Not surprisingly, Stanford University alumni are the most likely to attract venture funding for their startups. But Harvard University and New York University are seeing fast growth in deal making.

Recruitment search engine Indeed is to be acquired by Recruit, a provider of integrated HR and information services based in Japan. Indeed was backed by Union Square Ventures.

New York City native Charlie O’Donnell is under the Brooklyn Bridge and dreaming–and LPs are buying in on his inaugural seed fund.

New Enterprise Associates has led a $15 million Series B round for Duolingo. Union Square Ventures, an existing investor, also participated. Pittsburgh-based Duolingo, a free service, teaches users a new language while they translate content on the web.

The Preqin study, released today, found that the quarterly deal flow varied over the 10-quarter period from about 60 to almost 100, with a spike of dollars allocated in the first quarter of 2011, when Facebook raised $1.5 billion and Zynga brought in $485 million.

Venture capital returns have begun to recover with exits from companies such as LinkedIn, Zynga, Jive Software and Imperva fueling liquidity. Funds from 2007 and 2008 are good examples of the renewal.

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 endowment committed $337.5 million to 11 funds in 2010 and 2011, according to its November portfolio report. Nine focus on technology or allocate some portion of their funds to tech. Two zero in on health care.

Tumblr President John Maloney announced today that he is no longer run the day-to-day operations of the company, which has raised more than $125 million in VC from from Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.

Trending on peHUB this week: Splunk, Infoblox, Proofpoint, Sequoia Capital, Sevin Rosen, Mohr Davidow, Thrivent, Spectrum Equity, SurveyMonkey, New Mountain Capital, UTIMCO, Union Square Ventures, True Ventures, King.com