Redpoint Ventures, the venture-capital firm behind digital-video recording company TiVo and vacation-rental company HomeAway, is raising a $400 million fund, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Ten years ago, Austin led Los Angeles on the deal-making front and barely trailed New York. But investment in Austin has dropped off noticeably.

The VC with a string of smash-hit investments is about to close its biggest fund ever.

Google’s latest and greatest acquisition is its $12.5 billion buy of Motorola, incorporating into its stable a major handset maker and patent library that transcends the company’s long-held advertising and search business model. But how many other sectors is the search giant planning to enter? Well, just take a look at Google Ventures’ portfolio, and [...]

A day after getting beaten down with the rest of the market, three-fourths of this year’s VC-backed IPOs posted gains in today’s market rebound.

Of the 38 VC-backed companies that have gone public on U.S. exchanges this year, 28 saw their share prices increase today, while nine experienced declines and one remained flat, according to data from Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). That stands in stark contrast to yesterday, when 36 of the stocks lost value and two remained flat.

The biggest gainers in terms of dollars were LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), which shot up

As you are well aware by now, the stock market plunged today on fears that the U.S. economy is slipping back into a recession and concerns about a debt crisis in Europe.

It was the biggest selloff in two years, with the Dow and the S&P 500 both declining by more than 4% and the Nasdaq falling by 5 percent.

I was curious how this year’s crop of VC-backed companies fared in the correction, so I took a look at the performance of 2011′s 10 largest IPOs of U.S.-based VC-backed companies. Given that I was expecting to find a bloodbath, I

Redpoint Ventures’ Menlo Park offices must be an awfully happy place to have been these last 12 months. The VC has racked up billions of dollars’ worth of IPOs, sales to strategic buyers and even launched itself into a handful of new investments as of late. Some of its deals—like eye-popping multiples on Cloud.com, or [...]

Vacation rental website operator HomeAway Inc priced its initial public offering at the top of the expected range on Tuesday, an underwriter said. Texas-based company and its shareholders sold 8 million shares for $27 each, the underwriter said, raising $216 million. They had planned to sell shares for $24 to $27 each. HomeAway’s websites, which [...]

It’s still a matter of fun conjecture as to when Facebook, Groupon, Twitter or Zynga will launch their IPOs. But for now, it doesn’t matter. This year is already turning out to be a good one for VC-backed IPOs. As Mark Boslet, senior editor of Venture Capital Journal, reported in the upcoming May issue: The [...]

With gas prices at multi-year highs, long-distance travel is getting less affordable than it’s been for a while. But that apparently hasn’t lessened venture interest in startups in the space.

There were two travel-related funding announcements so far this week. Oktogo.ru, an online hotel booking service for Russians traveling abroad, raised $5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners, ABRT and French fund Ventech VC. Meanwhile, London-based HouseTrip, which specializes in short-term apartment bookings for travelers, raised $2.7 million in a Series A funding round from Index Ventures. (See a list of half a dozen other recent fundings on the jump.)

Those were smaller deals. But with vacation home rental site HomeAway in the pipeline for an IPO, it’s now possible to get a glimpse of larger numbers in a fast-growing space. (HomeAway, which is seeking to raise $230 million in its public offering, had revenue of $153 million and net income of $17 million last year.) Additionally, the recent viral growth of Airbnb, a site for arranging short-term stays in accommodations, ranging from living room futons