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.

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

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.

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.

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

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):

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.”

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.

Here’s my personal favorite, which I call “I Heart Mark Zuckerberg.” It is a short and–let’s just say it, shall we?–deeply uncomfortable encounter BoomTown had with the Facebook founder and CEO.

(To be fair, we caught him completely unaware when he and Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer dropped by our table at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto, Calif.)

Here’s the video:

But that’s just the feeling I got when I read the always sharp Joseph Menn of the Los Angeles Times, who penned an interesting piece earlier this week about writers in Hollywood turning to venture capitalists as the strike drags on.

Wrote Menn: “At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.”

That includes meetings with Silicon Valley VCs like Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, whose investment in Facebook gives it insight into the creation of new audiences.

The hope for the–let’s just say it, shall we–unnatural pairing of tech VCs and Hollywood folks?

That the sour lemons being thrown between studios and writers–ironically over future Internet revenues–will actually yield delicious lemonade, spurring the creation of quality online programming using the Internet’s massive distribution system that could also make lots and lots of money.

“Could” is obviously the operative word here, because–as we have noted many times in this column–very little original content created on the Web has had any true payoff yet.

Um, well, none, actually. (Save porn, which is an almost perfect content format for the Web.)

To be fair, there have been promising signs.

Ex-Yahoo exec and Hollywood player Lloyd Braun struck a deal with PepsiCo to pay for and create online content.

MySpace has been backing a range of online-only shows made by Hollywood types (although none has shown strongly increasing popularity and even seem to display worrisome declines in viewership, despite the justified potential touted by creators).

Of course, there’s the high-profile Sequoia Capital-backed and Will Ferrell-fronted FunnyorDie.com, as well as MyDamnChannel.com, from former MTV executive Rob Barnett.

And Viacom agreed this summer to create a new online entertainment studio in a 50-50 split with the creators of the popular “South Park” TV program.

Finally, Creative Artists Agency, which is the biggest talent agency in Hollywood, is apparently working with Silicon Valley VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson to raise up to $200 million to invest in the digital entertainment sector, even as other such firms as UTA and William Morris are making similar moves.

While that is a very little amount of money considering the billions of dollars that slosh around Silicon Valley to fund things like dopey widgets and yet another movie-comparison site, it is still a start.

The presumable goal is that by creating and distributing content for the Web in a lower-cost way, many kinds of revenues could be garnered via everything from advertising to getting back investments by selling the online material to television and the movies.

That sounds like a plan, except for the fact that the current state of advertising innovation related to Web videos is quite nascent, even pre-fetal.

While a lot of companies are focusing on this and advertisers seem willing to move in the direction of more online ad spending, it will simply be a long time before these investments pay off.

Which is just not part of the no-risk-and-all-reward mentality of most players in Hollywood, who wouldn’t know a start-up unless it took their prime table at the Ivy.

In all seriousness, it seems unlikely that the high cost of production now in place in the entertainment industry would in any way lend itself to the critical need for that kind of massive shift in economics required to make online content pay off now.

Currently, studios still only grudgingly want to consider sharing ownership of content, and the talent seems even less willing to take the burden of risk required onto its shoulders.

Still, I admire all the efforts on the part of writers to not just strike, but strike out from their current comfort zone and move into the future, where online entertainment production and distribution seems obviously inevitable.

The problem is that it might take a longer while than those creators have patience for and they will prematurely abandon their efforts and return to propping up a system that is destined for, while not oblivion, then certain diminution.

So what’s needed–as in all marriages–is a crazy leap of faith, like this one from “Heroes” Peter Petrelli on NBC.

I am definitely no expert on this topic, except to say that the problem is that the delta between falling flat and succeeding is frighteningly close.

In other words, I Has No Idea what to do.

Here’s a longish video I made at Thiel’s office on San Francisco’s Presidio (no Sand Hill Road mundanity for Peter!) yesterday with the man who has become Silicon Valley’s most interesting venture capitalist and all-around great character of late.

Now running the VC firm called the Founders Fund, as well as a hedge fund called Clarium Capital Management, Thiel has a lot to say about everything from the painfully slow decline of old media (likening them to train companies in a plane world!) to the underhyping of Web 2.0 companies like Facebook (a 10-times-10 valuation from its current $15 billion if the hot social network, in which he was the first investor, keeps up its torrid pace of growth!) to the state of venture capital (needs a shake-up!).

My favorite quote from the interview comes from Thiel right at the end: “There’s absolutely no bubble in technology.”

This is Thiel’s Web 2.0 version of the infamous quote from Web 1.0 uber-VC John Doerr, who said at the height of the last bubble that the Internet was then “underhyped” (which turned out to be pretty accurate overall, except to investors who lost their shirts in the bust).

The Stanford undergraduate and law school grad is in many ways a breath of fresh air for Silicon Valley–an entrepreneur (he was co-founder and CEO of PayPal, which he flipped to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion and personally pocketed $55 million in the transaction), a center square of a new kind of VC keiretsu (ex-PayPalers have their mitts in everything from Facebook to YouTube to Slide and more) and, best of all, someone willing to say deliciously wild things (he’s essentially John Doerr unplugged).

Such as this year when, in a widely read interview with the Deal in July, Thiel floated a massive figure for the valuation of Facebook, on whose three-person board he serves with founder Mark Zuckerberg and Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer.

“If we got an offer from someone for $10 billion, we probably would listen to them,” said Thiel to the Deal’s David Shabelman. “I don’t think we’re going to get that offer, and we’re not going to solicit it.”

It was a stunningly brash statement at the time, given that Thiel had initially invested $500,000 in 2004 in the company, which was followed by two more rounds, for a total of about $32 million overall by Founders Fund, Accel and others.

The last one was more than a year ago for $25 million, giving Facebook a $525 million pre-money valuation.

Except that changed last week when software giant Microsoft forked over an investment that put Facebook’s number at $15 billion and made Founders Fund’s 5% stake worth $750 million, at least on paper. (One has to wonder, of course, how Thiel is now hedging his bet to lock in that obscene gain.)

In any case, that deal is just the kind of capitalist development a political libertarian like Thiel would savor. And he clearly does.

Well, we’re glad it’s done, our conflict of interest shoved aside by the hey-big-spenders at Microsoft and we can again resume our incredulous analysis of the insane $15 billion valuation of Facebook.

No matter who would have gotten to make nice with founder Mark Zuckerberg in the hefty ad-investment deal–Google or Microsoft–we will be sticking to our guns on this ridiculous roundelay of hype and circumstance.

That’s because this valuation, while a paper windfall for its investors and those currently employed at Facebook, has exactly no meaning until the company actually performs financially to keep up with the lofty figure and then, presumably, goes public in a great rush of glory.

Of course, that does not mean this bump–which could only happen in a very bubbly Silicon Valley–will not help the company pick up some tasty acquisitions now using its overpriced stock, as long as targets are willing to play along with the still-questionable dream of future riches.

And, of course, in the here and now, Facebook will get an even bigger slug of guaranteed ad dollars from international as well as U.S. markets from Microsoft, which will be losing a giant amount of money in the arrangement.

As a plus to Facebook and an important element in Microsoft signing this deal, by the way, sources confirm that the start-up got much better terms in its U.S. ad deal that basically lets them control the whole partnership without any hooks for Microsoft.

Does any of this really matter? From a perspective of big, cash-rich companies throwing huge dollars at hot start-ups, it is, as one investor told me last night, meaningless.

“It’s trivial to Microsoft to spend this money and worth the gamble,” this person said.

Indeed.

Because while execs at both companies talk about the potential–and there is a massive amount of it in the Facebook business model–both Microsoft and deal-loser Google, too, were willing to bankroll a loss leader in the hopes of later return, a whole lot of important education about the social-networking space and also likely solid returns in an IPO scenario.

And for Microsoft, that is OK, given that the software giant needed to land this deal for all sorts of reasons (seeming relevant in the fast-moving Web 2.0 space and, of course, the sweet-sweet feeling of actually beating out Google) and has more than enough money to burn.

That’s obvious too with the $240 million cash investment (with more to come from other greedmonger private investors, of course, in another round now being arranged by Facebook) that bought Microsoft exactly 1.6% of Facebook.

That puts Microsoft behind Greylock Partners’ and Meritech Capital Partners’ 1.7%, Founders Fund’s 5% and Accel Partners’ 11%–Accel partner and Facebook board member Jim Breyer also has a personal 1% stake, now valued at $150 million–and Zuckerberg’s 20% (not the 30% that has been widely reported), which is now worth $3 billion.

So what can we say but: Party on, Garth!

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that for all the fabulous growth, Facebook is still a very small business now carrying a very large valuation on its slight shoulders. So far, it has only $150 million in annual revenue, half of which comes from its guaranteed ad deal with Microsoft, and is break-even on a cash-flow basis.

So more cash in the kitty is a good thing, allowing Facebook, as one of its execs said yesterday, to double its work force to 700, jack up its international business and better service its 50 million active users.

This is all well and good for turbocharging a business that is growing like gangbusters. But while Facebook executives argue that all trends point upward, I still maintain that potential is not actual.

As I have previously written: “While the minions at Facebook under its young leader are laboring mightily to come up with new ways to make revenues and its strong growth is laudable and I loved the splashy widgetmania Facebook unleashed, let us try not to be too jaded when we say we have seen this story of spiky growth followed by less-than-spiky growth before.”

So excuse me for being worried about this deal and what it might do to the business discipline and attitude of Facebook, making it sit too long on the laurels of being able to gin up an investor frenzy and not focus on making the service one that is consistently innovative and useful to users and, of course, building a truly different kind of advertising business.

Frankly, while spending on social-networking sites is supposed to triple this year, I have still not seen a breathtakingly groundbreaking new kind of advertising from Facebook (or anyone else) that merits this valuation.

All the rich data Facebook collects and parses back out is amazing, but I still need to see actual ad programs and results that blow the mind and change the game.

I have talked to Facebook investor Jim Breyer many times about this concern related to this cart-before-the-horse valuation, so let me quote him directly about it, from one of our conversations:

“Companies always need to separate valuation from strategic and performance issues, and this is obviously a valuation we need to grow into and we hope we will,” he said. “But we know it is an aggressive valuation.”

That’s what you might call an understatement, Silicon Valley-style.