News Byte

Battery Ventures Hires a Top Comms Exec: Former WSJ Reporter Rebecca Buckman

Like many venture firms in Silicon Valley, Battery Ventures has hired a top communications and content exec — former Wall Street Journal reporter Rebecca Buckman. She will be a VP at Battery, in charge of a number of media areas, including developing original content about its portfolio of investments. Buckman has also written for Forbes and, most recently, has been doing some PR work. Adding top execs to focus on media and content at VC firms has been increasing, including the recent hiring of former WSJ reporter Ben Worthen by Sequoia Capital and Wired’s Michael Copeland at Andreessen Horowitz, among others.

News Byte

WSJ’s Worthen Joins Sequoia as Head of Content

Longtime Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Worthen is joining Sequoia Capital as head of content to work with its startups, including on improving its blogs, social media and video. The Silicon Valley venture firm confirmed the move by Worthen, who has covered tech for 13 years, most recently focused on enterprise software.

Voices

HP Moves to Head Off Investor Revolt

The board of Hewlett-Packard Co. is on the hot seat again.

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Dell Nears $23 Billion Deal to Go Private

Dell Inc. on Monday was close to finalizing a $23 billion deal to take itself private at between $13.50 and $13.75 a share, said people familiar with the matter, in a buyout that marks an unofficial end to the era when a handful of young entrepreneurs made PCs the dominant computing device.

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Inside HP’s Missed Chance to Avoid a Disastrous Deal

Days before Hewlett-Packard Co. dived into an $11 billion software deal it almost instantly regretted, it missed a chance to back away.

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Dell in Talks on Buyout at $13 to $14 a Share

Dell Inc.’s journey from computer king to buyout candidate reflects the difficulty of abandoning what propelled it to prominence: A finely tuned supply chain that could quickly assemble and deliver custom-ordered computers at a lower cost than the competition.

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Long Before HP Deal, Autonomy’s Red Flags

When Autonomy Corp. was starting up in this historic university town, founder Mike Lynch stuck a sign on an office door that read “Authorized Personnel Only.” Behind the door, he told visitors, were 500 engineers working on “hush-hush” projects.

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What’s Gone Wrong With HP?

In 2010, Hewlett-Packard Co.’s then-chief executive Mark Hurd boasted the company was “the largest IT company in the world” and said “we are still not to our full potential.” Two years and two CEOs later, HP is stumbling.

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HP’s New Printers: A Big Launch for the Battered Company

Hewlett-Packard Co. plans to unveil a new line of printers for businesses Tuesday, one of the first fruits of Chief Executive Meg Whitman’s efforts to invest more in research and development as she tries to turn around the struggling technology company.

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Revenge of the Nerds, the Sequel: Silicon Valley Wallflowers Now Hot

Even as Facebook, Groupon and social-games maker Zynga Inc. struggle in the public market, tech companies with names like Splunk Inc. and ServiceNow Inc. that make harder-to-understand products for businesses are snagging attention with stellar IPOs and strong growth.