Forbes magazine put out its much-watched Midas List today, which is kind of the Oscars for venture capitalists in tech. (Caveat: Think more khakis and dudes than glitz and glamour.)

On the Top 10 list of 100 of the best-performing and most influential tech investors, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz led the list at No. 1 and No. 2, as they did last year. And several others in last year’s list remained on it: Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners’ Reid Hoffman, and also David Sze, Peter Thiel and Bessemer Venture Partners’ Jeremy Levine.

Accel scored well on the rest of the list with nine partners named; Sequoia Capital had six VCs on the list; Benchmark, Greylock and New Enterprise Associates got five slots; Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins and Meritech Capital Partners had four; and Andreessen Horowitz, Institutional Venture Partners and Venrock each had three.

As usual, there were few women on the list — only three — reflecting the lack of gender equality in the top tier of the VC business, which solidly remains a boy’s club, despite a lot of noise about changing it (see the pictures here and become depressed once again). Those women who did manage to get on the Midas List were Jenny Lee at GGV Capital, who jumped from No. 94 to No. 36; Kleiner Perkins’s Mary Meeker, who dropped from No. 42 to No. 47; and Theresia Gouw of Accel at No. 82, up from No. 92.

One notable part of the massive Forbes package of VCs on parade was the intense and multipart focus on the travails of Kleiner Perkins and its longtime leader and legendary VC John Doerr. Doerr clocks in at No. 26 on the list, dropping from No. 12 last year, a significant fall.

He does address the nagging issues at the storied firm, including ill-conceived investments in clean tech, a late-to-the-game move into social media, and even its big stake in stock-declining online gaming giant Zynga, in a video (below) and in several pieces, one of which is titled ““John Doerr’s Plan To Reclaim the Venture Capital Throne.”

More like “Game of Thrones” from reading it; there is another, more critical article in the New York Times that appeared yesterday. That piece focused on Kleiner’s investment in the troubled green-car startup, Fisker Automotive, and also the firm’s ongoing sex-discrimination lawsuit with former partner Ellen Pao.

“It was a challenging year, one of my more challenging years in the venture business,” said Doerr to Forbes.

Indeed, although Forbes does hand Kleiner a hey-we-have-some-sharpie-young-folks-here-too! gimme with its focus on “new generation” partners Megan Quinn and Mike Abbott in an interesting Q&A, as well as yet another piece on Kleiner supporters — such as Google’s Eric Schmidt — touting the firm as perhaps down but definitely not out in the “mojo” department.

“John always wins eventually, and the reason he always wins eventually is because he has the processing power and human energy,” Schmidt told Forbes. “Whatever the set of challenges, he will drive the change in the firm. They’ll have a crisis meeting and another crisis meeting, but he will do it. It may be messy but he will get them there.”

Presumably, if Doerr and team can get some mileage out of its Twitter investment next year and somehow turn around Zynga’s moribund stock. (Kleiner has held on to a pile of it, which is why Doerr recently joined the board that already had Kleiner’s Bing Gordon on it.)

On problem for Kleiner, and boon to others like Accel and Greylock, was that the firm was not early in Facebook, whose IPO — as rocky as it was — gave many VCs making the top of the Midas List the needed turbocharge in terms of performance. Other key companies to help VCs look good this year, according to the Forbes report: Workday, LinkedIn and Skype.

Here’s Doerr, who is indeed a legend, even if more bruised and battered this year, talking about it all to Forbes’s Connie Guglielmo, in the video interview:

Speaking of media attention, here’s a more provocative video interview by Forbes with Sequoia’s Doug Leone (No. 4, up from No. 18 last year), in which he takes aim at VC firms that do too much self-promotion — three guesses which pioneering browser inventor he is referring to here, and the first two don’t count. He called it an “embarrassment,” although Sequoia did hire an excellent PR person from Google this year — nonetheless making the point that the focus should be on entrepreneurs and not investors.

Except, of course, when it comes to scoring high on the Midas List.

In a very brief press release, Dell said Breyer notified the company that he doesn’t intend to stand for reelection at the meeting.

That’s when Dell shareholders will be voting on a controversial $24.4 billion plan hatched by CEO Michael Dell and the private equity firm Silver Lake to take the company private in a leveraged buyout. Breyer’s vote on the matter will likely be among his final acts as a Dell director. Breyer had served on Dell’s board since 2009.

“Dell and its stockholders have benefitted greatly from the leadership and perspective Jim has provided during his tenure on the Dell board,” Michael Dell said in the statment. “We’re grateful for his guidance and we wish him well in all his future endeavors.”

This is Breyer’s third resignation from a high-profile director’s seat in recent days. Only three days ago, Facebook said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Breyer would be stepping down from its board, a position he has held since 2005. And last week, Walmart announced that Breyer would “rotate off the board in accordance with our corporate governance guidelines” after June 7.

He still sits on the boards of video company Brightcove and also of News Corp. (which is, of course, the parent company of AllThingsD.)

“It has been a genuine honor to serve as an investor and board member since April 2005 as Facebook has grown from an emerging social network for U.S. college students to a global service that connects over a billion people,” Breyer said in a statement.

“After over eight years of board service, it’s time to step aside in light of my other responsibilities, including my recent election to the Harvard University Corporation Board. I will leave the board knowing that Facebook is a global Internet leader with exceptional leadership within the company and on the board,” he said.

Breyer will continue to sit on the board until the date of the annual directors’ meeting, the filing said, which will occur on June 11 this year.

“Jim made many, many important contributions during his long tenure on the board and we were well-served by his presence,” Facebook said in a statement. “We will continue to have a strong relationship with Jim and going forward, we’re thankful we can continue to rely upon the tremendous depth and expertise of our recently expanded board.”

Breyer has served on Facebook’s board of directors since 2005, and has been a partner at Accel, a venture capital firm, since 1987. He currently sits on the board of Brightcove, Dell, News Corp. (which, disclosure, is the parent company of AllThingsD) and Walmart.

At its annual shareholder meeting in June, Facebook will ask its shareholders to reelect the eight currently sitting board members (not counting Breyer), including Marc Andreessen, Erskine Bowles, the recently named Susan D. Desmond-Hellmann of UCSF, Don Graham of the Washington Post, Reed Hastings of Netflix, current COO Sheryl Sandberg (who was also named to the board relatively recently), early investor and long-time adviser Peter Thiel and, of course, CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Sean Parker and Jim Breyer with Techonomy host David Kirkpatrick

“A lot of those early-stage investors, they’ll fund literally anything” Parker said, calling the phenomenon “the assembly line approach to investing,” where an idea comes in and an investment comes out. Meanwhile, later-stage investors are themselves funding early-stage investors to access their deal flow.

Breyer, who is a Facebook board member and an investor in Parker’s pre-launch start-up Airtime, agreed with Parker and said the early-stage frenzy “will end badly.”

Breyer noted that the “spray-and-pray” mentality is especially prevalent in Silicon Valley and somewhat present in New York City and Beijing, but thankfully not in the rest of the world.

The two men’s comments came as part of a discussion about jobs and the social impact of technology at the Techonomy conference in Tucson, Ariz.

Parker admitted that the icon of rapid-fire angel investing, Ron Conway of SV Angel, is a close friend and an investor in every company he’s started.

But that doesn’t mean the world needs more Ron Conways, Parker said. “It’s fine if there’s a few guys doing this, but there’s so much capital now in the early stage.”

Parker contended that the Internet is becoming a mature business, where power consolidates among big players like Facebook, Google and Apple — making it harder for young companies to knock them off. “For young entrepreneurs, it’s really not helpful for some guy to come along and write you a check,” he said.

Photo credit: Bill Gross

To get things going, I used that old trick of word association, channeling a technique perfected –aptly, for the location — by Sigmund Freud.

The panelists — who included Google’s Nikesh Arora, LinkedIn Chairman and investor Reid Hoffman and Accel Partner’s Jim Breyer — had to give lightning observations on Facebook, Google, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Nokia, New Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and smartphones.

The results were very interesting and very different, as you will see here below in a chart of it, posted recently by DLD on its Facebook page (click on the image to make it larger):

And here is a digital version of its whole DLD book that the chart was in:

According to sources close to the situation, Wal-Mart Stores paid just over $300 million in cash for Kosmix.

The six-year-old Mountain View, Calif.-based company–which has built a social media platform that organizes content by topic–has raised $55 million from a large group of Silicon Valley venture firms.

The acquisition by the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant was announced earlier today.

Wal-Mart did not disclose terms of the deal, which is focused on building out its social and mobile e-commerce offerings.

The price for Kosmix is a pricey one to do so, but traditional retailers need to jump into the digital market now dominated by app-happy, smartphone-wielding customers.

Kosmix will join the newly formed @WalmartLabs, the company said.

Kosmix was founded by the team that sold pioneering e-commerce company Junglee to Amazon in 1998.

After that, Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman raised $55 million in funding from Time Warner Investments, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, DAG Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, and angel investors Jon Miller and Ed Zander.

As eMoney’s Tricia Duryee wrote earlier today:

The company may be best known for powering TweetBeat, which it defines as a real-time social media filter for live events. It also operates Kosmix.com, where people go to discover social content by topic, and it operates RightHealth, which it claims to be one of the top three health and medical information sites by reach.

One interesting aspect of the deal: Accel’s senior partner Jim Breyer–who was not the principal VC in the Kosmix investment–is on the board of Wal-Mart. Presumably, he recused himself from the decision.

That’s the takeaway from Accel Partners’ $40 million bet (via secondary shares) on Legendary Pictures, the producers behind hits like “The Hangover” and “The Dark Knight”.

You can already rent “The Dark Knight” on Facebook, via a Warner Bros. test program. But Accel’s Jim Breyer figures the social network will move beyond tests and become an important distribution platform for the movie business–and all content businesses–in the future.

And since Breyer is a Facebook board member (Accel is Facebook’s second-largest shareholder, after Mark Zuckerberg) content-makers ought to pay close attention to what he’s thinking and doing.

Peter Kafka: We’re not used to seeing VCs pour money into Hollywood studios, because they don’t seem like places where you can get huge returns. What is Accel thinking?

Jim Breyer: We believe there are a number of extraordinary opportunities that sit at the intersection of content and social networking platforms like Facebook. And there will be multichannel distribution capabilities for video content beyond classic theatrical and television release.

We try to take a 3-5 year view, and we feel more deeply than ever that proprietary content and creativity that can be delivered across multiple channels is an extremely attractive investment area.

As someone who makes content, that’s nice to hear. Because it seems like most tech investors are interested in putting money into content platforms and distribution plays, not content-makers.

I think in selected cases there’s extraordinary value in investing in content. It is a really unique time for deeply creative content developers to build very signifcant businesses that scale extremely quickly.

This is also one of the reasons behind our opening an office New York, in January. My vision is that a reasonable amount of our New York investments will have a very significant content flavor.

I can already rent and watch one Legendary movie on Facebook. Accel is a Facebook investor, and you’re on Facebook’s board. Where do you think the company is headed when it comes to video?

My hope is that Facebook continues to build out a platform that enables not only traditional video to be distributed, in an extremely meaningful way, but that enables new content and experiences to be deployed creatively, successfuly, and on a global basis.

But does that mean Facebook will become a distributor? Or a retailer? Or a hub where you can consume video?

I think there are number of different models. But at the heart of what Facebook is trying to do is enable outstanding content and application developers to develop breakthrough video and media applications.

So it’s going to fundamentally be a platform where outside companies can set up shop.

That would be my view, as a board member.

What other content plays interest you? What about music? If you wanted to, you could buy a piece of Warner Music Group right now.

We are looking at a wide range of content-driven companies. We are looking at libraries of entertainment, new opportunities in areas such as sports, news, publishing, as well as social games and other applications that fit very well with the social nature of today’s emerging platforms.

So if I own a big catalog of, say, songs, that could be something you’d look at.

That would be correct.

The valuation for the Pasadena, Calif., start-up founded by well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross (pictured here)–which was actually struck some month ago–is $40 million.

Accel’s Jim Breyer will join the board of UberMedia, maker of social media reading and posting tools, which is currently largely aimed at the Twitter ecosystem.

“We are hoping to work very closely with Twitter, which is certainly our goal, as well as other social media platforms like Facebook,” said Breyer in an interview with BoomTown this morning, answering a question about previous tensions between Twitter and UberMedia. “There will be a lot of efforts to monetize Twitter and there is no silver bullet.”

Index Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures also participated in the round.

The company did not reveal the amount raised, nor the valuation for UberMedia.

But many like him are trying to find a way to monetize the huge microblogging platform–including Twitter–and take advantage of its enormous scale.

Gross founded the start-up last spring.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, including Index, Revolution, betaworks, First Round Capital and angel investors such as Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

Started in Gross’s Idealab start-up incubator and called TweetUp (and then PostUp), it was initially cast as a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

TweetUp also offered an organic search service to surface the best tweets. This put it at odds on several fronts with Twitter, which began to aggressively move to take over key parts of its business that had largely been left to third-party developers.

That still remains UberMedia’s essential goal, and Breyer hopes that the new investment will show Twitter that UberMedia hopes to work in harmony with it, as other developers have done successfully with Facebook. (Accel and Breyer himself are big investors in the social networking giant, so he should know.)

“Like Twitter, we want to drive the customer experience,” he said, pointing out successes such as the Zynga gaming service. “This is a lot like Facebook several years ago and cooperation worked out well for everyone.”

Here’s the official press release:

Accel Partners Leads Investment Round in UberMedia, Jim Breyer Joins Board of Directors

PASADENA, Calif.–February 14, 2011–UberMedia, the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social media platforms, today announced that it completed a financing round led by Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. Existing investors Steve Case of Revolution Ventures and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures also participated.

“At UberMedia, our goal is to enhance the Twitter experience with functionality in our clients and to be the best partner with Twitter in growing and enhancing their ecosystem,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO. “In particular, the addition of Jim Breyer to our board will really enable us to succeed at this mission. His experience on the boards of Wal-Mart, Facebook, Marvel Entertainment, Dell and so many other high-profile consumer brands will be particularly helpful.”

“We’ve been watching closely Bill’s efforts at UberMedia to build upon the ground-breaking communications platform created by Twitter,” said Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “We see a tremendous business in the kinds of innovations in user experience being developed at UberMedia. The result of these efforts will be an expansion in the number and variety of people engaged with Twitter as well as a method for advertisers to reach consumers in highly targeted and relevant ways.”

And here are two video interview I did with Gross last April when the company was founded:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110214/ubermedia-raises-17-5-million-from-accel-index-and-steve-case/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110128/qotd-would-you-take-linkedin-public-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20110128/qotd-would-you-take-linkedin-public-now/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 19:26:45 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=56694

“I would not. I like to wait a little bit longer. I don’t think there’s any rush to go to the public markets. And certainly the advice we give to our CEOs is take time, remain private as long as you can, build the business, build the profitability, and most importantly keep the product passion that is the definition of all the great companies out there. The ones who don’t have the long-term, deeply intense 24/7 product passion hit the rails, and I would point to Yahoo and AOL as two that have certainly done that.”

– Jim Breyer of Accel Partners

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110128/qotd-would-you-take-linkedin-public-now/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110121/from-u-s-to-germany-to-china-boomtown-goes-around-the-digital-world-in-a-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20110121/from-u-s-to-germany-to-china-boomtown-goes-around-the-digital-world-in-a-week/#comments Sat, 22 Jan 2011 01:22:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39822

It’s a big, wide and very digital world out there and that’s why I’m headed around the globe–quite literally–for the next week.

First stop, due east of San Francisco, where I arrived today in Munich, Germany, to moderate several sessions for Hubert Burda Media’s annual DLD conference.

That includes interviewing a whole lot of players I see all the time in Silicon Valley, including investor Reid Hoffman, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Google sales majordomo Nikesh Arora, as well as the two hottest start-up leaders on the Web, Groupon’s Andrew Mason and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare.

And while there are even more U.S. techies here–many on their way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland–I like DLD because it gives me a chance to meet a lot of European entrepreneurs and also grok a different and global perspective on tech, media and more.

It starts Sunday.

Then, from here, even farther east. I head for Hong Kong, where I’ll be meeting my All Things Digital other half, Walt Mossberg and ATD’s secret brain Lia Lorenzano to meet with our Dow Jones partners and scope out a possible AsiaD conference in China in the fall.

We’ve had our international aspirations before that did not pan out–see one of the many videos I did for a possible EuroD in 2007, while we visited Dublin, Ireland–so nothing’s certain.

But we’re hoping we can pull off some kind of international conference in 2011, one of the many parts of the expansion of our D offerings, including more events and many additions to our reporting staff on the ATD Web site this fall.

I will be posting videos from both places, including another episode of “Where in the World Are Walt & Kara?”

Until then, enjoy this one from Dublin Castle in 2007:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110121/from-u-s-to-germany-to-china-boomtown-goes-around-the-digital-world-in-a-week/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:44:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38810

In one memorable episode of the famous old short films “The Little Rascals,” after not getting invited to a party, the Our Gang little dudes decided to form their own group, comically called “The He-Man Woman-Haters Club.”

In other words: No girls allowed!

While it was wink-wink cute when Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat huffed and puffed about keeping out Darla–which they never ever could do–back in the last century, it’s not quite as adorkable when it comes to the boards of all the major Web 2.0 hotshots these days.

That would be Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare, none of which have any women as directors.

As in zero.

What’s most remarkable is that most of these start-ups are run by what I consider enlightened and open-minded entrepreneurs, mostly young enough to be part of a generation more inclined to value equality and diversity in the workplace.

In addition, each of these companies has a massive base of women consumers, in some cases well over 50 percent of its audience.

Thus, it would seem logical that in casting about for those to help guide these companies, one or two women leaders might slip in.

To be fair, it’s not for lack of trying, but of completion, as was the case with Twitter’s recent addition of three new board members.

They were longtime Silicon Valley exec Peter Currie, Flipboard CEO and co-founder Mike McCue and former DoubleClick leader David Rosenblatt.

All are deeply qualified for the Twitter board, which is obviously prepping for its next stage of growth and maturity.

But in its search, the San Francisco microblogging site did not manage to cast the net quite wide enough.

While sources said at least one prominent online woman exec was considered, there were some legitimate issues with her appointment, and it was not completed.

Still, one might imagine Twitter could have tried harder to find other workable choices.

Currently, the Twitter board is made up of the new trio, as well as Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, CEO Dick Costolo and co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey.

Things are not any better over at Facebook, which has several prominent women execs running the show, most especially its high-profile COO Sheryl Sandberg.

But, inexplicably, though she does attend board meetings, she is not yet a director of Facebook, nor is any other woman.

In fact, here is Sandberg on topic at a recent TED event for women, in an eloquent speech titled “Why We Have So Few Women Leaders”:

Instead, the Facebook board is all men, all the time, composed of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, prominent techie and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Washington Post head Don Graham.

It is no better at three of the most prominent recent Web 2.0 start-ups, which one source attributes to the lack of woman VCs, who are often the first board members after major investment rounds.

At Zynga, the hot social gaming company in San Francisco, it continues, with an all-male board, despite a very heavily female audience for its casual social games.

That would be co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus, COO Owen Van Natta, investor Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, investor Reid Hoffman and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group.

The same is true at woman-targeted–spas, spas and more spas–social buying site Groupon, which has an unusually large board for a start-up and made up of–as per usual–all men.

The list: Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason, Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy, former AT&T President and COO John Walter, New Enterprise Associates’ Harry Weller and Peter Barris, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis, 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried and early investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.

And, much smaller, is Foursquare’s board, which is the trio of co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger.

New investors–Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures’ Bryce Roberts–have observer status and both are, needless to say, dudes.

There is no question it is tough to make sure there is a good balance of qualified women leaders to men in tech–it is an issue we wrestle with every single year for the program of speakers at our own All Things Digital conference, although we are most excellent on this issue on our Web site and conference staff.

But it can be done, especially at public tech companies. Google has two women on its board of nine directors; Yahoo has three of 10; even Oracle has two of a dozen.

But a grand total of zero at the leading companies of Web 2.0 is not just a coincidence.

It’s a shame.

Tomorrow, BoomTown will post a list of great women who would be superb directors for any of these companies, but until then, let’s not follow in Spanky’s steps:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/feed/ 60 http://allthingsd.com/20101129/vostu-harvests-funds-from-facebook-zynga-backers/ http://allthingsd.com/20101129/vostu-harvests-funds-from-facebook-zynga-backers/#comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:00:41 +0000 Nick Wingfield http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33201 Some well-known investors are placing a bet that Brazil is fertile territory for the spread of social games.

Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management are investing $30 million in Vostu, a startup that has grown quickly in Brazil with a collection of games that have spread through Orkut, a Google-owned social networking site that’s popular in Latin America’s biggest Internet market. Jim Breyer, a partner at Accel and Facebook board member, will join Vostu’s board of directors.

Vostu has become to Brazil what Zynga, the creator of the inescapable Farmville game on Facebook, is to the U.S. market. Vostu’s biggest game is Mini Fazenda, a Farmville-like game that lets players cultivate virtual crops. The company makes money by charging people to buy virtual goods, like tractors and other items, which help their farms thrive.

“Vostu is profitable and well-capitalized and continues to grow at an extraordinary pace,” says the company’s CEO Daniel Kafie, who cofounded Vostu with two classmates from Harvard University, Joshua Kushner and Mario Schlosser.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101129/vostu-harvests-funds-from-facebook-zynga-backers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100526/booyah-ceo-keith-lee-talks-about-social-gaming-moolah-and-more-with-accels-jim-breyer-as-sidekick/ http://allthingsd.com/20100526/booyah-ceo-keith-lee-talks-about-social-gaming-moolah-and-more-with-accels-jim-breyer-as-sidekick/#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 12:15:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28843

Earlier this week, BoomTown motored on down to the HQ of Booyah in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., for a chat with its CEO and co-founder, Keith Lee.

Also there: Jim Breyer, the Accel Partners moneybags who recently joined the board of the mobile social gaming start-up, forking over $20 million in new funding for the privilege.

Best known for its MyTown iPhone app, now with upward of two million users, Booyah is made up of a team of gaming industry veterans, especially from Blizzard Entertainment, which is now part of Activision Blizzard (ATVI).

Started in 2008, the company had previously raised $9 million in venture funding, mostly from the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers $100 million iFund, as well as from DAG Ventures.

MyTown, which is about to come out with a new version, is one of the most popular and innovative location-based social games on Apple (AAPL) mobile devices.

That compares with other social check-in services, such as Foursquare (just over one million users) and Gowalla (250,000).

MyTown is slightly different from these services, though, focusing on gaming in its check-ins and virtual goods versus emphasis on a discovery element.

Lee and Breyer talk about all this and more in the video of my interview, which includes a short tour of Booyah’s Silicon Valley HQ (it is soon moving to San Francisco):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100526/booyah-ceo-keith-lee-talks-about-social-gaming-moolah-and-more-with-accels-jim-breyer-as-sidekick/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100517/booyah-moolah-social-gaming-company-behind-mytown-gets-20-million-in-funding/ http://allthingsd.com/20100517/booyah-moolah-social-gaming-company-behind-mytown-gets-20-million-in-funding/#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 07:01:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28410

A mobile social game company called Booyah, best known for its MyTown iPhone app, announced that it has raised $20 million, mostly from Accel Partners.

The giant round is one of many doled out recently for social start-ups, such as Groupon, in which Accel also invested.

Accel’s Jim Breyer will also join Booyah’s board.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has raised $9 million in venture funding until now, mostly from the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers $100 million iFund, as well as from DAG Ventures.

Both are participating in the new round.

Made up of a team of gaming industry veterans, especially from Blizzard Entertainment, which is now part of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Booyah has been on a roll, reaching two million users for MyTown.

MyTown, which is about to come out with a new version, is one of the most popular location-based social games on the Apple (AAPL) mobile devices.

That compares with other social check-in services, such as Foursquare (just over one million users) and Gowalla (250,000).

MyTown is slightly different from these services, though, focusing on gaming in its check-ins and virtual goods versus emphasis on a discovery element.

Here’s the official press release from Booyah:

ACCEL PARTNERS CHECKS INTO BOOYAH: LEADS $20 MILLION FUNDING ROUND

Popular Location-Based Media Company Adds Industry Luminary Jim Breyer to Board of Directors

Palo Alto, Calif.–May 17, 2010–Booyah, creator of the popular location-based mobile app MyTown, has closed a $20 million round of financing and added renowned investor, Jim Breyer to its Board of Directors. Led by Accel Partners, a premier global venture firm with investments in technology-driven social media, advertising and mobile services, the new financing will be utilized to ignite and accelerate the company’s real and digital world offerings. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures also participated in the round.

Since launching in December, MyTown rocketed upwards of more than 2 million users growing at over 100,000 new users week over week. MyTown passed 60 million check-ins and 250 million virtual item impressions a month. An immersive and addicting experience, users of MyTown spend an average of 70 minutes per day, establishing Booyah as the leader in real-world interactive entertainment.

“Booyah is at the epicenter of the fastest growing markets today–mobile, social, and interactive gaming,” stated Jim Breyer, Partner, Accel Partners. “Not only are they a next-generation entertainment company, but they are bridging the gap between consumers and businesses. The Booyah management team has both the passion and talent to innovate and create a wholly unique experience.”

Breyer currently is the lead & presiding Director of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, (WMT), a Director of Dell, Inc (DELL), and a long-time investor & board member of companies such as Brightcove, Facebook, Etsy, and Marvel Entertainment (MVL).

“We are thrilled to work with a world-class partner such as Accel Partners with their experience across social, mobile and entertainment,” said Keith Lee, CEO, Booyah. The combination of Jim’s expertise in real world retail and cutting edge digital media mirrors our dedication to creating the most compelling real-world experiences. MyTown is a bold step to achieving this goal and we have very exciting plans in the near future to move far beyond the check-in.”

Unique to Booyah is their ability to blur the lines between the real and digital worlds. With extensive experience in the traditional gaming industry and cutting-edge mobile technologies, Booyah is poised to create new forms of entertainment for the masses and revolutionize the consumer experience. In the massively popular app MyTown users can check in at real-world locations using GPS features to unlock rewards. Players can purchase, upgrade and collect rent on their properties, enjoying MyTown ownership of their favorite real-life places.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100517/booyah-moolah-social-gaming-company-behind-mytown-gets-20-million-in-funding/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100422/a-mean-video-boomtown-annoys-to-a-cavalcade-of-facebook-execs-at-f8/ http://allthingsd.com/20100422/a-mean-video-boomtown-annoys-to-a-cavalcade-of-facebook-execs-at-f8/#comments Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:15:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27482

Here is a video BoomTown did yesterday at Facebook’s bustling f8 developers conference in San Francisco.

At a press conference at the Silicon Valley social networking event, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg–trying mightily not to answer a question I proffered about the competitive landscape–said I wrote “mean” posts.

Oh, Mark, man up or get a big dose of a sense of humor from your delightful sister, Randi.

In any case, I hope Zuckerberg enjoys these interviews about the innovations and partnerships announced yesterday that I did with many of his minions, including:

Biz dev guy and guerrilla hugger Bubba Murarka, latest Google (GOOG) refugee David Fischer, PR honcho Brandee Barker, deal dude Vaughan Smith, moneybags investor Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, engineering head Mike Schroepfer and product guru Chris Cox, on whom I might have developed a man crush for his good humor while I poked at him.

Which is not mean at all!

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100422/a-mean-video-boomtown-annoys-to-a-cavalcade-of-facebook-execs-at-f8/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091109/accel-partners-feels-like-a-billion-dollars-today-no-really/ http://allthingsd.com/20091109/accel-partners-feels-like-a-billion-dollars-today-no-really/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:24:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20399

Who said the venture capital industry is sucking wind lately?

Well, it is–but not today, and especially, not Accel Partners, which sold two of its portfolio start-ups to large public companies for a total of $1.5 billion.

That would be the sale of AdMob to search behemoth Google (GOOG) for $750 million in stock and the acquisition of Playfish by gaming giant Electronic Arts (ERTS) for about $300 million (plus an earn-out of up to $100 million for Playfish staff).

While Accel shared the AdMob largess with Sequoia Capital and others with a stake in AdMob, which focuses on mobile advertising, and shared its social-gaming winnings from Playfish with Index Ventures, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based VC firm can surely afford to choose the pricier bottle of wine this week.

(Also, apropos of nothing, Accel Partner and Facebook board member Jim Breyer is now officially paying for the lunch he still owes me!)

Playfish had raised a total of $21 million in funding, while AdMob had pulled in about $47 million.

“I think you can imagine we are very pleased,” said Rich Wong, the Accel partner involved with AdMob, in an interview this morning. But he would not give any specifics about what Accel hauled in for its portion of the two companies.

Still, Wong said the venture market in Silicon Valley and elsewhere was definitely “stabilizing,” noting that there has been an increasing number of exits for investors via big companies scooping up strong start-ups.

“AdMob and Playfish are strong players in their respective spaces and in leading categories,” said Wong. “Their sale is a sign that this kind of innovation is important to major companies.”

And, apparently, to Accel.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091109/accel-partners-feels-like-a-billion-dollars-today-no-really/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081211/accel-partners-raises-1-billion-in-unique-economic-times/ http://allthingsd.com/20081211/accel-partners-raises-1-billion-in-unique-economic-times/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:00:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=7574

Bucking a trend of contraction in the venture capital industry, Accel Partners announced today that it had raised two funds totaling $1 billion.

The well-known VC firm said that it had closed the $480 million Accel Growth Fund and the $525 million Accel London III.

The first will be managed from its Palo Alto, Calif., HQ, focusing on “growth equity” across several sectors, while the London fund will be managed there and aim to invest in early-stage and growth companies across Europe and Israel.

Accel’s last fund raised, Accel X, was $500 million dollars, which the VC firm started investing in January. Accel currently has $6 billion under investment.

“We’re very pleased with the support of our long-time investors in these unique economic times,” said Accel Partner Jim Breyer in a statement.

In an interview with BoomTown last night, Breyer added, though, that raising the money was not as hard as he had thought it might be, given that VC firms have been struggling with their investors.

“It wasn’t difficult, simply because we are fortunate to have exceptional investors, who stepped up aggressively over the last month,” said Breyer, who noted that Accel’s international focus helped. “Despite the times, I think we are going into an exceptional investing environment, as long as we value based on a more reasonable but aggressive set of upside scenarios.”

Here’s the full Accel release on the new funds:

Accel Partners Closes Two New Funds

December 11, 2008–Palo Alto and London: Accel Partners, a leading global venture capital firm, today announced the closing of two new funds, Accel Growth Fund at $480 million and Accel London III at $525 million. “We’re very pleased with the support of our long-time investors in these unique economic times,” said Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel, and this milestone represents a continued validation of Accel’s strategy to back the leading technology and media companies globally, from inception through growth.”

Accel Growth Fund represents an important extension to the Accel Palo Alto team’s twenty-five year old venture capital practice. The fund will focus on growth equity opportunities across a broad range of sectors, including: information technology, internet, digital media, mobile, networking, software, and services. As with Accel’s early-stage efforts, Accel Growth Fund will play an active role in helping entrepreneurs and management teams build category-defining, global businesses.

“We are excited to expand Accel’s early-stage efforts to now include investments in attractive, growing businesses across all stages of the private company life cycle,” said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Partner at Accel.

The Accel Growth Fund will be managed by Andrew Braccia, Jim Breyer, Kevin Efrusy, Sameer Gandhi, Ping Li, Arthur Patterson, Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Jim Swartz, Peter Wagner, and Rich Wong, the same partners from Accel’s most recent early-stage partnership, Accel X.

Accel London III will continue to invest in early stage and growth companies across Europe and Israel in Accel’s historical sectors of expertise, including information technology, internet, software, media, mobile, and communications.

“We are proud to have earned the support of our industry’s elite investors,” said Kevin Comolli, Partner at Accel London. “The successful raising of Accel London III is a tribute to the quality of our team and portfolio, the huge market opportunity in the region and the distinctiveness of Accel’s global approach.”

“Accel London is uniquely positioned as the only leading venture firm operating in Europe with a Silicon Valley heritage and a global footprint,” said Bruce Golden, Partner at Accel London. “Entrepreneurs who are truly focused on building defining, standalone public companies, are seeking investors with the expertise, global network of resources, patience and ambition to help them achieve their dream of creating the next market leader. Our mission is essentially to find and support this growing community of talented entrepreneurs in Europe and Israel.”

Accel London has experienced tremendous success working in the European and Israeli early stage and growth environment, where it has been able to offer world-class entrepreneurs a combination of Silicon Valley best practice experience, and intimate knowledge of local investment requirements in Europe and Israel. A few of Accel London’s current investments include Alfresco, Amobee, Check24, Gameforge, Kayak, Qliktech, Playfish, Super Derivatives, and Varonis.

Accel London is led by Partners Kevin Comolli, Sonali De Rycker, Bruce Golden, Harry Nelis, Simon Levene and Kaj-Erik Relander. The team offers a unique blend of experiences in investment, technology, and management.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081211/accel-partners-raises-1-billion-in-unique-economic-times/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20080725/curtains-for-the-observer-role-on-the-facebook-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20080725/curtains-for-the-observer-role-on-the-facebook-board/#comments Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:13:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=2431 [UPDATE]

According to several sources, Facebook has discussed eliminating the observer status slots from its board.

Those positions are currently held by Greylock Partners David Sze (pictured here) and also Paul Madera of Meritech Capital Partners, both of whom are early Facebook investors, and they currently remain on the board as they always have been.

In any case, it’s not clear if Facebook can remove that status from preferred investors.

But the company might be discussing it because–as Facebook grows–it needs a more formal board process, especially as it prepares for a public offering sometime in the future.

In that case, the observer slot might be eliminated as the company moves to add more full-time members to the board. Observers do not attend all parts of the board meetings.

While Madera (pictured here) and Sze, well-regarded and well-liked Silicon Valley investors, could be in line for those slots, Facebook is unlikely to want too many venture capitalists on the board permanently.

The board already includes Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer, whose firm has a large investment in the company; Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel, the original investor in the privately held social-networking site; and, more recently, longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen.

Greylock and Meritech were one of the earlier investors in Facebook, although its stake is smaller than that of Accel and Founders Fund.

A Facebook spokesperson had no information about such a development; I have a call and an email into Sze for comment, which he has not yet returned.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080725/curtains-for-the-observer-role-on-the-facebook-board/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20080630/superpoke-marc-andreessen-mark-zuckerberg-has-thrown-a-board-seat-at-you/ http://allthingsd.com/20080630/superpoke-marc-andreessen-mark-zuckerberg-has-thrown-a-board-seat-at-you/#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:17:08 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=2648 BoomTown was right, Facebook has scored itself a “golden geek.” TechCrunch claims that Netscape/Opsware/Ning founder Marc Andreessen will join Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel and, of course, founder Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s board of directors. Which makes perfect sense, really. After all, as BoomTown pointed out back in May, Andreessen is “the man who was Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg was cool.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080630/superpoke-marc-andreessen-mark-zuckerberg-has-thrown-a-board-seat-at-you/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080618/harvard-dropout-zuckerberg-feted-by-well-harvard/ http://allthingsd.com/20080618/harvard-dropout-zuckerberg-feted-by-well-harvard/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:12:52 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=2172

Oh the sweet irony of Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg getting awarded a big round glass object, suitable for mantel-showing-off, from Harvard types.

Especially since he is now the school’s second most famous tech mogul dropout–after Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

But that was the case last night at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency, where the 24-year-old Zuckerberg collected the 30th Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award from the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California.

As is required at dinners like this, Zuckerberg had to sing for his supper in a post-meal interview about the hot social-networking site’s past and future.

At first, he did clarify that he was technically “on leave” from Harvard, as Gates also is, which the crowd loved.

(But, memo to Harvard Yard: Neither Gates nor Zuckerberg is coming back, so don’t leave the lights on.)

Zuckerberg (pictured here with me) also used the term “share information” in the interview, perhaps even more than he did onstage when I interviewed him at the D: All Things Digital conference last month.

And so much so that it could be the basis for a raucous drinking game where you take a shot every time he says “share information,” which would make you dangerously inebriated within 56 seconds.

Zuckerberg also strongly reiterated his statement that Facebook was not for sale, which is especially important now that it looks like a tastier treat to Microsoft (MSFT), in the wake of its failed takeover of Yahoo (YHOO).

But Zuckerberg specifically nixed a sale to Microsoft, which invested $240 million in Facebook and gave it its infamous $15 billion valuation.

He was joined onstage by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg–who is an academically scary double whammy, holding a master’s degree in business administration with highest distinction from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in economics from Harvard University.

Plus Sandberg has a really effective hairy eyeball that she used to stop me from stalking her or Zuckerberg with my Flip camera.

Still, BoomTown managed to get some video of those attending the event, which was heavy with tech types.

My various quarry dispensed business advice, all while I mocked Harvard (lovingly, so don’t gripe that I am envious–am not).

So, here’s my video of last night’s event, which includes: Piczo CEO Jeremy Verba (HBS); Facebook’s Ben Ling (not Harvard) and Elliot Schrage (Harvard undergrad, masters, law!); Greylock Partners’ James Slavet (HBS) and David Sze (horrors–Yale!); Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer (HBS); and the glass award itself (totally HBS!).

And, once again, here’s Zuckerberg and Sandberg in action, somehow withstanding my withering questions at D6:

Part One

Part Two

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080618/harvard-dropout-zuckerberg-feted-by-well-harvard/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080512/kara-visits-the-future-of-the-internet-book-party/ http://allthingsd.com/20080512/kara-visits-the-future-of-the-internet-book-party/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 17:00:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080512/kara-visits-the-future-of-the-internet-book-party/

This past Saturday night, BoomTown attended the tony San Francisco book party for Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, “The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It.”

It was hosted by megablogger Arianna Huffington and Melanie Ellison, an old friend of Zittrain’s from high school, as it turned out.

And BoomTown took our Flip video camera, of course.

For one, it was held at Ellison’s stunning Pacific Heights home, with a lot of Internet and San Francisco wattage in attendance, including Melanie’s husband, Larry Ellison, and Mayor Gavin Newsom.

By the way, Zittrain is professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, and co-founder of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

And the book is actually not about stopping the Web–perish the thought, as what would I do with my life without my beloved Internet, which I would marry if it were legal?

Instead, according to Zittrain, my beloved Web is in deep, deep trouble!

He is justifiably worried about innovation continuing and the book is a bracing call to fix some of the Internet’s serious structural and other problems, before it collapses in a giant heap of too-tightly controlled mundanity.

I’m for that! Let Web Wackiness Worldwide (WWW!) reign!

In that spirit, here is a video of the party, in which I ask everyone the key question: What is the future of the Internet?

The video includes some book party speeches and thoughts from Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, Jim Steyer of Common Sense Media, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer, Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, Zittrain and, of course, Huffington (and I also got her to impersonate Tracey Ullman impersonating Arianna to up the wacky quotient) .

And also three Internet clowns trying to impersonate me. Wackier still!

Here’s the video (there is an odd voice/video disconnect in the Zittrain and clown sections at the very end that I am trying to fix):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080512/kara-visits-the-future-of-the-internet-book-party/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080506/andreessen-to-facebook-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20080506/andreessen-to-facebook-board/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 11:04:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080506/andreessen-to-facebook-board/

Silicon Valley luminary Marc Andreessen (pictured here) has been asked to join the board of Facebook, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation.

While the arrangement is not completed yet, sources said the longtime entrepreneur has verbally agreed to accept the post to become the fourth member of the board of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking site.

Other board members include Accel Partners Jim Breyer, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel and Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Greylock Partners David Sze also has observer status on the board.

Since he co-founded browser pioneer Netscape in the 1990s and helped usher in the Internet age, Andreessen has been an active investor and has created several successful start-ups.

His most current effort has been Ning, also based in Palo Alto, which is a white-label social-networking company that recently raised another $60 million in funding.

If Andreessen joins Facebook’s board, the move is yet another sign that the much-hyped start-up, which has undergone some growing pains over the last year, as well as garnering a $15 billion valuation, is growing up by bringing some major high-profile tech figures into its ranks.

Last night, for example, BoomTown broke the news that Google PR head Elliot Schrage had accepted a similiar job at Facebook.

That comes after Facebook hired another top Google (GOOG) exec, Sheryl Sandberg, as its COO, in March.

A while back, BoomTown suggested that Web 1.0 golden boy Andreessen–pictured here on the iconic Time magazine cover in 1996–would be a good mentor for current golden boy Zuckerberg, in a piece I did about potential execs for Facebook.

As I wrote in February:

But why not go for the man who was Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg was cool. Yes, the shiniest of Golden Geeks himself, Marc Andreessen.

I could go on and on about the similarities I find between the two, if you compared today’s Zuckerberg with the Netscape founder in the mid-1990s.

From their arrogant innocence to their visionary qualities to their enfant-terrible charm, it is almost as if they were separated at birth.

But now Andreessen is all grown up and much, much matured from when I covered him. He has become all calm and sage and he even does a very decent blog.

Plus, he has also started and run a number of start-ups after Netscape, giving him deeper managerial experience over the last dozen years.

And, best of all, Andreessen knows the pressure of being the best-thing-since-sliced-bread in the tech sector, and its inevitable downside too.

Overall, a real mentor and partner for Zuckerberg, making a perfect pair of Golden Geeks.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080506/andreessen-to-facebook-board/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080305/sandberg-tidbits/ http://allthingsd.com/20080305/sandberg-tidbits/#comments Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:15:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080305/sandberg-tidbits/ After BoomTown broke the news yesterday that top Google exec Sheryl Sandberg was tapped by Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg to be COO of the hot social-networking company, I talked with her and got the usual blah-blah quotes about scaling and growing operations and building a platform and how she wasn’t leaving Google as much as “going to an opportunity.”

But, as loyal readers will find out in the weeks and months ahead, she is sure to make for a much more lively new character in our ongoing and near-obsessive coverage of the Facebook saga, which we at BoomTown HQ like to call “As the SuperPoke Turns.”

It is certainly an interesting bet for Sandberg to make the move from the powerful Google (GOOG) to the upstart Facebook. And whether she wins or loses, it will be fascinating to watch.

But fried as she was late last night when we talked after the big announcement was finally made and deserving of a break, BoomTown will bring you a sassier sit-down with Sandberg after she clears out of the Googleplex Friday after six years (wherein all her rights to unlimited visits to the organic soba latte barista and shiatsu massage therapist will be suspended tout de suite!).

So until then, here are some sizzling tidbits about Sandberg (pictured here, with those soon-to-vanish colored Google exercise balls) to chew on:

The 2007 holiday party where Sandberg met Zuckerberg for the first time was thrown by former Yahoo president and COO Dan Rosensweig, who is close to both (apparently, BoomTown’s invite, where I could have witnessed this historic meeting, was lost in the mail!). Interestingly, Rosensweig himself was someone Zuckerberg probably considered bringing into Facebook.

One plus for the socially awkward Zuckerberg is that Sandberg–who spent her formative years swimming in the shark-infested waters of Washington, D.C., as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers during the Clinton administration–has struck a lot of friendships around the Valley. That includes Google rival Yahoo (YHOO), where her husband David Goldberg once headed up the music efforts. Yahoo President Sue Decker is a good friend, for example.

Sandberg even seems to make nice with VCs (she has to, as her husband is now an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Partners). According to Facebook board member and major investor Jim Breyer of Accel, for example: “I met her in 2001 at the U2 Concert in San Jose. Bono called her name out in front of the whole crowd thanking her for the work she had done with Larry Summers. We (including Bono) all went out for drinks afterwards. Little did I know that it would be a 23-year-old entrepreneur who would finally allow me to recruit her.”

Ah, the sweet ironies of the Valley!

Speaking of which, here’s a video I did in June, with a longish chat with the then-pregnant Sandberg at the start, where we talk about the status of women–or lack thereof–in Silicon Valley.

The occasion was one of Sandberg’s regular gatherings, which she organizes at her home in Atherton, Calif., and which she calls “Women of Silicon Valley.” (Alternatively, BoomTown has dubbed them “ladyfests.”)

The events feature a wide range of speakers, talking to a broad swath of typically high-ranking women technology executives from Internet, software and hardware companies, as well as from other walks of life, about a range of issues. This one was with political pundit and Web diva Arianna Huffington.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

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