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Companies Led By Women Are Greener
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 They didn't find many -- women hold only 10.6% of the board seats and executive jobs at these companies, and only 15 of the companies have women CEOs. At 30% of the companies, both board members and executives were all male. One of the counties that ranked the lowest for women-led companies, by the way, was Santa Clara, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley. Still, companies that do have women in leadership positions also had better environmental records. Read more » |
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The company reported $144 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2009, with net loss of $28 million. The company has raised around $220 million in VC funding from Foundation Capital (9% pre- |
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NVCA: The Tweets Are In
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 They also asked employees of these startups to submit 140-character testimonials on what inspires them to get up and go to work each day. Here are some of them: "Our CEO is wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt right now. At bulbstorm.com, we're too busy innovating to iron!" Bart Steiner, CEO, Bulbstorm Read more » |
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Silicon Valley electric sports car maker Tesla Motors is planning to go public soon, two people familiar with the situation said, outlining plans to sell stock and cash in on investor appetite for green technology and interest in battery-powered vehicles. The six-year-old start-up’s investors include Google Inc (GOOG.O) founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. An IPO filing from Tesla, best known for its $109,000 all-electric Roadster, is expected any day, said one of the sources. The person did not give a specific time frame. Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes declined to comment on what he called “rumor |
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Why Chegg.com Was Financed With Credit And Debt
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 Insight Venture Partners led a $57 million Series D round of equity funding into the company this week, plus helped provide a $25 million credit facility. In addition, Chegg.com got a separate $30 million debt facility from Pinnacle Ventures and TriplePoint Capital. Total equity funding is now over $90 million, according to Thomson Reuters. Chegg.com bills itself as the Netflix for college textbooks -- students order books from its website and receive them in the mail, along with a prepaid envelope to return them -- and it needs enough financial flexibility to be able to accommodate its fast growth, according to Insight's Deven Parekh. Read more » |
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Michael Avon has joined Millennial Media as executive vice president and chief financial officer. He previously was a principal with Columbia Capital. Millennial is a Baltimore-based provider of mobile advertising solutions, which recently raised $16 million in Series C funding from firms like Columbia, New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners and Charles River Ventures. Read more » |
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Ligon Discovery Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based drug developer that uses small molecule microarray technology, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by incTank Ventures. www.ligondiscovery.com Read more » |
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QuinStreet has raised nearly $60 million in VC funding, from firms like Split Rock Partners (16.4% pre-IPO stake), Sutter Hill Ventures (10.55%), Granite Global Ventures (7.05%), Catterton Partners (5.87%), Focus Ventures, Rosewood Capital,Charter Gr |
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Xigen, a Swiss developer of therapeutic peptides, has raised $20 million in Series B funding from return backer Tilocor Life Science. Read more » |
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Asterand PLC (LSE: ATD) has acquired BioSeek Inc., a Burlingame, Calif. drug developer that uses predictive human biology. The deal includes a $1 million up-front payment in Asterand stock, and up to $13 million in earnouts ($10m in cash). BioSeek had raised around $28 million in VC funding, from Amylin Pharmaceuticals,Bay City Capital, Fremont Ventures and Vanguard Ventures. Read more » |
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TriVascular, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based developer of endovascular repair devices for treating abdominal aortic aneurysms, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Return backers include New Enterprise Associates, Delphi Ventures, MPM Capital and Kearny Venture Partners. The company previously raised $65 million, part of which was used to purchase TriVascular from Boston Scientific (which itself had purchased the company from VCs Delphi and Kearny). Read more » |
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peHUB First Read
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 * Reddit's divorce from Conde Nast: How a social media dream deal fell apart. * SEC told to change the way it chooses investigations, in order to avoid the type of breakdowns that led to Madoff. * Morning Call: U.S. futures mixed, London rises early, European shares extend losses, the Nikkei falls 0.5% and both Hong Kong and China shares lose ground. * Tim O'Reilly: The war for the Web * What corporate America is reading * Marvin Clark: 10 reasons to believe we're in a depression * I'm still in LA, but good to hear the home state's unemployment rate actually dropped last month (which is different than growing more slowly). Read more » |
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Stanford Bids Due Today; How Much Will Stanford Get?
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 Stanford's capital calls haven't happened yet, Yau says, and he estimates that the university needs to raise anywhere from $700 million to north of $1 billion, despite raising $1 billion in a bond offering last spring. "These are big numbers, so they've set up a process (where) if you're not a meaningful buyer it doesn't make sense to participate. So secondary funds should be coming in -- that's probably what's going to happen. "The portfolio is a very good portfolio on the private equity side -- Read more » |
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Manthan Systems, an India-based provider of business intelligence and analytics for the retail and consumer packaged goods industries, has raised up to $15 million in Series B funding. Fidelity International led the round, and was joined by return backers IDG Ventures India and ePlanet Ventures. Read more » |
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ClearMomentum, a Rochester, N.Y.-based provider of, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Trillium Group. Read more » |
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Adknowledge, a Kansas City-based provider of behavioral online advertising solutions, has acquired the primary assets of SocialMedia Networks, a San Francisco-based provider of a social media ad platform. No financial terms were disclosed. Adknowledge raised $48 million in funding in 2006 from Technology Crossover Ventures. SocialMedia Networks had raised VC funding from Charles River Ventures, IDG Ventures SF, Marc Andreessen and Jeff Clavier. Read more » |
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GettingHired LLC, a Bedminster, N.J.-based company that provides career services to people with disabilities, has raised $3 million in new VC funding. Backers includeZenith Insurance Co., Kamine Development Corp and Fisher Capital Corp. Read more » |
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Axxana, an Israeli developer of data disaster recovery solutions, has raised $9 million in Series B funding. Carmel Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers Gemini Israel Funds and Moshe Yanai. Read more » |
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Zeno Corp., a Houston, Texas-based developer of a handheld device to treat acne, has raised $20 million in new VC funding, according to a regulatory filing. The round includes $6 million in cash and $14 million for "services to be rendered." Backers include Austin Ventures, Catterton Partners and Sante Ventures. ww.myzeno.com Read more » |
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PicoChip, a Bath, England-based provider of signal processing products for wireless communications, has raised $20 million in Series E funding. Backers include Atlas Venture, Highland Capital Partners, Pond Venture Partners, Scottish Equity Partners, Rothschild, AT&T, Intel and Samsung The company previously raised over $64 million. Read more » |
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BioStar Ventures, a firm focused on early-stage medical device startups, is looking to raise $75 million for its second fund, according to VentureWire. The Michigan-based firm has already secured $30 million, and expects to hold a final close next year. www.biostarventures.com Read more » |
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Immunet, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer of anti-virus technologies, has raised $2 million in Series A funding. Altos Ventures led the round, and was joined by Atlanta-based TechOperators. Read more » |
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Nate Westheimer has joined Flybridge Capital Partners as an advisor, while continuing to serve as co-founder and executive vice president of product and technology at AnyClip. Prior to AnyClip, Westheimer was an entrepreneur-in-residence withRose Tech Ventures. Read more » |
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peHUB First Read
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* Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin: The 8 best questions we got while raising venture capital * Felix Salmon: "Is it OK for a financial services professional who has run into major trouble with the law to simply move over to journalism and cover the same asset class there?" * Morning Call: U.S. futures point lower, London falls early, European shares keep tumbling, the Nikkei hits 4-month closing low and Chinese shares keep gaining. * Heineken CEO says the decade he spent in Africa was “certainly worth three times Harvard Business School.” * As electric cars arrive, where will they plug in? * Mark Suster: VC funding season effectively ends this week. Read more » |
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The performance comes on the heels of an IPO pricing that beat expectations and will help ease the path for other venture-capital backed IPOs, which have lagged those by private-equity owned companies in 2009, analysts said. “You’re starting to see the pipeline of IPOs include mo |
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Founder Collective Debuts with $40m in the Bank
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 Founder Collective is quite literally just that. A collective of founders, looking to invest in seed stage companies. The firm calls it "peer-to-peer" investing. According to Managing Partner Eric Paley, the firm has closed the fund with $40 million in commitments. The capital comes from around 20 investors, an even mix of entrepreneurs, family offices, and institutional funds of funds, he said. Founder Collective used its partners' personal investment track records as a selling point. In the last six years, they invested more than $20m in 31 companies, yielding an IRR of greater than 75%, the majority of which is realized. The New York and Cambridge-based firm has already invested 10% of its fund in around 10 seed stage investments, after looking at "well into the 100s" of companies, Paley said. "The demand for this type of capital is extremely high," he said. Read more » |
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ShoeDazzle.com, a Los Angeles-based online shopping assistant for shoes, has raised $7 million in venture capital funding, according to a regulatory filing. No investors were listed. The only non-executive board member listed is celebrity attorney Robert Shapiro. www.shoedazzle.com Read more » |
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Seattle-based venture capital firm Maveron LLC is opening an office in San Francisco. It will be led by partner Amy Everett. Also in the office will be new principal Ben Choi, who recently joined Maveron from Storm Ventures. Read more » |
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American Express Co. has agreed to acquire Revolution Money, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based provider of secure payments through an Internet-based platform. The deal is worth approximately $300 million. Revolution Money had raised around $100 million, from firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Steve Case's Revolution LLC. Read more » |
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AlwaysOn’s Top 100 Venture Capitalists
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 Winners were selected based on four years worth of data -- from Oct. 1, 2005 through Sept. 30, 2009 -- and were judged on "total number and dollar amounts of successful M&A and IPO deals from their portfolio companies. For IPOs, AlwaysOn examined opening market capitalization as well as subsequent stock performance, relative to the Nasdaq. For each investment, AlwaysOn counted one lead investor per firm, in order to identify the true dealmakers. Much of the data required for a thorough evaluation remains private and inaccessible..." No one from Kleiner Perkins made the list, which is unusual, and it isn't ranked -- the copy I have is in alphabetical order. Get it after the jump: Read more » |
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UNX, a Los Angeles-based provider of trading technology solutions, has secured an undisclosed amount of new private funding. Goldman Sachs and Vernon & Park Capital were joined by undisclosed existing investors. Read more » |
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IPWireless, a San Francisco-based provider of 3GPP technology, has raised $15.5 million in Series A funding. Spark Capital led the round, with Lockheed-Martin Corp. also participating. IPWireless had raised over $155 million in VC funding before being acquired for around $100 million in 2007 by NextWave Wireless Inc. (Nasdaq: WAVE). The company's founders bought IPWireless back last year. Read more » |
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Ready Financial, a Boise, Idah-based provider of prepaid debt cards and online bill payment services, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by Rockbridge Growth Equity, a Detroit-based firm begun by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert. Flybridge Capital Partners also participated, with partner Jeff Bussgang joining the Ready FInancial board of directors. Read more » |
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Active Storage Inc., a Torrance, Calif.-based, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding. Intel Capital led the round, and was joined by Mission Ventures and Valhalla Partners. Read more » |
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peHUB First Read
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* Someone in Yale's endowment office needs to take an undergraduate math course. * FT blares headline that Apollo Management is planning an IPO. Not too surprising (we even hinted at it in this space last week), but FT does give us some new intel on the pay-to-play investigation: "Apollo has received subpoenas from California, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York, and from the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York and Denver" * Morning Call: U.S. futures point to mixed open, London rises early, European shares near 13-month high, the Nikkei hits 6-week closing low and China shares gain 0.62%. * Fred Wilson's brute force strategy for finding good deals? 10 meetings per day. * Tear down this wall: On the persistence of borders in trade. * Scott Kirsner: New England's economy is playing five games, but winning only two. * Digg CEO Jay Adelson says that profitability is right around the corner, thanks to its new ad platform. Read more » |
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The 12.5 million shares priced at $12.50 according to an underwriter, who declined to be identified, and the IPO raised about $156.3 million. Fortinet had expected shares to price between $9 and $11, according to a regulatory filing with the Sec |
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Wells Fargo Doubles Down on Norwest Venture Partners, Commits $1.2B
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 Norwest Venture Partners will invest the money in technology startups and other growth-stage private companies based in the U.S., India, Israel and China over the next three to four years, says managing partner Promod Haque. Wells Fargo had a rough beginning to its year, cutting its quarterly dividends by 85% to 5 cents per share in March. The move was calculated to save t... |
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Microsoft Boosts Support For Startups As Dodge Joins Google
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 It sounds like he'll be doing essentially the same job at Google that he did at Microsoft -- helping developers and startups build products on top of Google, rather than Microsoft, technology. In his blog, he thanked Microsoft and then proceeded to criticize several of its products -- Outlook, Office, Windows Mobile and Internet Explorer -- as flawed. He's dropping them in favor of Google products. He also promised to write "extensively and honestly" about making the switch. Dodge's former colleagues, meanwhile, say that Microsoft is expanding its commitment to startups, despite Dodge's departure Read more » |
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