The big news today is that Facebook is reportedly planning to register to go public next week. It should come as no surprise, then, that our most popular post this week was about this year’s prime IPO candidates. Other hot topics included the above-average performance of the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System’s PE portfolio, a surge in VC investing and promotions at Carlyle and TA Associates. Here are the top 10 posts peHUB’s regular readers found most compelling from Jan. 23 to Jan. 27

1. Slideshow: Bring on the 2012 IPO Candidates – by Joanna Glasner
2. Scorecard: San Francisco Builds A Winning PE Portfolio – by David Toll
3. Venture Investing Rebounds In 2011 With Early Stage Leaping To A 10 Year High: Slideshow – by Mark Boslet
4. Aydin Senkut Recalls a Game of Pool with Aaron Levie Led Him to Milo.com: PHOTOS – by Alastair Goldfisher
5. Slideshow: Smart Grid, Smart Play? – by Jonathan Marino
6. TA Associates Promotes Eight – by peHUB staff
7. Carlyle Promotes 41 Execs – by peHUB staff
8. Global PE M&A Does Well in 2011 – by Angela Sormani
9. TransDigm Group Acquires AmSafe Global – by peHUB staff
10. Battery, Bay and USVP Could See 22x Return from Guidewire IPO – by Lawrence Aragon

Aydin Senkut, founder and president of Felicis Ventures, says that he has some 20 exits to his credit. But his investment in Milo.com wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for what he called “an epic game of pool” with Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie. Speaking at the Startup Exits event last week at RocketSpace [...]

Seed investing fell 56% in the recent third quarter to the lowest level of the past six years, according to the MoneyTree Report. The question is whether this accurately reflects the seemingly irrepressible seed market. One line of thinking is that the MoneyTree study may not entirely capture the continued ground swell of support for [...]

Last week, Forbes published its Midas List of venture investors with Jim Breyer of Accel Partners edging out Sequoia’s Michael Moritz and Greylock’s Reid Hoffman for the top spot. This closely followed list of VC moneymen has become something of a Who’s Who of the business. Its focus is the highest-profile GPs with the best [...]

The great thing – and the bad thing – about the Internet is that we have all sorts of newfangled tools to measure things. But, as Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that counts can be measured. Not everything that can be measured counts.” Which brings us to the latest list making the rounds: the [...]

Earlier today, Felicis Ventures, founded by ex-Googler Aydin Senkut, announced the close of its first institutional fund at $40 million, or roughly $10 million more than Senkut planned to raise when he first began knocking on the doors of LPs. I’d written about the new fund back in June, when Senkut first registered it with [...]

Aydin Senkut, a former Googler turned prolific angel investor, has raised roughly $16 million of what is estimated to become a $30 million fund, according to a new SEC filing. Eight investors have already participated in the offering for Felicis Ventures II, according to the filing, which does not list a minimum investment amount. Senkut, [...]

Aydin Senkut decided to quit Google in 2005, after six years as a senor manager responsible for Asia Pacific strategic partner development and account management. He wasn’t fed up. He simply didn’t need to work at Google any more. Like many of his peers at the time, the now-39-year-old became supremely wealthy almost overnight when the company went public in 2004.

Still, Senkut didn’t hit the beach (for long). Instead, he almost immediately began working again, this time on his own investment firm called Felicis Ventures. He designed his own logo and website, set up his own phones, had business cards made and set up informational interviews for himself all over the Valley, including with Sequoia’s Mike Moritz. At the heart of his questions was this: Is it possible to break into VC without first working for an established venture fund?