Call them the cream of the venture crop, the 472 high flying U.S.-based companies with valuations above $100 million and exciting businesses to justify them.

Online market place Etsy said it raised $40 million in new capital in a deal led by Index Ventures and joined by existing investors Union Square Ventures, Accel Partners and Burda. The news was released in a blog post, which noted that $525 million changed hands on the Etsy market place last year. Here is [...]

The rental agency Airbnb issued a lengthy public apology yesterday afternoon, following days of dreadful press spawned by the story of “EJ,” a customer whose home was ransacked by someone who’d rented it through Airbnb. In the letter, CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky (pictured) stated that the company had “really screwed things up” in not [...]

2011 will likely be remembered for its bubbly valuations. But plenty of startup employees may wind up recalling it as the year that their company’s top dog was kicked to the curb or else stepped aside to make room for someone better suited for the challenges ahead.

Etsy staffers will be among them. Today, the online marketplace for handmade goods revealed in a blog post that CTO Chad Dickerson has replaced Etsy founder Rob Kalin as CEO. (AllThingsD was first to notice the post, in which Dickerson smartly thanked Kalin for dreaming up Etsy, as well as for hiring him.)

It isn’t yet clear whether Kalin wanted to stay or go, but he’s now been in and out of the CEO’s (presumed) cubicle twice. In 2008, Kalin handed the management reins to Maria Thomas, NPR’s longtime digital head before coming to Etsy. By late 2009, he was back, and she was gone.

Following are some others who this year have gone from managing, to having time for Mah Jong.

As valuations steadily rise for consumer Internet startups, angels appear to be increasingly willing to take some money off the table by selling to secondary investors eager to buy into those companies.

That seems to have been the case last Thursday when crafts e-commerce site Etsy raised a $20 million series E round led by Index Ventures. The new round was not driven by founders or VCs looking for liquidity, but instead was “angel liquidity driven,” Fred Wilson, a principal of Union Square Ventures (an Etsy investor), wrote on his blog last Friday.

Wilson went on to write that “the main point of this post is we are seeing that angels can get liquidity via these secondary transactions. They don’t need to wait for the sale of the company or possibly the IPO. That is a very good thing, for the angel/seed sector, and for the overall venture capital market.”

Etsy, the online retailer of handmade arts and crafts, raised another $20 million in a series E venture funding round led by Index Ventures. TechCrunch said partner Danny Rimer will receive an observer’s seat on Etsy’s board and that the latest funding round gives Etsy a pre-money valuation of just under $300 million.

Etsy Inc., a New York-based online marketplace for buying and selling handmade products, has acquired ad platform operator Adtuitive Inc. No financial terms were disclosed for the deal, which was disclosed on Etsy’s blog. Etsy has raised over $30 million, from firms like Accel Partners and Union Square Ventures.