Trending on peHUB for the week of April 2 – 6: Huntsman Gay, Henry Kravis, GSO Capital, Sequoia Capital, Arsenal Capital, seed investing, venture fundraising, Q1 exits, JOBS Act, more

Trending in the news this week: Audax Group, Canopy Financial, Chamath Palihapitiya, Eric Schmidt, Henry Ellenbogen, Identified, Indiana Public Retirement System, KPS Capital Partners, SecureNet, Sterling Partners, T. Rowe Price and Bill and Tim Draper.

Bijan Salehizadeh of NaviMed Capital ran the numbers and found that returns from seed stage deals “aren’t good enough to justify the amount of exuberance and valuation growth that we are seeing in the seed market, particularly in IT, Internet and software.”

Jeff Clavier has closed a $55 million third fund that will enable his seed-stage firm, SoftTech VC, to make bigger bets on portfolio companies and reap bigger rewards. Clavier, the firm’s founder and managing partner, said the fund was oversubscribed and has invested in 23 companies so far with money from its first and second [...]

1. Top 10 Sectors Backed by VCs in Q2; the Internet Isn’t the Only Game in Town, by Mark Boslet
2. Don’t Let Momentum Slip–And Other Top Fundraising Tips, by David Toll
3. Texas County & District’s Top-Performing Funds, by David Toll
4. Who’s Investing Faster — DST or Andreessen Horowitz?, by Connie Loizos
5. Who’s Getting Rich Off of the Dunkin’ IPO? Here Are the Top Shareholders, by Luisa Beltran
6. More Money Flows into Mobile Ad Startups, by Joanna Glasner
7. Seed/Early Stage Investments Hit 12-Year High in Q2, Fueled by Internet Deals, by Mark Boslet
8. Playing The Field: PE And Pro Sports, by Gregory Roth

Private equity firm Elevation Partners plans to raise a new seed stage fund, peHUB has learned.

As peHUB previously reported, Elevation Partners co-founder Roger McNamee said in a speech late last month that his firm would start make seed stage investments. A source with knowledge of Elevation’s plans tells peHUB that the firm will not make the seed investments out of its $1.8 billion PE fund, raised in 2005. Instead, the firm will raise a new fund, the source says, noting that the size of the vehicle has yet to be determined.

McNamee first spoke about his interest in seed deals at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles, telling the audience that

Seed stage investments have become so popular that even angels are finding it difficult to keep up their pace. To wit: Half of the deals done by angels between 2002 and 2007 were with seed and early stage companies, but that figure fell to 35 percent last year and is likely to be 35 percent or [...]