here at Profy have spoken before of Vuze. A video content distribution company built upon the P2P-based platform Azureus, Vuze is akin to the iTunes TV shop in that it provides easy access to professionally-produced material both new and old – albeit with one great distinction: most of the stuff’s free.
Fairly recently, Vuze made a few headlines through the issuance of a petition to the FCC to investigate and halt ISPs’ practices of throttling bandwidth and network access [...]

We’ve covered the MyStrands social music service/network several times here at Profy. First in December of 2006. Then in late January, when we spoke of several enhancements made. Then in mid-March, when MyStrands tacked on a nifty mobile component to its repertoire. And, lastly, in early September, when we brought you word of the launch of MyStrands TV.
Now it’s safe to say the company (we presume it’s past the “startup” stage) is doing quite well for itself. [...]