It used to be that you had to have an actual company for capture investors’ attention. Last March, entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham upended that basic standard, inviting candidates with no plan whatsoever into his Y Combinator program. Now, Upstart, a 10-month-old, 10-person company based in Palo Alto, is making even Graham’s unconventional thinking seem quaint.

SparkLabs, a new startups accelerator based in Seoul, South Korea, has launched with the goal of strengthening ties between Korea’s entrepreneurs and the rest of the world. SparkLabs will provide a similar model to Y-Combinator and TechStars while focusing on Korean startups in the Internet, online gaming, mobile, and digital media sectors. Among its mentors are [...]

Venrock will see a return of more than 15x on its investment in SlideShare after just four years, says Brian Ascher, a Venrock partner who sits on the company’s board.

NBA champion Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban likes early-stage startups. He doesn’t like the Miami Heat, who his Mavs will square off against when the league kicks its season on Dec. 25. And, from the sound of it, he still doesn’t much care for Box.net’s prospects, either. I caught up with Cuban after his keynote [...]

Mark Cuban has put $250,000 into Los Angeles-based social gaming company Mention Mobile, the company announced Tuesday. Cuban, owner of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks, will be given a minority equity stake in the company. Mention Mobile was formed in 2010.

BlueCava said it closed of a $9.5 million round of new funding. Venture capital firm S3 Ventures led the $9.5 million round. Existing investors Mark Cuban and Tim Headington participated. Irvine-based BlueCava develops device identification technology. PRESS RELEASE BLUECAVA ANNOUNCES $9.5 MILLION IN NEW FUNDING LED BY S3 VENTURES Mark Cuban and Tim Headington participate [...]

Decked out in black jeans, a purple shirt, black jacket and orange Puma tennis shoes, Box.net co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie lived up to his billing as a rising star in the tech world at today’s Venture Alpha conference in San Francisco. Interviewed by Alastair Goldfisher, acting editor of Thomson Reuters’ Venture Capital Journal, Levie [...]

Give Google credit for lighting the fuse with its harangue last week entitled “When Patents Attack Android.” Now investors and entrepreneurs are weighing in on the heels of a Department of Justice probe. This weekend, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban offered a scathing assessment of the troubled patent system on his blog when he claimed [...]

BlueCava, the device recognition startup funded by billionaire Mark Cuban, raised another $1.5 million in debt financing, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In October, the Irvine, Calif., company closed a $5 million round led by Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Timothy Headington, founder of the oil and [...]

1) It’s Not a Bubble, People; It’s a Pyramid Scheme, by Connie Loizos

2) Scoop: Peter Wagner Parts Ways With Accel After Nearly 15 Years, by Alastair Goldfisher

3) Halsey Minor Sticks It To Virginia, Again, by Connie Loizos

4) ‘Goldfinger’ Hits $732M On 2nd Mount Kellett Fund, by Gregory Roth

5) Oak Hill To Make Back 40% of Dave & Buster’s Investment in Nine Months–UPDATED, by Luisa Beltran

6) Riding High On Q4 Profit, KKR Expects To Fully Deploy ’06 Fund, by Luisa Beltran

7) J-Dubs Redux: Beaten Abandoned, & Left For Dead, J.W. Childs Is Back, by Bernard Vaughan