In Part 2 of a two-part series, David Teten of ff Venture Capital and his research partners discuss three common categories of VCs in terms of attitude and practices towards investing and portfolio company support: Financiers, Mentors and Portfolio Operators.

Lots of venture capitalists claim to add value to the companies in which they invest. But how do they do it? And does it really produce better returns for their investors? Guest authors David Teten, Adham AbdelFattah, Koen Bremer and Gyorgy Buslig give their perspective.

Adcade, an NYC-based startup in the mobile advertising market, has closed over $1.5 million in seed stage funding led by ff Venture Capital. Other participants in the round include Quotidian Ventures, BHV, Great Oaks VC and a handful of angel investors.

New York-based seed investment firm ff Venture Capital is expanding its acceleration team to include an in-house designer, hacker and public relations specialist. The positions are based in midtown Manhattan. The new team members will work both on in-house ff projects and also work with portfolio companies.

VolunteerSpot has secured an investment of $1.5 million. The funding was led by ff Venture Capital of New York, with participation from members of the Central TX Angel Network, Nebraska Angel Network, Angel List and Baylor Angel Network. Launched in 2009, VolunteerSpot provides online volunteer tools designed to help busy moms, teachers and nonprofit organisers [...]

Online reputation company Klout has acquired Blockboard. This is Klout’s first acquisition. Klout’s backers include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Greycroft Partners and ff Venture Capital. PRESS RELEASE We’re only a few weeks into 2012 and already have more great news. Klout has acquired Blockboard! This is Klout’s first acquisition, and it’s a very important [...]

Livefyre, a provider of social commenting and real-time applications, has announced the release of its second-generation conversation platform along with a Series B round of financing. The $4.5M investment was led by Greycroft Partners and included digital media investors Cue Ball, HillsVen Group, and ff Venture Capital. The funding round allows Livefyre to scale engineering and sales efforts, as well as accelerate development of its aggressive innovation roadmap.

Would you invest in a company that only sold to one out of 80 leads? Or a company that typically took one year and three professionals just to close a single client?

In fact, you’ve already made that investment: in your private equity or venture capital fund. According to our data, the median investor in private companies reviews over 80 opportunities in order to make one investment. The median private equity fund required 3.1 investment team members to close one transaction in one year….

David Teten, founder of one company that mines social networks for deal leads, another that mines social networks for recruitment leads, another that connects hedge fund managers with industry executives, and another one (alas, now defunct) that provided investment banking services to buyers and sellers of domain names, has landed a gig as a venture capitalist.

Teten has become the second partner at New York-based ff Venture Capital since its inception in 1999. The firm holds stakes in such notable companies as Klout Inc. (mine is 50, thank you very much) and Hashable Inc., a company that stands at the crossroads of CRM and, yes, hash tags. Having known Teten for nearly a decade, and admired his mastery of the social networking scene, I thought I’d catch up with him with five questions to find out more about his new firm.

Entrepeneur David Teten is joining the early-stage, New York-based venture capital firm ff Venture Capital as a partner, he announced today on his blog. Teten joins founder John Frankel. Teten is chair of Harvard Business School Angels New York and was most recently CEO of Navon Partners, a New York-based data mining and analytics company. [...]