This is something top VCs John Doerr and Mike Moritz have done personally, but AH is making a point of pledging as a firm.

As Ben Horowitz put it during a phone interview this morning, “When we started the firm three years ago, neither Marc nor I had a lot of fancy hobbies to do like playing polo, so we weren’t sure what we were going to do with the money if we were really successful anyways.”

Now, he said, “I think we’re getting a little more confident that we’ll return something and make some money.” AH said yesterday that it has returned $288 million of the first $300 million it raised from limited partners for its first fund.

Marc Andreessen added that he hoped other VC firms would join, as sort of a rehabilitation of venture capital’s public image. “Investing has become polarizing, which is kind of crazy given we think we’re in a field that actually adds to the positive,” he said.

To kick off the pledge, the six partners and their own partners have given a combined $1 million to six Silicon Valley non-profits, including the Ecumenical Hunger Program (Jeff and Karen Jordan) and the Shelter Network (Scott and Pamela Weiss).

See also: Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Talks About Giving 2.0.

Coursera co-founders Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller

Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng are on leave to launch Coursera, which will offer university classes for free online, in partnership with top schools.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera is backed with $16 million in funding led by John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins and Scott Sandell at NEA. It has no immediate plans to charge for courses or to make money in other ways.

Compared to Udacity, a similar start-up from former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun that’s creating its own classes, Coursera helps support its university partners in creating their own courses, which are listed under each school’s brand.

Some might doubt that universities would want to share their prized content for free online with a start-up, but Coursera has already signed up Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania as partners, with a set of classes launching April 23.

Coursera evolved, in part, out of the hugely popular Stanford classes that Ng and Thrun taught last fall on machine learning and artificial intelligence, respectively. Ng’s course had 104,000 people enrolled, with at least 46,000 completing at least one homework assignment. Of those, 23,000 completed a “substantial” amount of the class, and 13,000 received a “statement of accomplishment,” Ng said. He’ll be offering that class again, starting next week.

Koller and Ng are particularly committed to developing pedagogy for this new medium, and have built their own course software and student forums. They describe their philosophy as similar to that of Salman Khan and the Khan Academy, where students are encouraged to take the time to master material at their own pace.

Coursera students help other students — in the fall, the median response time to a question asked on the class forum was 22 minutes — and the system will also learn from the students.

For instance, 2,000 of the 20,000 or so students in Ng’s online class had the exact same wrong solution on one problem set, he said. That’s an opportunity to recognize what’s happening, and to teach those students in that moment.

Koller and Ng have also conceived of an ambitious plan to grade humanities classes with thousands of students enrolled.

Coursera’s content is naturally heavy on computer science — where problem sets are fairly straightforward to grade — but it will also offer poetry, sociology, and medical courses. These classes will be graded crowdsourcing style, with peer assessment and review. Figuring out how to grade masses of assignments on a subjective scale is a machine learning problem, Ng said.

Another ambitious venture-backed college-level online education start-up I recently covered is the Minerva Project, which is planning to launch its own mostly virtual elite university.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Aileen Lee is founding a new seed fund — still unnamed — that is focused on backing and helping develop early-stage start-ups.

Lee, who has been at the famed Silicon Valley venture firm for a dozen years, will remain a partner at Kleiner Perkins, although her full focus will be on the fund. While she declined in an interview this morning to say what the size of the new fund will be, most such efforts range from $10 million to $70 million.

Along with Kleiner, there will be several other unnamed investors and strategic partners, said Lee, who is in a quiet period of fundraising and could not give more details. It will be separate from Kleiner.

“I read a book that said you should make a big change every seven years, and this was an area of investing that I really have wanted to be in,” said Lee, who at Kleiner has backed companies such as One King’s Lane, Rent the Runway and Dollar Shave Club. “I really have become very interested at working with and helping entrepreneurs at the early stages of their growth.”

KP’s John Doerr said that while some VC firms are creating their own high-profile seed funds, he and Lee felt it was important for such an investment vehicle to be independent to be effective and also to work with other seed efforts that have exploded on the tech scene.

“But we wanted to invest in it, so it’s the best of both worlds,” he said. “It’s really important that start-ups at that stage get the kind of attention Aileen can give them.”

According to her bio on KP’s Web site, Lee worked at the Gap before her VC life, as well as Odwalla and the North Face. The MIT and Harvard Business School grad also worked at Morgan Stanley in technology mergers and acquisitions.

On some level of journalism, I guess anything could happen.

At least that’s according to a recent article by Business Insider’s Henry Blodget about an alleged “mole” at Twitter who was allegedly spying for Google, specifically about an exec the microblogging service was trying to poach from the Silicon Valley search giant.

In a decidedly splashy, hello-traffic, ALL-CAPs headline–THE SEARCH FOR THE “TWITTER MOLE”: All Eyes On John Doerr“–Blodget pointed his J’accuse finger at the legendary venture capitalist as the culprit.

Based on…

Well, based on nothing, it appears, except rank speculation and what appears to be no attempt to get Doerr to comment.

And, while it’s not my cup of tea, whatev, I suppose.

Except when I read down to the bottom and landed on this gem:

We have talked to several sources familiar with aspects of the situation. Thus far, we have not been able to confirm either assertion.

First, no one has even confirmed that Google was tipped off in advance of Twitter’s poaching effort, much less by a Twitter mole.

This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

And later still:

So we haven’t been able to confirm the “high-level mole at Twitter” story. And we think there’s a good explanation for why there might not be a mole at all.

Secondly, we have talked to no one who has any evidence other than the logic above that, even if there is a Google mole at Twitter, the mole is John Doerr. One insider we spoke to, in fact, dismissed the idea out of hand.

Say what?

It’s kind of like thinking that a sparkly Civil War-era vampire falling in love with a moody chick in the Pacific Northwest and flying through the pines all day and mooning over their cruel fate was real.

Okay, that was a Hollywood movie called “Twilight,” but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!

Thus, Doerr–a tough customer to be sure, capable of all kinds of sharp-elbowed behavior–is guilty until proven innocent?

Or just not guilty at all, but let’s just say he might be anyway, without a shred of evidence, because it could have happened!

(Courtroom confession: It was All Things Digital‘s Liz Gannes, who did it on the blog with scoop on the Twitter talent raid effort of Sundar Pichai!)

Speaking of evidence, less than a week later, Javert–oops, I mean, Blodget–was back in another kangaroo court performance with another terrifically loud headline:

“The Guy Who Says He Owns 50% Of Facebook Just Filed A Boatload Of New Evidence–And It’s Breathtaking.”

Breathtaking, I guess, if you are in that fantasy teenaged girl mode, but deeply suspect if you are anyone with a modicum of journalistic responsibility.

It is perfectly fine for Blodget to dredge up the copious emails from a man named Paul Ceglia–who alleges he possesses a contract that he struck with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg at the time of its creation–and analyze them.

And it is certainly notable that a credible law firm, DLA Piper, has taken on the case for Ceglia and it does seems unlikely that it would have done so without doing some level of due diligence.

In fact, in an interview with Am Law Daily, DLA partner Robert Brownlie, international co-chair of the firm’s securities litigation, said: “At first I shrugged it off as incredible. I would not have gotten involved and DLA would not have gotten involved if we had any doubts about the facts or evidence in the case.”

That was, of course, countered by Facebook’s lawyer Orin Snyder at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who said in a statement that the Ceglia allegations were part of “a fraudulent lawsuit brought by a convicted felon.”

By the way, in fancy-lawyer parlance, that translates to a liar-liar-pants-on-fire defense.

So, microwave the popcorn and get ready for the drama, because no question, it is clearly going to be juicy all around with a whole lot of social networking poking!

In fact, such a case is tailor-made for Blodget, who has always been a very gifted writer with a nose for sharp-edged analysis.

It’s too bad, then, that he did not hone his knife to such an edge when it comes to Ceglia, giving him much too much credibility based on what could be fake emails, especially since they come from a man with a history of fraud.

History, in fact, that Ceglia is depending on in this case, since Zuckerberg most definitely has one in regards to partnerships gone bad.

Thus, Zuckerberg has been sneaky before, ergo he’s sneaky here.

That’s no surprise as a legal tactic, of course, and I threw in the “ergo,” since I too want to play Perry Mason in a blog.

But. More to the point, while Facebook was certainly hard-nosed in dealing with both protracted and high-profile legal challenges from the Winklevoss twins and also Eduardo Severin, I don’t think I have ever seen the company explicitly say evidence was completely fabricated, as it is alleging Ceglia’s emails are.

As I said, I have no idea if they are or they’re not, but I do know this: While those emails are certainly bombshell in nature, they are designed to be so precisely because it is a lawsuit in which the principal is trying to shame Facebook into settling.

None of that seems to concern Blodget, who concludes at the end of the post:

“In short, to us at least, the emails don’t read ‘fake.’”

In short, to me at least, that’s for fake-email experts and the courts to decide.

The real fact of the matter is, who knows? I certainly don’t, although I do know it’s terrifically easy to file a lawsuit and claim just about anything you like.

And the same seems to be true–more and more these days and not for the good–for blogs too.

As for me, I need to get back to my goal of proving that sparkly vampires do exist.

Yesterday, the Obama administration dribbled out the news that it was going to nominate current Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as the next ambassador to China.

If approved, Locke will surely have his hands full on a wide range of issues, many of them impacting the tech sector, including piracy, privacy and government-sponsored censorship.

Perhaps more interestingly, the move leaves open a post–which the Obama administration actually had a hard time filling initially–that could get a true turbocharge if it were filled by an exec from the fast-growing digital arena.

It’s not a bad idea, since tech is probably now the most critical business arena in the U.S. and one of the only markets in which this country innovates and excels at.

While the Commerce Department has a huge and disparate domain, from international trade to the census to promoting American businesses, its digital footprint has been much less profound than the industry’s increasing importance to the U.S. economy.

After all, despite some interesting international efforts, most of the current crop of tech stars are U.S. born and bred and leading the way in digital innovation.

In fact, every big trend right now in value creation are all coming out of tech.

Gaming? Zynga.

Social networking? Facebook and Twitter.

Retail? Groupon.

Mobile? Google and Apple.

So, why not pick a business person from the area to lead the government agency dedicated to business?

But that’s where it gets dicey.

One more obvious candidate would be outgoing Google CEO–and Obama favorite–Eric Schmidt.

I would assume he might welcome such a prominent post, although putting him in place at Commerce would be a tough road.

Issue one and only: The investigations of Google’s aggressive business practices by federal regulators make this an awkward decision for Obama, given Schmidt would be open to a lot of scrutiny going through confirmation.

But there is a long list of others who could be considered to serve, especially if you think well outside the box.

What about former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, who certainly has the management cred?

Or mega-VC John Doerr, who–despite his recent social fever–might finally get to push his beloved clean-tech agenda onto a larger stage?

What about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who recently showed she could deliver a boffo speech and who might lend some Silicon Valley magic to her former Washington, D.C. rep?

And while Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ laugh would have a hard time getting Congressional approval, why not consider someone who has profoundly changed the way an entire business sector does business?

In that vein, Reed Hastings of Netflix also fits the bill.

Except these three execs are pretty busy these days. So, what about former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, whose failed bid to be California’s governor as the Republican candidate leaves her without a post.

President Barack Obama had picked a GOP pol as his second choice for Commerce head, in fact, so Whitman or even Cisco CEO John Chambers are not out of the question.

The point is to perhaps move outside the Beltway’s comfort zone and pick a Commerce Secretary who represents the future rather than the past.

The White House is announcing that Otellini will be named to the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt chairs the group, which was created by an executive order in January. Other members are expected to be named in coming weeks.

News of Otellini’s appointment is a highlight of the president’s trip west this week, which kicked off with a meeting Thursday night with tech CEOs that include Apple’s Steve Jobs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Cisco’s John Chambers. The meeting was held at the Woodside, Calif., home of John Doerr, the prominent venture capitalist.

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At the president’s right hand, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; at his left, Apple CEO Steve Jobs. And when Obama looked across the centerpiece, there were the piercing eyes of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Note that Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt are safely separated, in keeping with the first rule of dinner-party seating–avoid fistfights.

The theme of the evening’s conversation? Said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, “The president specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire.”

[Image credit: Flickr/WhiteHouse]

President Obama will dine with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and a handful of other top Silicon Valley executives at a private dinner at the home of venture capitalist John Doerr. The conversation topics of the evening: American innovation, education and clean energy, and quite a few others, I’m sure, given the guest list.

According to a White House official, other attendees include Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, Cisco CEO John Chambers, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Stanford president John Hennessy, chairman and former CEO of Genentech Art Levinson, and Westley Group’s managing partner and founder Steve Westly. Oddly absent: HP CEO Léo Apotheker. Perhaps, Ellison’s attendance canceled his out….

Yesterday, star venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins forked over $150 million in funding to Twitter.

At at $3.7 billion valuation, that got him a big chunk of the San Francisco microblogging site.

But what it didn’t get him was a seat on the board of Twitter, which many figured he would be given for after handing over so much moolah.

According to sources familiar with the situation, that’s due to Doerr’s being a director on another board: Google.

Several sources who BoomTown spoke to, after breaking news of the massive funding, said that his being on the board of the search giant was seen as too much of a conflict of interest.

A conflict because Google has plans to wade deeply into the social space. And also, of course, because it is the No. 1 potential acquirer of Twitter, as the Silicon Valley company seeks to gather more tools to fight its latest rival, Facebook.

Doerr has very deep ties at Google, having been on its board since mid-1999.

He got that seat, along with Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz, after he ponied up a critical $25 million equity round for Google in June of that year.

Interestingly, no other Kleiner partner was named to a Twitter board seat either.

But, some speculate, it might make sense for Mary Meeker–who just joined Kleiner to head up digital investing efforts, after a long-time stint as a Wall Street analyst for Morgan Stanley–to eventually become a Twitter director.

Meeker has, of course, deep IPO and M&A experience.

And, frankly, after adding Flipboard’s Mike McCue and former DoubleClick exec David Rosenblatt yesterday and former Netscape exec Peter Currie recently to its all-boy board band, a woman director might be a good idea to consider.

Other directors at Twitter include Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, Co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey and CEO Dick Costolo.

I reached out to Doerr for a comment, but he has not yet replied; Twitter declined to comment.

Even more interesting to consider is what Kleiner will invest in next after this mega-funding, given how aggressively many sources said Doerr had pushed to lead the Twitter round.

And, in fact, sources said that Kleiner is looking closely at new funding rounds for both the Spotify music streaming service and Groupon, the social buying start-up that recently decided to turn down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and an earlier $3 billion one from Yahoo.

Groupon is now seeking more funds to remain independent and hold onto its lead in the fast-growing local discounting market, sources said.

(Bloomberg also reported on Groupon’s new fundraising efforts, although it was written about after it turned down the Google offer.)

And Spotify, which is hugely popular outside the U.S., is trying to enter this market, but needs more funding to expand and perhaps strike better deals with music labels.

Both are the just the kind of companies Doerr has targeted in what looks like a serious effort to compete with other firms–especially Andreessen Horowitz and Russia’s DST Global.

They have garnered the heat Kleiner used to have, largely by backing more of the top entrepreneurs recently.

Doerr has already put money into social gaming phenom Zynga and also started an sFund for social-focused investments.

Add Twitter to the pile and you can see where this is headed: Except for the board seat, John Doerr will no longer be denied.

Twitter has completed its latest round of funding–$200 million at a $3.7 billion valuation–with Kleiner Perkins as the lead investor, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Sources said the San Francisco microblogging service is also adding two new board members: Flipboard’s Mike McCue and David Rosenblatt, who ran DoubleClick until a bit after it sold to Google.

Twitter recently added former Netscape exec Peter Currie to the board, as BoomTown previously reported.

A Twitter spokesman confirmed the funding and the board appointments, but declined further comment.

The moves are big ones for Twitter, which is moving fast to upgrade its management and business model under CEO Dick Costolo, who just posted a blog (see below) on the new funding and directors, titled “Meaningful Growth (although it was first curiously called, “Stocking Stuffers,” and was much funnier).

But, indeed, a big slug of cash will surely help the start-up’s expansion efforts and essentially declares it is not for sale to bigger companies such as Google (quite yet, that is).

As I reported last week, Kleiner partner John Doerr has been pushing hard to fund Twitter, beating out Russia’s DST Global.

Kleiner is the only new investor in the latest round, which brings its funding total to $360 million since it was founded about five years ago.

The storied Silicon Valley venture firm, which has been aggressively moving into the Web 2.0 space of late, put in $150 million, with the remaining $50 million coming from existing investors.

Past investors include Benchmark Capital, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and several other venture firms and angel investors.

Adding Currie, McCue and Rosenblatt are very strong choices for the board. Currie has deep financial and IPO experience, McCue is a well-connected and innovative entrepreneur and Rosenblatt brings much-needed online advertising heft.

As it happens, Costolo will appear at our D@CES event in January, where I am interviewing him and we can talk about all the changes.

(Thank goodness the funding is done, since I was worried about all those awkward pauses.)

Here is new version of Costolo’s blog post on McCue and Rosenblatt (the old one is below it for you to compare and contrast):

Meaningful Growth

In the past 12 months, Twitter users sent an astonishing 25 billion Tweets and we added more than 100 million new registered accounts. In that time, our team has grown from 130 people to more than 350 today. We’re thankful for every Tweet, every account, and every talented employee who has decided to join the Twitter team. This week, we’ve got some big news to share.

As part of a significant new round of funding with investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and existing investors, we’ve added two new members to Twitter’s board of directors. Please join us in welcoming Mike McCue and David Rosenblatt. The experience these new directors bring to Twitter, along with this renewed investment, will help us continue to grow as a company and business.

2010 was one of the most meaningful years since Twitter, Inc. was founded in 2007. We operate on a principle that people are basically good–when you give them a simple way to express this trait, they prove it to you every day. We’re proud of what Twitter users have accomplished, we’re proud of our work, and we’re very proud of our team. Thanks for being a part of this work; it means a lot to us.

Stocking Stuffer

Growth is fun. In the past 12 months, Twitter users sent an astonishing 25 billion Tweets and we added more than 100 million new registered accounts. In that time, our team has grown from 130 people to more than 350 today.

This week, we added two new members to Twitter’s board of directors who have strong experience running technology companies: Mike McCue and David Rosenblatt. Mike was the CEO of Tellme Networks, is currently CEO at Flipboard and also worked for Netscape and Microsoft (which acquired Tellme in 2007). David is the former CEO of DoubleClick and an ex-Google executive.

We also closed a significant new round of funding, with new investor Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers leading the round. KPCB brings to Twitter a track record of helping build great companies, ranging from Amazon to Zynga (get it? A to Z? See how we did that?), and a team with expertise in Internet, mobile and social platforms. The additional resources and expertise will be extremely helpful as Twitter continues to grow as a company and business.

Thank you to Twitter users everywhere for making 2010 such a good year.

According to sources close to the situation, the aggressive Russian investment outfit DST Global is out of the running to fund Twitter.

Instead, the prize is almost certainly going to Kleiner Perkins, the legendary Silicon Valley venture firm of Web 1.0 that has been making a big push of late into the Web 2.0 market.

The valuation for the new round–which sources said is well above $150 million–will be from $3.5 billion to $4 billion.

And it is not clear if there are any other smaller investors in this funding, but sources said that was likely.

Sources added that the San Francisco microblogging service will be completing its newest round of funding next week, although Twitter might not even announce it publicly.

The new round will be the first in a year for Twitter.

In the fall of 2009, Twitter raised funding at a $1 billion valuation to help spur its growth to its current size of 325 employees, serving its 175 million users.

Such growth was of interest to DST, which has made giant investments in social networking giant Facebook, social gaming rocket ship Zynga and Groupon, the social buying site that recently ended acquisition talks with Google.

Twitter moving into its next phase of development is an attractive target for many VCs, as it seeks a lucrative way to monetize its popular business.

And, in fact, Kleiner star VC John Doerr has been making a big push to be the big investor in this key next round for Twitter, which also has had regular acquisition interest from both Google and Facebook.

What will be interesting to see is if acquisition interest in Twitter from the pair spikes, given the collapse of Google’s attempt to buy Groupon.

The talks with Twitter began, according to several sources, after Kleiner had considered investing in PostUp–the Twitter search engine and advertising platform start-up from Bill Gross’s Idealab, which was first called TweetUp.

PostUp irked Twitter, and its CEO Dick Costolo was particularly vocal about not allowing third-party ad rivals to create a spammier service.

Sources said it was Bill Campbell, well-known Silicon Valley exec and adviser to multiple companies such as Google, who brought Kleiner and Twitter into discussions.

Campbell’s latest coaching task has been at Twitter.

Kleiner has also recently stepped up its Web 2.0 game with the hiring of high-profile Wall Street analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley.

She has been brought in to help turbocharge the firm’s digital investment portfolio, especially in social, mobile and commerce.

The move has underscored Kleiner’s noisy intent of late to jump into the social Web market.

After scoring a late entry into the scene with its investment in the fast-growing social gaming start-up Zynga, Kleiner has made a big marketing push recently to allocate a dedicated $250 million “sFund” to social start-ups.

NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes first wrote of Kleiner’s interest in Twitter a week ago, followed by a report a day later in TechCrunch about Kleiner’s primacy in the Twitter funding race and Doerr’s fervent effort to land the investment.

None of the players mentioned here has responded to BoomTown’s request for a comment.

BoomTown is showing my age quite a bit today, after I unearthed notes this morning from 11 years ago.

It was for a story I never ended up doing in December of 1999 for The Wall Street Journal–where I was pretty much the only Internet beat reporter for the newspaper in Silicon Valley then–about the possibility that Mary Meeker was considering leaving Morgan Stanley in New York for two hot West coast jobs.

The high-profile Wall Street Internet analyst never made the move back then.

But, at long last, Meeker finally decided today to take one of those offers, joining Kleiner Perkins today as a venture partner in the digital arena.

It’s a much-needed hire by the legendary firm and its most prominent partner, John Doerr, given Meeker’s deep well of experience and the critical need for the still-lagging-behind-hotter-VCs Kleiner to wade more definitively into more current digital trends that she knows well.

For sure, Kleiner dominated Web 1.0 by backing what are now its golden oldies, such as Netscape Communications, Amazon and Google.

But it’s more recent Web 2.0 investments and influence has not been as impressive, especially with regards to its brighter lights and sharper entrepreneurs.

As in: No Facebook. No Foursquare. No Groupon. No Twitter (yet).

To be fair, Kleiner has made some interesting moves–mostly due to its iconoclastic partner Bing Gordon (pictured here)–such as one fund to focus on Apple iPhone and iPad apps and another on social.

And it’s has one big and shiny Web 2.0 bet–which it never fails to point to an awful lot–in gaming phenom Zynga, also courtesy of Gordon.

Bringing on Meeker to add to that now will surely help Kleiner at a critical time, giving it new investment chances, as the digital space shift sharply again.

In an interview with the Journal today, Doerr correctly called the time–a mash-up of social networking, e-commerce and mobile–”a third wave of innovation.”

In a quick interview this morning, Meeker underscored this, noting, “the level of engagement from large companies and the innovation coming from all over Silicon Valley makes this a unique time to invest in and build important companies.”

She said she was attracted to the team at Kleiner to help her move to a new level of expertise and will be spending more significant time in Northern California at her home here.

“This is an opportunity to stretch myself in a great spot at a great time,” said Meeker, noting she was especially interested in the mobile space. “It’s a pretty massive shift going on right now and I wanted to be part of it.”

But a move way back when by Meeker would have been an even bigger deal, since the Web 1.0 was at what turned out to be its peak moment in December of 1999–the ill-fated AOL-Time Warner merger would not be announced for a month, in fact.

And Meeker–who was involved in that deal and most of the other bigs ones, especially the IPOs–was the undisputed “Queen of the Net” from her powerful perch as the top kingmaker on the booming scene.

After working at other firms, she had come to Morgan Stanley as an analyst in 1991, covering PCs, hardware, software and the still nascent Internet scene.

I had met her several years later in a late-night interview in her office in Manhattan, Chinese food included, while I was working on a book on the rising power of AOL.

AOL was one of the many companies she had introduced Wall Street to, and she had become one the key nexuses for all the newly hatched Web players.

For her to leave her job then would have caused reverberations everywhere, since investors far and wide were taking her recommendations on the new companies of the moment, such as Amazon and eBay.

So–while she would later endure negative scrutiny for some of her too bullish cues, after the bursting of the Internet bubble came soon after–nabbing her at the time would be been a very big story.

And who was trying to entice her?

Well, Bill Gross of Idealab for one, offering her the possibility of big IPO stock options (which would turn out to be less than valuable soon after).

Said Gross in an email to me this morning:

Back when we were opening an Idealab office in NY, we wanted to get the best talent in the universe, and that led us right to Mary. She was brilliant and ahead of her time then, as now.

At the time, we talked about working with her to have her insights about industries and companies help us inform the direction our existing companies should take, as well as brainstorm together what new companies to create.

I think Mary was just too happy doing what she was doing, and she went on to have another great 10-year run doing just that!

And the other suitor? That was Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.

A longtime friend and a star venture capitalist whose investments benefited greatly from Meeker’s attention, he had long tried to recruit her.

Fast forward to today, as Doerr seems to have finally sealed the deal.

Meeker’s title at the investment bank has most recently been as its head of global technology research.

At Kleiner Perkins, no surprise, she’ll focus on the firm’s investments in social, mobile and e-commerce, trying to turbocharge its efforts.

Presumably including, as NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes reported earlier today, Kleiner making a big push to invest in a new badillion-dollar funding round for Twitter.

Meeker’s presence could help there for sure, especially since she has been a big proponent of the microblogging service, as you can see on page 18 of her most recent annual Internet trends report–titled “Ten Questions Internet Execs Should Ask & Answer.”

It’s clear, as you will read below, those are just the kinds of queries Kleiner needs to be making.

Check out her presentation deck for some clues as to where Meeker could focus first as a newly minted VC:

Internet Trends Presentation

Meeker is joining Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner, said KPCB partner John Doerr. The Menlo Park, Calif., venture firm was one of the prime backers of the early wave of Internet companies such as Netscape Communications, Amazon.com Inc. and, later, Google Inc.

Doerr said Meeker is joining KPCB’s digital practice, where she will invest in start-up technology companies and help current KPCB-backed companies grow. Doerr said KPCB is adding to its digital practice as “a third wave of innovation” combining social networking, mobile and e-commerce creates investment opportunities.

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Twitter caught some undeserved flack over the holiday weekend, after CEO Dick Costolo told a reporter for the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper he is “working on clarity” around Twitter’s ultimate purpose.

The story garnered the unfortunate headline: “Twitter lacks ‘clear long term vision’ admits new CEO.”

The full Costolo quote was more reasonable and simply defined his job:

“I am working on clarity around that at the moment. I am currently trying to define what Twitter’s purpose is in the long term. We will be able to be more specific on that answer in the near future.”

In fact, it’s more like the present for the popular San Francisco-based microblogging service, which sources said has been wrestling with several lucrative scenarios over the last several weeks, including acquisition interest from both Google and Facebook and also a number of favorably termed major funding offers.

The big push is coming from DST Global, as this site reported a month ago, which was clearly implied by both DST’s Yuri Milner and Twitter’s Evan Williams in onstage interviews at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco earlier this month.

In a recent visit to Twitter’s downtown HQ, sources said, Milner underscored DST’s generous funding offer to top execs.

Sources said DST, which has made big investments in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, has offered over $100 million to Twitter at a valuation closing in on $4 billion.

It’s a move to shut out others, apparently, including, more recently, Kleiner Perkins–specifically its well-known John Doerr, who has been angling to move the venture firm more squarely into the social space.

After scoring a late entry to the social scene with its investment in the fast-growing Zynga, Kleiner has made a big marketing push recently to allocate a dedicated $250 million “sFund” to social start-ups.

Also reportedly interested in the deal are Andreessen Horowitz, which this summer outplayed and outlasted other VC firms and potential acquirers to get a piece of Foursquare.

Not surprisingly, Twitter has also been on the receiving end of serious look-sees in recent weeks from both Google and Facebook, according to sources, although there has not been an actual term sheet presented from either party. Those valuations for an acquisition have been well above $5 billion.

Of course, the interest in Twitter has been ongoing for a while from both the search giant, which has struggled in the social space, and the social networking giant. (And meanwhile, Google is also looking at buying Groupon.)

In late 2008, for example, Facebook tried to buy Twitter for $500 million in cash and stock, an offer Twitter rejected at the time.

Former CEO and Co-founder Evan Williams was behind the decision to go big rather than sell out then.

He turned down the deal after sleeping on it, penning a long email about “why there’s still so much we have left to do,” which Twitter investor Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital recently told the New York Times was “inspiring.”

Inspiring or not, Twitter’s board would have to seriously consider the landscape again if there was another massive offer for the company.

And, if a bidding war were to happen, Facebook seems unlikely to win versus Google. A deal costing billions of dollars would be dramatically different and more difficult than the “acqhire” talent strategy Facebook has employed to date. For Facebook, the biggest upside of deal would simply be beating Google.

Raising a monster round would be in keeping with Twitter’s short history so far.

In the fall of 2009, the company raised funding at a $1 billion valuation, when it had about 50 million accounts, under 100 employees and had yet to secure its first major revenue stream through deals to deliver real-time data to Microsoft and Google.

As a company and a service, Twitter is growing quickly. But it still only has 325 employees today, serving its 175 million users.

Williams, who stepped down from the CEO job in October, played coy at Web 2.0 when asked about additional funding rounds, simply saying “We have a lot of money in the bank.”

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on its latest funding and acquisition options and Facebook said it had “nothing new to report” on the subject.

And Google, DST and Kleiner have not yet responded to requests for comment.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user kristin_a (Meringue Bake Shop).]

Big Web CEO/very recently CEO Interviews:

The headliners for the Web crowd were Eric Schmidt of Google on day one, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook on day two and Evan Williams of Twitter on day three. None of the conversations were super revelatory, but they did highlight the heightening competitive tensions between Facebook and the rest of the Web.

Here’s the Zuckerberg video, which was notable for being one of his better public interviews in terms of ease and clarity (nothing like the near-fainting incident while being pummeled with privacy questions by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at D8).

Two good comments from Web 2.0: About giving Google access to Facebook user email addresses, Zuckerberg said, “I’m not sure we’re 100 percent right on this.” (For someone with his hubris, that’s practically an admission of guilt.) Zuckerberg also criticized the visualization of the Web as a map of territories that illustrated the Web 2.0 stage.

“Your map is wrong,” he said. “The biggest part of the map has to be uncharted territory–this map makes it seem like it’s zero-sum, but it’s not. We’re building value, not just taking it away from someone else.”

Here are Schmidt (already at 170,000 views!) and Williams.

Best panel:

The most captivating panel was the one with venture capitalists John Doerr and Fred Wilson, ably moderated by John Heilemann. Wilson argued that Google has bought all of its recent interesting products, saying its last in-house success was Gmail. “They haven’t home-built from the ground up anything interesting in a half decade,” he said. Doerr replied passionately, “Ideas are easy. What’s really dear is execution. Google executes. Facebook executes.”

Best start-up presentation:

Brian Pokorny, CEO of DailyBooth, explained how the young people who use his site to share pictures are having conversations with each other. Pokorny made an interesting distinction about how–unlike with other photo-sharing apps–his users choose to use the front-facing camera on the iPhone and iPod Touch so they can take pictures of themselves.

An evening talk by agent Ari Emanuel was also quite well-received, with many people mentioning it to me the next day. You can watch it here.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics
statement.

BoomTown will admit it: I am a social party pooper.

In any case, here is a lovely video I did yesterday while at the launch of the sFund.

The sFund is a $250 million fund for social start-ups, whose partners include Kleiner Perkins, Amazon, Facebook, Comcast, Liberty Media, Zynga and Allen & Co.

The event participants included, as you can see above, Silicon Valley power VC John Doerr, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, and VC Bing Gordon.

All are also below.

At the end of the presentation to the press, the sFund’s new majordomo, Gordon (who looks like a clean-shaven version of Hagrid from “Harry Potter”), took to the stage and read a very unusual poem about entrepreneurs, which I recorded for posterity. After which, he took on a video interview.

Here’s the result:

[Photo credit: Richard Morgenstein]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101022/a-nerd-by-any-other-name-would-be-as-geek-bing-gordon-waxes-poetic-and-more-at-the-sfund-launch/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:44:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35998

BoomTown had to park a badillion miles away from Facebook’s suburban HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. and hoofed it there for a press event that unveiled the sFund.

What’s that? A $250 million fund for social start-ups.

10:40 am PT: The excitement was building–well, not really…well, not at all, in fact–at the Facebook cafeteria, as the Silicon Valley press got to see the name of the sFund on screens throughout the room.

Kleiner Perkins power VC John Doerr started off the proceedings with some microphone snafus, when he tried to get out from behind the podium.

“John, sometimes you have to stay in the box,” joked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was sitting onstage in what appears to be an Internet Hall of Fame group.

The others would be Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and Founder Mark Pincus, and giant-man-about-Web Bing Gordon.

Doerr talked on about the importance of social, related to the Internet.

Then, he introed Zuckerberg, hoodie-less, who agreed with him, talking about photos and how social made them hot on Facebook.

Apparently, everything is going social. Personally, I am now contemplating becoming a hermit.

Doerr went full Oprah on him, asking what would inspire him to innovate, if he were starting out today (and presumably there were no Winklevii around to “borrow” an idea from).

“If you take any passion and map it to an industry,” said Zuckerberg, it will result in disruption.

Then Doerr channeled Barbara Walters at Pincus, tossing him a softball query about the fabulousness of it all.

For example: “What’s inspired you to be a CEO at this amazing company?” (Note to Walt Mossberg: Let’s file that tough one away for D9!)

11:01 am:Thank goodness then for Bezos, who simply said he hoped these new companies will take some of that $250 million and use Amazon Web Services.

He talked about how these trends grow virally and “sometimes violently.”

Ouch!

Speaking of pinchy, Bezos moved on to some chemical explosion metaphor, and I am now certain I want to be a hermit crab.

Then, after a question about what he would do now, he veered to bioengineering! Doerr wanted a social answer, but Bezos was talking test tubes and “engineered and synthetic life.”

But Gordon behaved for John “Diane Sawyer” Doerr and talked about how social is the only place to be for the cool kids.

He reeled off the other partners, including Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co.

One more question from Doerr: Five years from now, what is going to make you “delighted” about and for the customers you service.

Gordon: He could see the family.

Pincus: He has 12-week twins, not the Winklevii, who are still too young to use Facebook. He was excited it is all getting wired.

“When everyone is always connected to one another, rather than connected to the Web,” he said, that’s the bomb.

He called the big social companies “dial tones,” as in Zynga was the gaming dial tone, Amazon was the shopping dial tone and Facebook was the dial tone.

Zuckerberg: I was not sure he was actually answering the question. But I believed his wish was about these social networks getting to scale.

He went on though, talking about how some companies were building a “light” social layer versus companies where social was “built fundamentally into the product.”

These, of course, have an advantage, according to the gospel of Zuckerberg.

Bezos: He talked about Amazon’s Web services some more–this dude is a retailer, so he was sure good at selling.

Gordon, who is apparently like Ed McMahon to Doerr’s Johnny Carson, rounded up the feel-good session.

11:17 am: Q&A.

Go Miguel Helft, from the New York Times, who asked a good question, about what took so long for Doerr to do this fund, since social–i.e., Facebook–has been around for seven years or more.

Doerr joked, “Next question.” Ha.

But really. Doerr did not answer except to say that Zynga only exploded a year ago, so back off, Miguel.

There were two other dullish questions, about new partners.

“It’s a quarter-billion-dollar party,” said Gordon, which I was not quite wanting to attend. Which made me a social party pooper.

Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.

Then, there ws a question about whether this is not simply the “fbFund,” as in Facebook, since the social networking site was going to benefit the most from all this.

No, it was not, declares Doerr.

More questions–about monetization, advertising, free versus paid and an off-topic one about rumors of Amazon launching an app store (of course it is!).

Zuckerberg took the monetization one. All of the above, it’s great, money for all.

The event finished with a very odd poem by Gordon, which ended with a decent joke about the possibility that entrepreneurs, if they are lucky, get a movie “made about you.”

He was referring to “The Social Network,” which trashed Zuckerberg.

In any case, quarter-billion-dollar party on, Mark.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/kleiner-perkins-announces-250-million-sfund-for-social-start-ups/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/kleiner-perkins-announces-250-million-sfund-for-social-start-ups/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:38:54 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=51090 During a press event at Facebook headquarters this morning, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced a new $250 million fund for start-ups playing in the social space. The venture capital firm’s partners in the effort: Amazon.com, Facebook, Zynga, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company LLC.

The release below; Kara Swisher is covering the event live.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Launches $250 Million sFund Initiative for Social Web Entrepreneurs

Amazon.com, Facebook, Zynga, Comcast and Liberty Media to Invest and Help Accelerate a New Wave of Social Web Innovations

October 21, 2010 – Palo Alto, Calif. – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced the sFund, a new $250 million initiative to invest in entrepreneurs inventing social applications and services. Amazon.com, Facebook, and Zynga, the leading companies defining today’s social and online environment; entertainment and media leaders Comcast and Liberty Media and Allen & Company, LLC, have committed to invest in the sFund and serve as strategic partners. The sFund will provide financing, counsel, and relationship capital for a new generation of entrepreneurs to deliver on the promise of the social web.

“We’re at the beginning of a new era for social Internet innovators who are re-imagining and re-inventing a Web of people and places, looking beyond documents and websites,” said KPCB partner John Doerr. “There’s never been a better time than now to start a new social venture.”

The sFund will be led by KPCB partner Bing Gordon, former chief creative officer and longtime executive at Electronic Arts and board director of Amazon.com and Zynga. Gordon said, “Social is just getting started and the opportunities are vast. As in the early days of the Internet, the race is on. Today every business, organization, and entrepreneur should have a social strategy.”

“Social apps are viral, and when they hit, it often happens suddenly, and then they grow explosively. That’s one of the reasons the scalable, elastic, no capex, variable cost nature of Amazon Web Services is ideal for social apps,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “The top three companies that develop for Facebook all use AWS.”

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said, “The Web is being rebuilt around people, and we’re at a point where any app, website, or device can be designed to be social from the ground up. We’re focused on enabling entrepreneurs to build companies that can disrupt their industries.”

Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, noted, “Zynga’s successes – such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars – show the speed with which entrepreneurs can transform existing industries and invent entirely new ones through social platforms. Our model demonstrates consumers’ desires to connect with others in new and valuable ways.”

Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation, said, “Social businesses play an increasingly important role in our entertainment and communications products. We’re very pleased to be a part of the sFund and look forward to seeing the great innovations that are generated from its investments.”

All anchor investors in the sFund initiative are prioritizing developer services for entrepreneurs, who will be part of an active ecosystem. The strategic partners launching the sFund each bring unique contributions. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will provide AWS Getting-Started Support for one year, priority access to worldwide Startup Events, and dedicated business and technical support. Facebook will contribute access to its platform teams, beta APIs, and new programs, like Facebook Credits. Zynga will host periodic sessions with sFund companies to focus on management and technical development, including open source collaboration. Comcast Interactive Capital, Comcast’s venture fund, will provide access to Comcast’s resources, teams, and relationships.

Over the past year, there has been unprecedented innovation in social applications. KPCB’s latest social ventures show the breadth of the social opportunity, from seed stage to scale-up, and enterprise to entertainment, including:

Cafébots — The first company dedicated to Friend Relationship Management. By building applications that are useful, fun, and scalable, consumers will be able to extract more information from and make better use of their social graphs. KPCB led a Series A funding for the company founded by a team of Stanford PhDs.

Flipboard — The world’s first social magazine, delivering a beautiful, personalized experience of the news, images, and information being shared by your friends across social network feeds on your iPad.

Jive — Jive’s social software leverages innovations in social to radically change the way work gets done in the enterprise. Jive has over 3,000 customers serving 15 million users. KPCB led a growth stage funding round in July.

Lockerz — A new social commerce company aimed at ages 13-30 creates a revolutionary new way to shop, play content, and connect. In less than a year, Lockerz has grown to more than 17 million members, offering major discounts on the best fashions, electronics, music, and more.

KPCB will have 10 U.S. partners working on the fund, including Chi-Hua Chien, John Doerr, Eric Feng, Bing Gordon, Lila Ibrahim, Randy Komisar, Aileen Lee, Matt Murphy, Ellen Pao, and Ted Schlein. Another four KPCB partners in Shanghai will extend the sFund’s reach in China.

Go to www.kpcb.com/sfund and www.facebook.com/kpcbprofile, or follow us at twitter.com/kpcb to learn more about the sFund.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/kleiner-perkins-announces-250-million-sfund-for-social-start-ups/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100720/meet-flipboard-mike-mccue-talks-about-stealth-social-magazine-start-up-that-just-nabbed-10-5-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20100720/meet-flipboard-mike-mccue-talks-about-stealth-social-magazine-start-up-that-just-nabbed-10-5-million/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:56:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30973

Today, BoomTown gassed up the MINI and headed down to see one of the more innovative new start-ups I have encountered of late.

That would be a new social magazine concept called Flipboard, which is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via a rich app on the Apple (AAPL) iPad.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment.

In this social magazine, there are pull quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of content linked out to. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on Twitter or Facebook.

Co-founded by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll in January, Flipboard decloaked itself tonight, announcing both a $10.5 million funding from top Silicon Valley power players and also the acquisition of Ellerdale, a relevancy search engine for the real-time Web.

The funders include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Index Ventures and a spate of high-profile investors, such as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moscovitz, angel investor Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. (NWS) exec Peter Chernin.

Flipboard currently has about 20 employees at its downtown Palo Alto, Calif., HQ.

“Flipboard is a social magazine filled with all the the things your friends are sharing,” said McCue, who co-founded Tellme, the speech recognition service acquired by Microsoft (MSFT). “We’re trying to bring the timeless principles of print to social media.”

(You can read The Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret’s review of Flipboard here.)

McCue left Tellme a year ago and was casting about for a new start-up when he settled on creating a new way to digest and present the noisy flood of information being spewed 24/7 by social networks.

Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr, who backed Tellme, said he was immediately intrigued by the idea.

“It is at once intimate and alive and beautiful,” he said in an interview with me earlier today. “This is the next wave of social media and redefines what magazine is…and I think it will be one of the defining apps on the iPad.”

Right now, the Flipboard app is free and the business plan is advertising and some possible subscription scenarios.

Ellen Pao, also of Kleiner and a member of Flipboard’s board, said she hoped publishers, whose Web sites are reconfigured from tweets and other social links by the app, will welcome the new distribution format.

“Traditional publishing is facing a crossroads and this imagines it from the ground up,” she said. “I hope it paves the way.”

We’ll see about old media reactions, which has been decidedly mixed to aggregation apps like this.

The New York Times (NYT), for example, attacked rather than embraced another terrific news reading iPad app called Pulse, accusing it of misusing its content.

It was a stupid move against inexorable concepts such as Pulse and Flipboard, which are beginning to make sense of the changing digital information landscape.

Here’s the video interview with McCue, followed by the official press releases about Flipboard:

FLIPBOARD LAUNCHES WORLD’S FIRST SOCIAL MAGAZINE

INSPIRED BY THE BEAUTY OF PRINT AND DESIGNED FOR iPAD, FLIPBOARD TRANSFORMS THE SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIENCE

Raises $10.5MM From Legendary Investors KPCB and Index Ventures and Media Innovators Including Jack Dorsey, Dustin Moskovitz, Ashton Kutcher and The Chernin Group

Acquires Ellerdale, Names Arthur van Hoff CTO

FORTUNE BRAINSTORM TECH–ASPEN, COLORADO – JULY 21, 2010–Founded by Mike McCue, former CEO of Tellme, and Evan Doll, former senior iPhone engineer at Apple®, Flipboard™ began a quest today to transform how people discover and share content by combining the beauty and ease of print with the power of social media. Flipboard also announced the immediate availability of it’s Flipboard App for iPad™, a social magazine that brings to life the stories, photos, news and updates being shared across Twitter and Facebook. Flipboard’s first public demo will happen at the FORTUNE Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado at 4:40pm MDT tomorrow.

“With over 1 billion posts shared every day, social networks are quickly becoming the primary way people discover and share content on the Web. The result is a huge influx of incoming messages and links people must sort through across multiple web sites just to stay up to date,” said Mike McCue, Flipboard’s CEO. “We believe the timeless principles of print can make social media less noisy, more visually compelling and ultimately more mainstream.”

Designed from the ground up for iPad, Flipboard creates a magazine out of a user’s social content. Simply launch Flipboard and “flip” open the cover to get started. From the Table of Contents readers can view their sections and personalize the magazine.

The Facebook and Twitter sections let readers quickly flip through the latest stories, photos and updates from friends and trusted sources. Because Flipboard renders links and images right in the magazine, readers no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on link after link – instead they instantly see all the stories, comments and images, making it faster and more entertaining to discover, view and share social content.

Flipboard also lets readers easily create sections around topics or people they care about. Choose from Flipboard’s suggested sections on topics such as sports, news, tech and style, with content hand-curated from popular and interesting Twitter feeds. Or, create an entirely new section by searching by topic, person or Twitter lists to make Flipboard even more personal.

The Flipboard App is available for free at www.flipboard.com or from the App Store on iPad or at www.itunes.com/appstore/.

ACQUISITION OF ELLERDALE
As part of it’s quest to fundamentally improve the social media experience, Flipboard also announced the acquisition of Ellerdale (see press release: “Flipboard Acquires Ellerdale”). Ellerdale’s advanced semantic analysis of large, real-time data streams will enable Flipboard to extract, categorize and feature highly relevant and hot trending content from across a variety of social networks. Flipboard will also retain the world-class engineering team at Ellerdale, including Arthur van Hoff, a leading Silicon Valley technologist who played a major role in the creation of Java. Arthur will become Flipboard’s Chief Technology Officer and spearhead the company’s technology strategy.

INVESTORS
Flipboard is backed by legendary investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Index Ventures. Other key investors also include Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, The Chernin Group founded by Peter Chernin, Ron Conway, Alfred Lin, Peter Currie, Quincy Smith, and Ashton Kutcher. The company has raised $10.5 million in a Series A venture capital round.

FLIPBOARD ACQUIRES ELLERDALE TO BOOST CONTENT RELEVANCY IN NEW SOCIAL MAGAZINE

Arthur van Hoff Joins Flipboard as Chief Technology Officer

PALO ALTO, Calif.–July 21, 2010–Flipboard today announced it has acquired Ellerdale, the real-time Web intelligence company. The acquisition concurs with the launch of Flipboard, a social magazine designed for Apple’s iPad, which provides a faster and more engaging way to discover, view, and share what matters on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Ellerdale, founded in 2008, has developed a Web Intelligence technology that applies semantic analysis to large, real-time data streams to extract relevant and valuable information. To date, Ellerdale has indexed over 6 billion messages from around the social Web and currently processes nearly 70 million messages per day. This technology and data set will be become the relevancy engine for the next release of Flipboard, enhancing the reader’s experience by always surfacing the most important and personally interesting information from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

Designed from the ground up for the iPad, Flipboard creates a magazine out of a user’s social content. With Ellerdale’s technology, future versions of Flipboard will be able to extract, categorize and feature highly relevant and hot trending content from across a variety of social networks.

“Ellerdale has developed an impressive solution for understanding the ever-increasing stream of social data coming at us every day,” said Mike McCue, CEO and co-founder of Flipboard. “This technology will add deep relevancy for our readers, enabling us to present social content in a way that is not only more beautiful, but also more meaningful. It’s a great combination.”

Arthur van Hoff, co-founder of Ellerdale, is joining Flipboard as the company’s new chief technology officer. Van Hoff, who played a major role in the development of the Java programming language at Sun Microsystems, and was founder of six high-tech companies, including Marimba, Strangeberry and Zing, will spearhead Flipboard’s technology strategy.

“Combining the two companies creates a situation in which one plus one equals three, bringing together Flipboard’s innovative front-end with Ellerdale’s powerful real-time relevancy engine on the back-end,” said Arthur van Hoff, co-founder of Ellerdale and Flipboard’s new chief technology officer. “Our technology will play a key role in providing readers with the content that matters most to them.”

Mike McCue and Evan Doll founded Flipboard earlier this year and received $10.5M in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Index Ventures. The founding team members come from Apple, Netflix, Tellme/Microsoft, Aardvark and Adobe. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100720/meet-flipboard-mike-mccue-talks-about-stealth-social-magazine-start-up-that-just-nabbed-10-5-million/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20100405/freed-by-amazon-john-doerr-cheers-ipad-will-google-care/ http://allthingsd.com/20100405/freed-by-amazon-john-doerr-cheers-ipad-will-google-care/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:40:35 +0000 David Barry http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=23542 Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) last month disclosed that John Doerr would not stand for re-election as a board member at the company’s annual meeting.

While Doerr reportedly received scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission over his board roles at increasingly competing companies Amazon and Google Inc. (GOOG), his close relationship with a third tech giant may have been the final straw.

Last Wednesday, Doerr, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, stood at a press conference to announce the doubling of the venture firm’s iFund to $200 million and to praise Apple’s (AAPL) forthcoming iPad–a device that clearly will have an impact on Amazon’s Kindle.

“We believe it’ll rule the world,” Doerr said. “I’ve touched it; I’ve held it and caressed it….It feel gorgeous. It isn’t a big iPhone, but it is a big deal.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100405/freed-by-amazon-john-doerr-cheers-ipad-will-google-care/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100331/kpcb-doubles-down-on-ifund-200-million-for-iphone-and-ipad-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20100331/kpcb-doubles-down-on-ifund-200-million-for-iphone-and-ipad-apps/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:42:03 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=37799 Add Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to the list of companies funding iPad app development. At an event this morning, the storied venture capital firm said it is doubling the $100 million fund it established to provide seed capital for iPhone apps to fuel development of apps for Apple’s (AAPL) new device.

“This Saturday the iPad arrives and we believe it’s going to rule the world,” said KPCB partner John Doerr. “I’ve touched it, I’ve carressed it and I hope to sleep with it this Saturday night. It feels gorgeous. It isn’t a big iPhone, but it is a big deal. It’s the future….We’re heading into a brave new world. From our old interfaces to touch. From WYSIWYG–what you see is what you get–to WYTIWIS ‘what you touch is what is.’”

A number of apps built by iFund companies will be available when the iPad launches this Saturday, among them seven games from ngmoco, as well as Doodle Buddy and Star Smash from Pinger, textPlus from GOGII and Shazam from Shazam Entertainment. Not announced today but headed to market soon: iPad apps from Zynga, Shopkick and Cooliris.

KPCB’s Bing Gordon closed the presentation segment of today’s event by reading a poem. Sadly, I missed most of it because of connection issues, but it began with this salute to the iPhone: “Welcome to the world; My new friend and pocket master.”

Tech Trader Daily and TechCrunch, which attended the event in person, have more detailed notes here and here.

Below, a few screenshots from the WebEx presentation, and the official announcement:

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Doubles iFund to $200 Million

iFund Companies to Deliver More Than a Dozen New iPad Applications by May

MENLO PARK, Calif., March 31, 2010 – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced the doubling of its iFund to $200 million of venture capital for applications for Apple’s revolutionary iPhone OS family of products, including iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Established in 2008 as a $100 million investment pool, the original iFund is now fully committed across 14 companies. iFund companies have been supported by an additional $330 million from follow-on investors.

KPCB also announced iFund-supported companies have more than 20 applications in development for the soon-to-be-released iPad, with 11 available at first ship on April 3. KPCB noted the iPhone has created an inflection in mobile content consumption and the iPad will lead the next wave of innovation in mobile computing. The iFund is increasing its investment dollars to back entrepreneurs and build companies that focus on these areas. Particular areas of interest on iPad include entertainment, communication, social networking, commerce, health care, and education.

“Welcome to the brave new post-PC era where a swoosh of fluidity replaces the traditional mouse-bound GUI. A new, truly revolutionary platform is rare, and a prize for entrepreneurs,” said John Doerr, KPCB Partner. “We expect all ventures to have an iPad strategy. We will fund many more ventures for iPad, and the iFund will accelerate their success.”

“Kleiner Perkins has done a terrific job at finding, funding and supporting great iPhone app developers,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are thrilled that they are doubling the size of their fund, along with expanding it to now include iPad developers too.”

Matt Murphy, Partner at KPCB and leader of the iFund, reported that KPCB’s iFund ventures have achieved significant success, including:

More than $100 million of 2010 mobile revenue
More than 100 million aggregate mobile downloads
An amazing 18 titles reached the Top 10 on the App Store

“We’re ecstatic to be doubling down on the iFund after two short years,” said Murphy. “The success of the App Store and its impact on consumers has been 10 times faster and bigger than we expected. Kleiner Perkins and iFund companies have enjoyed an incredibly helpful and unwavering partner in Apple.”

Recent milestones for iFund companies include:

GOGII’s 5.5 million users have sent 2 billion messages through textPlus
ngmoco’s titles are installed on over one-third of iPhone OS devices and played 20 million minutes each day
Pinger launched 10 apps into the App Store Top 100 in a single month
Shazam’s 50 million worldwide users are tagging over 2 million songs per day
Booyah’s MyTown has over 1.6 million users doing 4 million location check-ins per day

The 11 applications available this week from iFund companies include seven games from ngmoco including We Rule, GodFinger and WarpGate, as well as Doodle Buddy and Star Smash from Pinger, textPlus from GOGII, and Shazam from Shazam Entertainment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100331/kpcb-doubles-down-on-ifund-200-million-for-iphone-and-ipad-apps/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100210/new-technet-ceo-rey-ramsey-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20100210/new-technet-ceo-rey-ramsey-speaks/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:32:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24264

Yesterday–in a very precious San Francisco tea cafe of BoomTown’s choosing–Rey Ramsey was unfailingly and politically polite, despite my rat-a-tat questions and the shoving of a Flip video camera in his face on his first visit to California after nabbing his new job as president and CEO of TechNet.

Ramsey better get used to it, though, as he takes over the bipartisan political network of tech types, which is heavy with Silicon Valley power brokers who are often at odds.

They include an executive council with co-chairs John Chambers, CEO of Cisco (CSCO), and mega-venture capitalist John Doerr, as well as Intel (INTC) CEO Paul Otellini and Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt.

Member companies include Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO), Apple (AAPL), Dell (DELL), craigslist, eBay (EBAY) and more.

While they are often wrangling competitively, it will be Ramsey’s job to get them on the same page on a wide range of issues they do agree on, such as visas, the need for more broadband, support for innovation and especially, blocking net neutrality regulation.

With the Obama administration more engaged in digital issues, it might be a good time for TechNet, which was founded in 1997 (I wrote the story about that in The Wall Street Journal, which dates me!). Unusually, it has not had as high a profile over the years as it should have.

But Ramsey, who has deep political ties to the new administration, also has a lot more tech savvy than past TechNet leaders. He co-founded One Economy, a laudable group that tries to bring tech to less privileged parts of society.

How to bridge the digital divide in a way that is more than words is another important issue Ramsey will have on his plate.

Here is the video of my interview with him talking about this and more (in which Ramsey mistakenly seems to say Apple was not a member of TechNet, but was referring to being on its Executive Council):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/new-technet-ceo-rey-ramsey-speaks/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090705/new-vc-marc-andreessen-speaks-about-the-dark-side-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20090705/new-vc-marc-andreessen-speaks-about-the-dark-side-and-more/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:00:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=15407

It’s finally official: Marc Andreessen has crossed over to what he once called “the dark side” and is now a venture capitalist.

Several weeks ago, BoomTown broke the news that the Silicon Valley legend and serial entrepreneur (pictured here) and his longtime investing partner, Ben Horowitz, had completed the raising of $300 million for a new venture fund.

And, indeed, the new firm–which is made up of just the two of them–is now launched and called Andreessen Horowitz. It has $50 million over the $250 million the pair had initially planned.

In an interview with me last week, Andreessen said that unlike many VC firms, Andreessen Horowitz will invest in companies at any stage of life–from early stage to late–and of any size and in any kind of digital sector.

That will mean about 60 to 80 seed investments, 15 that need following rounds and two to three late-stage companies.

In addition, the firm is able to take large equity stakes in public companies.

“We are unafraid of investing in 400 people instead of 40 people,” said Andreessen. “And we could invest $50,000 to $50,000,000.”

He noted the new firm would aim for areas the founders were more familiar with, such as the consumer Internet and mobile.

One certainty, though, was that the firm would focus on companies led by tech-savvy founders.

“We believe in entrepreneurs and those who live and breathe the tech product that they have created,” said Andreessen.

Andreessen said several major institutional investors–universities, for example–have invested large chunks in the fund, while a spate of tech luminaries has put in smaller amounts.

The quick completion of the fund raising, in the midst of a national econalypse, is a good sign. But the reputation of both longtime entrepreneurs seems to have helped.

Andreessen co-founded Netscape–the iconic browser company that was key to introducing the modern Internet to consumers in Web 1.0–and a lot of other start-ups.

He has also morphed into a mentor to many Web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

Andreessen made news when he announced on the “Charlie Rose” television show in February that he was creating the new fund.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen at the time, in a joke about VCs being like Darth Vader.

Andreessen said he was essentially professionalizing the active angel investing that he and Horowitz had been doing.

Over the last several years, either together or apart, the pair have invested in a large variety of start-ups, such as Twitter, Aliph, Digg, LinkedIn and many more.

Andreessen is on the board of Facebook and an adviser to Twitter too.

Now, as a VC, he is upping the ante. “It’s important to have more capital,” he said. “Sometimes having a huge checkbook is a great thing.”

But, more important, he said, was to develop a knack for investing in successful companies with a fearlessness he said he learned from well-known VC John Doerr.

“John is always swinging for the fences,” said Andreessen. “I want to get into a cycle of backing radical ideas.”

Here’s a video interview I did with Andreessen about his new venture firm:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090705/new-vc-marc-andreessen-speaks-about-the-dark-side-and-more/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090309/kara-visits-a-hot-flat-and-crowded-book-party-for-tom-friedman/ http://allthingsd.com/20090309/kara-visits-a-hot-flat-and-crowded-book-party-for-tom-friedman/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:51:41 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=10750

Last Friday, BoomTown attended a packed-out book party at the Silicon Valley home of Gary and Laura Lauder in honor of globetrotting pundit Tom Friedman and his latest weighty tome: “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–And How it Can Renew America.”

The New York Times columnist’s book is catnip for the smart set–including greentastic VC John Doerr–gathered under a swanky tent on a stunningly beautiful late afternoon, even though Friedman’s message was that these kinds of days were pretty much numbered for the human race.

Unless, of course, all the big brains in tech figured how to stop the following: overpopulation, too many people on the globe acting like piggy Americans, global “weirding” (Friedman’s more accurate term for warming), petroterrorism, the end to biodiversity and more.

As the old cliché goes: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Although dire, and making the current economic straits seem like a paper cut, Friedman still managed to paint a picture of hope, ultimately delivering a yes-we-can-innovate speech ender that the crowd of high-achieving geeks loved.

The big question: Can Silicon Valley stop dopily Twittering and save the day?

Here’s a video interview with Friedman, as well as some snippets from his very well-done speech:

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090309/kara-visits-a-hot-flat-and-crowded-book-party-for-tom-friedman/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20081030/they-will-survive-silicon-valley-entrepreneurs-talk-downturn/ http://allthingsd.com/20081030/they-will-survive-silicon-valley-entrepreneurs-talk-downturn/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:32:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=5850

Earlier today, BoomTown posted a video of star venture capitalist John Doerr’s 10 tips to start-ups for surviving the econalypse that he ticked off at a roundtable in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

Beside the words of wisdom from the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner, I also trolled for advice from the panel of well-known entrepreneurs I moderated at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn” event.

Thus, here is the i-will-survive take from Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Toni Schneider, chief executive of Automattic, the company that makes the WordPress blogging software, Nirav Tolia of Web 1.0′s Epinions and Max Levchin of Slide.

As an added bonus, Ram Shriram, one of Google’s first investors, also weighs in. And, of course, the inevitable blogger Robert Scoble gives his two cents (and also freaks me out once again!).

Here’s the video of the entrepreneurs, and below it, for your viewing pleasure, two versions of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor (the classic) and Cake (the weirdly good one):

[ See post to watch video ]

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