So well, in fact, that the tablet market is often characterized as being a two-horse race between the tricked-out Amazon e-reader and Apple’s iPad.

But when it comes down to the numbers, the two companies couldn’t be more different, like comparing Apples to oranges.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report a giant fourth quarter, but it’s guaranteed not to look anything like Apple’s monstrous results reported last week for the same period.

Here’s one data point: For the holiday period, Apple’s gross margin was an impressive 44.7 percent, up from 38.5 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, analysts are estimating that Amazon’s operating margin will fall to 1.3 percent from 3.6 percent last year.

The specifications of the two tablets can be compared side by side, but a completely different vocabulary is needed to speak intelligently about the two businesses. Simply put, Apple is a hardware maker and Amazon is a retailer.

One has very high margins and the other doesn’t, resulting in two drastically different financial outcomes today. But over time, the idea is for that to change.

Rather than making money from hardware sales, Amazon’s approach to the Fire is to generate incremental sales from other goods and services on the device. Some analysts feel that, over time, that play can create a reliable and recurring revenue stream – and ultimately higher margins.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report sales of $18.3 billion in the fourth quarter, up more than 40 percent from the same period in 2010, according to FactSet Research. Q4 earnings are expected to fall notably to 17 cents a share from 91 cents a year ago.

While revenue growth is impressive, the company’s profitability is being weighed down by losses from the $199 Kindle (which is not quite a break-even proposition), the construction of more warehouses across the globe (17 were added in 2011 for a total of 69) and other investments in infrastructure, like its cloud-computing services and media services, like video, music and e-books.

In contrast, Apple has a rich markup on its iDevices and doesn’t have much of the same overhead as Amazon.

Still, the number of consumers Amazon touches in just one quarter is staggering, and it continues to take share from brick and mortar retailers.

As J.P. Morgan analyst Douglas Anmuth points out in a report, e-commerce grew about 15 percent in Q4 in the U.S. due to strong holiday sales, but he expects Amazon’s growth rate to more than double that to 47 percent year over year.

Anmuth is also bullish that while the fourth quarter could represent a “low point for margins,” Amazon could start seeing an uptick in margin as soon as the first quarter, now that a number of services and some key infrastructure are set in place.

However, don’t expect much insight tomorrow into the company’s long-range plans. The Seattle-based company is typically short on details during its earnings release and call.

If it follows standard protocol, it could provide an update on warehouses being built next year, number of employees and other infrastructure investments, but will likely dodge answers about how many Kindles it shipped during the quarter, or how much Kindle Fire owners are purchasing on the devices.

For now, we’ll have to settle for analyst estimates.

On Sunday evening, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan raised his estimate for fourth-quarter Fire sales to six million units from five million.

While only on the market for a limited time, that’s still a lot less than Apple, which sold 15.43 million iPads, up 111 percent year over year.

Amazon’s stock dropped 1.65 percent, or $3.22, today to close at $192.15 a share.

The San Francisco-based company is somewhat similar to the teen-oriented book series by Ann M. Martin, in which a group of middle-school students help parents find babysitters.

But in this version, instead of an elaborate phone tree, it uses modern communication tools like Facebook. The UrbanSitter site helps parents find sitters based on their availability, and even on their experience working for Facebook friends and friends of friends.

UrbanSitter has secured $1.75 million in seed funding from First Round Capital. Rustic Canyon Partners, Menlo Ventures and several angels also participated.

In September, AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes reported that the company had launched in one market, and had assisted with 300 babysitting bookings.

Since then, it has expanded to San Diego, Napa and Sonoma Valleys, Seattle, Boulder and Lake Tahoe. Next month, it will roll out in New York, Chicago, Denver and St. Louis.

The funding will be used for product development, such as mobile bookings, and new features, including online payments to sitters. The capital will also go toward expansion into new cities.

At one point today, the stock dipped as low as $7.97 a share before closing at $8 even.

At that price, it is $2 below it’s initial stock price of $10, and has lost at least 20 percent of its market value in less than a month.

But why?

The San Francisco social games company has launched at least two new games since going public, and over the past few days, no harsh analyst report has come out with a negative rating.

It appears the once high-flying Silicon Valley company — known for addictive games on Facebook like FarmVille and CityVille, and mobile games like Words With Friends — is having a hard time gaining the market’s confidence.

To be sure, there’s no clear answer for the price drop; and other tech companies that recently went public, such as Groupon or LinkedIn, have experienced their own fluctuations. But there is one theory making the rounds.

Analysts and other sources suspect Zynga’s stock has been propped up over the past month by the underwriters, who agreed to buy shares if the stock started to perform poorly. The stock purchases would have created steady demand for the stock and kept the price relatively stable.

Furthermore, the theory goes, the underwriters have since met their obligations for buying the stock, and therefore are are no longer buying as many shares.

Incidentally, on Friday, Morgan Stanley — one of Zynga’s underwriters — disclosed that it had purchased nearly 16 million shares in December.

But while the disclosure, filed with the with the Securities & Exchange Commission, adds fuel to the theory, it is unclear if those shares were purchased as part of the IPO, or if they were spread out throughout the month.

Zynga declined to comment, citing its quiet period.

Still, whatever the reason for the drop, Zynga’s shares are seeing less demand.

As recently as last week, the stock was trading at $9.45 a share, but since then, it has struggled to stay above $9. On Friday, it lost 12 cents; today, it lost 81 cents, or 9 percent.

But even if the underwriting theory is on the mark, it doesn’t explain the broader question of why Zynga’s stock price is falling. Shouldn’t there be other investors who are willing to buy up a piece of Zynga?

Unfortunately, it seems the market isn’t sure what to do with the stock, or how to value it.

A social games company fits somewhere between traditional game makers, like Electronic Arts and Activision; and an Internet stock, like Google or LinkedIn.

Zynga gives away its games for free, but still manages to be profitable from selling virtual goods, such as a tractor or more power-ups, that a small number of players elect to purchase inside the games.

It’s also heavily reliant upon Facebook, which could be another problem. Facebook, too, operates privately, and reveals only as much information about its business as it has to — at least until it files to go public, which could be later this year.

In all likelihood, many of these investor fears could be settled when Zynga reports its first period as a public company. No word on when that will be yet, but the fourth-quarter report should come as soon as this month, and no later than February.

Last week, the Facebook game company sold 100 million shares at $10 apiece to raise $1 billion.

On its first day of trading, the stock fell 5 percent, and its losses are even deeper today. In early morning trading, the stock was down nearly 8 percent, or 73 cents, to trade at $8.77 a share. UPDATE: The stock ended up falling 48 cents, or 5 percent, to close at $9.02 a share.

No anti-wither serum exists in the real world to revive a stock price the way virtual crops can be revitalized in FarmVille, one of the game-maker’s hit titles.

Zynga is not the only recent Internet darling to take a nosedive.

It took a while longer, but about a month after Groupon went public, its stock tumbled and was trading for less than half its first-day high of $30 a share. Groupon has since rebounded, but it is also trading lower today, at $22.47 a share.

Zynga has not see those wild fluctuations yet.

Still, the losses do add up — at least on paper. Both the company’s public valuation and some of its largest shareholders’ shares are quickly dwindling in value.

The company is now trading at a valuation of $6.1 billion, down from its IPO valuation of $10 billion. Other big game companies, like Electronic Arts, are now more valuable, albeit only slightly higher.

Investors like Morgan Stanley are seeing their stakes drift further and further underwater.

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley, which was also one of the Zynga’s underwriters in its IPO, purchased 5.3 million shares at $14 apiece, for a total of $75 million. Four other investors, which were unnamed, also contributed to the round totaling $490 million, according to the document.

Morgan Stanley’s stake is now worth only $46.5 million.

The dip is also hurting Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s stake, which is now worth less than $1 billion, or roughly $982.5 million.

One thing the company can look forward to is its first-quarter earnings, which will come out early next year and should be bolstered by a strong fourth-quarter performance. In the quarter, Zynga launched new games, including CastleVille, on Facebook, as well as some standalone titles for iPhone; the fourth quarter is typically strong because players have a little more free time to play — and pay — during the holidays.

That brings the price tag for Adobe’s two-year ad business shopping spree to $2.4 billion. The bulk of that comes from Adobe’s 2009 acquisition of Omniture for $1.8 billion; it has also recently picked up Auditude and Demdex.

Adobe’s appetite for ad technology has been good news for a handful of investors who have been betting on the sector. In the case of Efficient Frontier, the deal is a big win for Mitsui & Co., Redpoint Ventures and Cambrian Ventures, who put less than $15 million into the start-up.

But while lots of VC cash has gone into ad tech in the past few years, there haven’t been a ton of big exits.

Beyond Adobe, the only other active buyer has been Google. And industry executives say that some ad tech firms looking for more funding are having trouble getting the dollars they want.

Last week, the retired prison guard showed up at a midtown New York loft for an event that connects entrepreneurs with investors to see whether he might get, say, $50,000, from the angels — wealthy individuals who provide capital to start-ups with the potential for fast growth.‬

Mr. Bolden, dressed in a suit and tie, took to the microphone for a two-minute pitch, clutching his crumpled notes of the key selling points for his idea — a police handgun identification signal, complete with a flashing alert. The proposed device is meant to protect plain-clothes officers from friendly fire.‬

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To all those entrepreneurs, I offer my advice: Don’t do it. Shotgun weddings don’t work in romance, and they don’t work in venture capital, either.

Solutions that offer the best valuations, without the close-knit partnerships required to build successful long-term businesses, are never going to be sustainable solutions.

In my experience, a lack of shared understanding between the parties upfront can lead to bigger problems down the line.

I recently read a statement from Founders Fund boldly declaring that VCs impose “value-destroying distractions” with the “intrusion of adult supervision.” As I reflected on this thought, I began to wonder — if any entrepreneur shares these feelings, why then would he ever enter into an arrangement with a venture firm?

The fact is, a VC’s value can vary widely. Just like you’d be better off not going under the knife of a neurosurgeon who graduated med school with a C- average, you’d be wise not to choose a sub-par venture investor who doesn’t share your values. Take the time to find the right one.

If both enterprise and investor don’t understand each other upfront, there is going to be a lot of dissatisfaction about where — and how — the relationship ends. When you look at the start-up and venture capital sectors separately, it seems they both understand this principle. For each, building relationships is a prerequisite to building up businesses.

In the start-up world, founders take a long-term approach when searching for co-founders. Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford on Larry’s first day of class before founding Google; Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were friends in high school and spent every day together before founding Apple.

Similarly, while you probably won’t find a VC partner after a single meeting, there are a few things to keep in mind that can increase your chances of success over the long run.

First and foremost, do your homework. It’s shocking to me how few entrepreneurs actually make due diligence calls to other portfolio CEOs. At Foundation Capital, we provide contacts for every company we have ever funded. Use those kinds of resources. Ask for references beyond what is on the Web site. Don’t expect glowing reviews from every single reference, but weigh the feedback carefully and decide if you like what you hear overall.

Second, dig deeply into how the firm works with founders on a day-to-day basis. Consider how much — and in what capacity — partners participate in their portfolios. Think about the proposed value-add, and if it will complement the existing capabilities of your executive team. Decide if the VC firm’s approach fits your style.

Third, don’t get seduced by the name of the firm. This isn’t choosing a college or buying a car. Set the prestige factor aside. Frankly, a firm’s name counts for little when it comes to predicting the success of your venture. It’s really about the individual partner who will be working with you. Decide if you want to work with that particular person.

Finally, ask the tough questions:

• How will this investor help out during difficult times?
• Will he or she understand the process and need for more funds if or when that time comes?
• Is the investor’s approach to the venture truly collaborative — one in which both parties are dependent on each other to succeed?
• Are your prospective investors passive-aggressive, or do they come out and tell you what they’re thinking?

Strong entrepreneur/VC partnerships are based on mutual respect and a true drive to succeed. You don’t want an investor who simply hands you a check and pushes you out the door with nothing more than an expectation of flawless execution — and, of course, a significant return on that investment.

At the end of the day, accepting an investment is like committing to a relationship — there will be ups and downs and disappointments, and even a few failures along the way. But the best partnerships — like the strongest relationships — are lasting ones. Granted, we’re talking about a decade and not a lifetime, but it is still critical to understand the people you are bringing into your business and whether you can work with them over the long haul — through thick and thin.

Understanding a prospective partner takes time. So do yourself a favor: Play it smart. Take your time. Do your homework.

Charles Moldow is a general partner at Foundation Capital, where he primarily focuses on consumer Internet companies. A former entrepreneur, Charles was a member of the founding executive team at TellMe Networks and on the founding team of @Home, and has a background in general management, sales, marketing, product management and business development.

Earlier this morning, Zynga announced it would price its stock between $8.50 and $10 a share when it goes public later this month.

That’s at the high end of the range that values the four-year-old company at as much as $7 billion. But that’s much lower than than what some investors paid as recently as February, according to documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

In fact, some of its investors are already underwater.

One of those investors is Morgan Stanley, which is also one of the company’s underwriters in its IPO. In February, 11 mutual funds associated with Morgan Stanley purchased 5.3 million shares at $14 apiece for a total of $75 million. Four other investors, which were unnamed, also contributed to the round totaling $490 million, according to the document.

At $14 a share, the company’s value in February totaled nearly $10 billion, or roughly 43 percent greater than today’s high-end of the range.

Zynga justified the higher stock price back in February, stating that the U.S. economy had improved and that the public markets were being receptive to Internet stocks, including generous valuations for privately held companies such as Facebook and Groupon.

Furthermore, in March, the company used that valuation as a guide to purchase shares back from five of its early investors and its CEO Mark Pincus at $13.96 a share.

While the market conditions have likely changed since then, it’s important to note that things are still in flux. If the company drums up enough demand for the 115 million shares being sold over the next two weeks, the price could move even higher.

As Kara Swisher previously reported, Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering, and no other executives at Zynga have plans to sell stock, either.

But a number of the company’s early investors will be cashing in. Institutional Venture Partners, Avalon Ventures and Foundry Venture Capital will sell 2.5 million shares apiece for up to $25 million each. Union Square Ventures will sell 2.2 million for roughly $22 million.  Google and Silver Lake Partners will also both sell 1.7 million shares for a proceed of $17 million each.

Google was originally not listed as an investor when Zynga filed documents with the SEC to go public, but it showed up in subsequent filings. Google, which was rumored to have invested as much as $100 million in Zynga, has an interest in social gaming because of its Google+ network. Following the offering, it will continue to own 21 million shares, or about 3.8 percent of the company.

One notable shareholder that won’t be selling shares is venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an early investor in the company. Its partner Bing Gordon, who personally owns a 10.7 percent stake in the company, also does not plan to sell any shares.

The company filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission this morning, indicating that it intends to raise between $850 million and $1.15 billion in its public offering.

At the high end of the range, that would translate to roughly $150 million more than it had previously estimated it could raise.

The company is seeking to sell 100 million shares at $8.50 to $10 a share and will reserve 15 million additional shares for extra demand. It expects to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ZNGA.

Under the best circumstances, the company will be valued at nearly $7 billion based on 699.3 million shares outstanding. That falls below some of the rumored expectations that have been floating around over the past few weeks.

Still, at that value, it will come close to the public valuation of Electronic Arts, which hovers around $7.8 billion, but falls short of other game publishers, like Activision, which has a value of  $14 billion.

Zynga has made its riches off selling virtual goods in social games on Facebook. Some of its most recognizable titles include FarmVille, CityVille, Poker and Words With Friends.

Virtual goods often allow players to continue to play the game and level-up faster, such as an energy boost. They also can be decorative in nature, like an outfit for an avatar or seeds to plant on a farm. Of the roughly 230 million monthly active users, very few players ever bother making a purchase.

Since the beginning, the company has a very close relationship with Facebook, which has been contentious at times, especially since the platform started collecting a 30 percent tax on all virtual goods sold. More recently, the company has tried to expand to other platforms, including the launch of several games on mobile and Google+. It also has its own online game network in production.

The company’s IPO will be one of the largest tech offerings in recent memory.

In early November, Groupon raised $700 million including overallotments. It had originally sought to raise $750 million. Other recent tech IPOs include Angie’s List, Pandora and LinkedIn.

But some critics think Zynga is rushing its offering before a broad financial collapse. If it waited until reporting fourth-quarter results, it could paint a stronger growth story as it completes the busy holiday period.

The San Francisco company, which was founded in 2007, was named after Founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s dog named Zinga.

In 2010, Zynga recorded a profit of $27.9 million on revenues of $597.5 million. In the first nine months of 2011, it broke even on revenues of $828.9 million.

While its revenues continue to grow, the number of daily active users that play its games has fallen two quarters in a row and some critics question whether the company can keep up its aggressive growth.

In recent weeks, Pincus has come under harsh criticism for his heavy-handed leadership approach. But to his credit, he has overseen rapid growth, including the acquisition of dozens of smaller game studios. Today, his company has 2,500 employees.

At the mid-range of its expectations, Zynga will bring home proceeds of $889.4 million after selling shareholders take their winnings.

The primary purpose of the sale is to increase its visibility in the marketplace and create a market for its stock. Proceeds will go towards working capital, but also $83.6 million will be spent to satisfy tax withholding obligations related to stock of current and former employees. Additionally, it plans to use a portion of the proceeds for charitable causes through its Zynga.org initiative.

As part of the sale, the company will have three classes of shares. Class A stock will have one vote per share; Class B stock will have seven votes; and Class C will have 70 votes.

Pincus owns some Class B shares, and all of the company’s Class C shares. Following the offering, he will control 36.2 percent of the company’s voting power.

As Kara Swisher previously reported Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering.

No other executives have plans to sell stock, either. But a number of the company’s early investors will sell stock, including Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures. Other interesting names that made the list include Google, which will sell 1.7 million shares.

The company’s largest institutional holder, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which owns 11 percent of the shares, will not sell any of its stock in the offering either.

In a shift away from the frenzy surrounding consumer-focused companies such as social-games maker Zynga Inc., venture capitalists are pouring more money into business-to-business start-ups.

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About eight million LinkedIn shares came to market Thursday, with 1.3 million coming from the company and 6.7 million from insiders and early holders. The secondary offering, which followed the company’s successful debut in May, roughly doubled the company’s float, or the number of its shares available for trading.

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But what about the unknown investors? The ones who purchased the stock on the first day, or picked it up a few days later?

To find out those answers, a San Francisco company called SigFig culled its database, which includes more than $20 billion in investment assets from its users, to gain insight into how private investors actually fared from the daily deal leader’s IPO.

Today, Groupon’s stock is up 26 cents, or 1.1 percent, to trade at $24.33; it has stayed fairly constant after closing more than a week ago at $26.11.

Here’s what SigFig found:

• 22.3 percent of people who bought Groupon’s stock on the day it went public dumped the stock that same day.
• The average purchase price on day one was $28.17, or well above the company’s $20 initial price. At one point, the stock went as high as $31.14.
• Even though Groupon ended the day up, almost two-thirds (62.5 percent) of people who sold off their stock on opening day lost money. The average negative return was 3.3 percent.
• People showed hometown pride: The highest percentage of investors came from Chicago, where Groupon is headquartered.
• For those who bought and sold on day one, Groupon’s IPO performed better than Pandora, but not as well as LinkedIn. Those who flipped Pandora’s stock lost an average of 8.52 percent; those who flipped LinkedIn’s stock made an average of 7.10 percent.

LG said the move will allow the company to secure funds to invest in key businesses including smartphones and it also plans to hire more workers. The company plans to issue 19 million new common shares at 55,900 won ($50) each, representing a 9 percent discount to their Thursday closing price of 61,600 won. LG’s shares had their biggest one-day drop in more than three years Thursday, closing down 13.7 percent as investors were concerned about share dilution. The new shares will begin trading on Jan. 9.

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Critics say the idea is dangerous for investors, and even dicey for the entrepreneurs. Yet, it is gaining traction with small-business owners from the Bay Area to New York, who say they eagerly await an opportunity to sell stakes in their businesses through social networking — a process known as crowd funding.

The House Financial Services committee last week backed legislation that would make it possible for small businesses to use crowd funding to raise money from investors in exchange for equity stakes.

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CouponCabin.com of Whiting, Ind., is the latest online coupon company to raise capital. The company has raised $54 million in its first round of funding.

The round closely follows competitors Coupons.com, which has secured $230 million in two megarounds; and CouponTrade.com, which has secured a more modest $2.4 million in capital.

CouponCabin’s round was led by JMI Equity.

CouponCabin says the cash will go toward growing its consumer audience and the relationships it has with merchants, including local businesses and groceries. Today, it has deals on its site from such brand-name properties as Dell, RadioShack, Target.com and Best Buy; and exclusives from lesser-known retailers like AutoAnything, Just My Size, BuyCostumes and Think Geek.

It says the main difference between it and its competitors is that CouponCabin tests the deals to make sure that coupons will work, checking up to three times a week that the offer is still valid. If it isn’t, they’ll give the consumer a $25 gift card.

The site, which was founded in 2003, works with more than 3,500 stores nationwide and has presented more than 100,000-plus offers this year alone. In addition, the company said it has generated $500 million in online retail sales for its merchants and has saved its users more than $300 million since 2003.

By the end of the day’s trading, the restaurant booking site had regained some ground, closing down only eight percent, or $5.23 to $57.50 a share.

But at least one analyst called the market’s bluff, concluding that the purchase did not mean Google was interested in competing with OpenTable.

OpenTable currently accounts for 10 percent of all diners who end up being seated in a restaurant, while Google mostly gains customer reviews and surveys from Zagat.

“The risk here … is that this marks Google’s attempt to compete directly with OpenTable in the Restaurant Reservation segment. For now, we don’t believe it,” wrote Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney in a note to clients. “Although Google has thrown a few surprises by us recently, we see it as highly unlikely that Google would want to enter the salesforce-intensive/truck-roll/hardware & software-install Restaurant Reservation business.”

Mahaney also noted that there’s little risk that traffic to OpenTable will fall because of the deal.

Today, only five to 10 percent of all reservations come from third-party networks like Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Zagat, etc. OpenTable, for example, is the exclusive restaurant reservation service on Zagat. Another review site, UrbanSpoon, was purchased by IAC two years ago. IAC, which owns a very diverse portfolio of businesses, saw its stock sink 15 cents today to close at $39.53.

Citigroup reiterated its buy and said its current price target is $82 a share.

The purchase of Zagat is likely a bigger blow to Yelp, which is still seeking an exit of its own after turning down a half-billion-dollar offer from Google two years ago. The companies are not completely alike. Yelp has been fairly successful in gaining a very broad audience, especially since Zagat charges for many of its publications and mobile applications — a very un-Google approach.

Google said this morning that Zagat will work closely with its search and maps divisions, but it also would make sense for it to work closely with Google Offers, which is trying to be the local deals equivalent to Groupon.

A decision by Beijing-based online retailer Jingdong Mall to shun the Hong Kong market, the most popular venue for Asian firms, may be a bet that Internet investors are savvier in the U.S. and may be more willing to give the company a heftier valuation. Asia has few large Internet stocks. The IPO, if it materializes, would be far larger than the listing of Google Inc., which holds the record for the largest U.S. Internet IPO at $1.9 billion in 2004, and of Internet-related offerings elsewhere in the world.

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The Chicago-based daily deals site isn’t cancelling its initial public offering, said this person, but is reassessing the timing for an IPO on a week by week basis. Groupon had originally been aiming to go public after Labor Day and to price its shares in mid-September, this person said, adding that the company had set up a roadshow next week to attract potential investors to the stock.

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Investors in the round include Benchmark Capital and Omidyar Network. The San Francisco company also said its co-founder Daniel Hoffer will be taking over as President and CEO.

In order to raise the round, Hoffer explained that the company’s new legal status is listed as a B Corporation, which allows it to sell a stake in the company while also striving to have a higher transparency and social responsibility when compared to other entities.

CouchSurfing is a lot like it sounds.

It enables people to find a place to crash for free when traveling around the world, but Hoffer says it’s much more than that. He describes it as a social network that allows like-minded people to meet and learn about each other. Examples range from organizing a picnic in the park to a party at someone’s house, or a trip to Mongolia, where a farmer will give you a place to stay in a yurt and teach you the local customs.

Matt Cohler, general partner at Benchmark Capital, has joined its Board of Directors, along with Todor Tashev, investment partner at Omidyar Network, as a board observer.

CouchSurfing’s round of capital follows the $112 million investment in Airbnb, which operates in a similar space of connecting strangers online to swap housing — although it charges a fee.

Hoffer said the company’s status is changing, but the mission is not.

The capital will be used for rolling out new features that the seven-year-old non-profit with only 25 employees was not able to support before, including a much-needed mobile application.

Up until now, CouchSurfing has not charged users to find accommodations, nor has it advocated that guests pay hosts for their stay. Instead, it has primarily been making money by charging for identity verification, so that two strangers feel more comfortable with each other.

It will also be looking into new revenues streams. “It’s important for us to collect revenue in a way that’s comfortable to our community,” Hoffer said. “We are looking at premium offerings as one possibility. It’s important to us that core surfing and hosting remains free.”

Hoffer expects to hire a dozen engineers shortly to accomplish its list of objectives.

Following Airbnb’s massive round of funding, questions arose on its ability to safely connect people online as it scales after one customer had an extremely bad experience when her apartment was robbed.

Hoffer said that their service is designed so that people stay with people when they are home.

“Even our profiles are designed to facilitate meaningful connections, so when couch surfers stay with each other, they know each other in a more meaningful and personal way,” he said.

Photo Credit: C.M. Keiner.

Steve Jobs at D8 | Photo by Asa Mathat

Jobs, who will become chairman, is handing over the day-to-day operations to former COO Tim Cook, who has deftly operated the company in Jobs’s absence before.

Still, investors are clearly uneasy with the top-level change, even though it has been a possibility for some time.

At one point, shares traded down $20.19, or 5.37 percent, to $355.99. That translates roughly to $18.5 billion in market value.

Investors, who recently pushed Apple shares high enough for the phone and computer-maker to overtake Exxon Mobil as the world’s most valuable company, obviously places overwhelming value on Jobs.

The stock had recently been trading higher on the expectation that the iPhone 5 would launch in October.

This is not the first time that Jobs’s sudden departure has shaken investors’ nerves.

Back in January 2009, shares dropped as much as 10 percent, or roughly $6 billion in market value, when the news broke that the CEO was taking a medical leave of absence.

At the time, AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski called investors wusses. “Yes, Jobs’s sensibility pervades Apple’s culture and its products, but that culture and those products are not tethered to his health or day-to-day presence at the company. And Apple’s deep executive bench is more than capable of running it — and running it well — in his absence. … Apple will endure — with or without Steve Jobs.”

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This approach has worked wonders for Naked Pizza, an all-natural restaurant chain that began using the social-media service five years ago.

Owners Robbie Vitrano and Jeff Leach post humorous (and pointed) notes every day, on subjects ranging from nutrition to the state of the food business to out-and-out jokes like, “One more glass of wine and I will b buying pop tarts from that damn vending machine for dinner, again.”

The New Orleans company says it has gotten about 8,000 investment inquiries in the past year and a half thanks to its online presence.

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