10:18 am: Walt greets Gore by noting that he has just come from Steve Jobs’s memorial service. What was that like?

10:18 am: “A beautiful and moving event … It’s a terrible loss, of course, for the entire world. We’ll all miss Steve.

But for all of his inventions — “among them all, I actually think his greatest work was Apple itself.”

“He created an organization — and inspired it — that literally creates technology that people love … and that’s going to continue. There’s so many things in the pipeline, and the team that he built is hitting on all cylinders.”

10:20 am: Walt: So, no offense to Tim Cook, at what point does the lack of having Jobs at the helm of the company become apparent? There’s a pipeline, “but at some point that pipeline runs out, and then what happens?”

10:21 am: Gore: Steve cultivated a team, “and we had discussions at every single board meeting, for several years, about cultivating that team.” No one will replace him, and he’s totally unique. “And yet, he also served on the board of Disney … and he used to talk initially about how, after Walt Disney died, the company always got in trouble about asking ‘what would Walt do in this situation?’ And he made it very clear: ‘I don’t want that.’ He made it clear to Tim Cook and everyone else. ‘Don’t ask what Steve would have done. Follow your own voice.’”

10:23 am: Walt: So you still expect risk-taking and game-changing?

10:23 am: Of course. Everyone on that management team could be CEO of a world-class corporation.

10:23 am: Walt: Isn’t that a problem? That people come after them?

10:24 am: Gore: Of course. But that’s not new. And I’m on the compensation committee, and we pay real close attention to that.

10:24 am: Walt: You’re also a Google adviser, and those two companies are competing. How do you handle that?

10:24 am: Gore: After Eric Schmidt left the Apple board because of conflicts, I pulled back as well. I still talk to Larry and Sergey, but never about anything where there’s competition. It’s not really a problem, but “I don’t have as many conversations with them now. And I miss that.” I’ve known them since they were 27 years old.

By the way, I think Larry is doing a great job since he became CEO.

10:27 am: Walt: America has been the big tech innovator for a long time, and in Asia they are still mostly imitating what we’ve done. But Asia is coming up fast. “How much longer can this be an advantage for the United States?”

10:28 am: Gore: That depends on choices we make. “I think our political system is now badly broken.” We’ve been able to use the political equivalent of massively parallel processing to make great decisions over the past 200 years.

Let me digress for a minute: The U.S. formed its superior decision-making in the wake of Gutenberg and the evolution of the print press. Allowed “the rule of reason” to let citizens and their reps make good decisions. Then, 60 years ago, TV surpassed print. And unlike the public square of print, the TV public square is controlled by gatekeepers, and access to that square requires a lot of money. So now we’ve seen a huge degradation of the conversation.

10:31 am: Walt: Hasn’t the Web fixed that?

Gore: Not yet. Right now, TV is by far the dominant medium. If you take primetime out of the picture, the activity on iOS and Android is now rivaling TV. But you include primetime, 7 to 10, TV “blows everything else away. Still.”

“Television is still the big kahuna. It’s because people like to sit back, and the relationship between the television and the human brain is extremely close.”

It’s part of evolution — back on the savannah, the people who didn’t notice the leaves moving suddenly didn’t become our ancestors. We’re hardwired for this stuff; “it becomes a quasi-hypnotic state.” It’s why lead-in shows are so important. (Peter Chernin disagrees — see earlier.)

So that’s why so much political money goes into TV, and that helps explain why the system is so broken.

10:35 am: (Sorry, tech issues here.)

10:35 am: And we’re back. Gore is talking about companies who can take advantage of the innovator’s dilemma, Metcalfe’s law, etc.

Gore: 5.6 billion of the world’s seven billion people have mobile phones. Less than one billion are smartphones. “But that is going to change dramatically” … “Moore’s law makes it inevitable that the low-end phones are going to get smart.” And as those 5.6 billion get smarter and smarter phones — remind me to mention the climate crisis, by the way — that’s going to unleash amazing creativity.

10:38 am: Walt: Okay, let’s talk about the climate. This ties into tech: We love all these devices. Walt gestures to writers sitting in the front row, and Gore notes “All Apple — almost all Apple.” But it seems like people in the developed world have all these great devices, but people in the rest of the world deal with the pollution. Here in Hong Kong, there’s a lot of smog, and I’m told that much of it comes from over the border in mainland China, where much of this stuff is made.

Gore: About two percent of global warming comes from this stuff. “It’s a nontrivial factor.” But the good news is that the IT sector has been really good about addressing this stuff, much more so than other industries. And the other good news is that the information revolution that comes from this tech makes it easier to combat this, as well.

Except for this massive disinformation campaign — reminiscent of the tobacco industry in the 1950s telling us that smoking didn’t cause cancer — that tells us this stuff isn’t a problem. One hundred million people died unnecessarily because of this, because of smoking.

In this case, the largest carbon polluters — starting about 19 years ago, in the U.S., Europe and Australia and other countries — these polluters and their ideological allies “have put out a massive campaign to put out false doubts … they know that they don’t have to prove” anything, “all they have to do is put out enough false doubt.” Meanwhile, there’s nearly unanimous consensus on climate change.

If you had chest pains and you consulted 100 leading doctors, and 98 of them told you to take care of your heart, that’s what you’d do. You wouldn’t pay much attention to the other two.

So now you have more pollution than ever, etc.

10:46 am: Walt: But wait — isn’t a Democrat in the White House? Isn’t that your party?

Gore: I’ve expressed disappointment.

10:46 am: Walt: What do you tell Obama?

Gore: I give him advice, and most of the problem is in the Senate, which is totally broken. But the White House has pulled back from environmental reform, and that’s disappointing.

10:48 am: Gore: Meanwhile, look what’s happening in Pakistan, Thailand, Russia, Colombia, all facing terrible crises because of the climate. Colombia has had five times its normal rainfall this year. The Philippines have had a massive series of downpours for the past two years. Nashville, my hometown, just had “once-in-a-thousand-years rainfall … at some point, there has to be a reality check.”

10:49 am: Walt: And this is all because of pollution?

10:49 am: Gore: Yes.

[Long explanation of how massive downpours are a result of pollution] “It will get a lot worse. Until we take action. Even after we take action, it will be a problem.” And the same factors creating all this rain are also creating droughts. Double, triple whammy.

“I’ve been trying to communicate about this. And I wish I could communicate more effectively about this.”

“This is a global issue … we’re now being assaulted by this 90 milllion tons of global-warming pollution every day … it’s not okay.”

Questions From the Audience

Q: Back to the print-TV-Web conversation. Please keep talking about the evolution of TV, in connection with your involvement with Current TV.

Gore: We’ve done creative stuff at Current TV with Twitter. It’s one of a series of experiments. Last year, we had a drama series with the Sims’s Will Wright, where he had an online story-creation engine online, where people could have input on story line. Many other examples.

But when you look at the opposite direction — TV on the Internet — you run into a broadband capacity problem. In the 1970s, there was only ARPANET, and twisted copper pairs. And we wanted to increase capacity via the information superhighway. But now, with video, the number of digits in a 30-minute video “is like a year’s worth of email.” And even with compression, etc., “there is a crunch coming” and “that is what has impeded the migration of TV proper onto the Internet.” For the majority of people, in the majority of the world, it is still going to be a while before we get full TV on the Internet.

Q: Back to the environment. What’s actually feasible for policymakers to do?

Gore: With individuals, start by “winning the conversation” — like the civil rights movement in the ’60s. Don’t put up with pollution. Then we can make changes on the consumer side.

For politics: Number one, we can start putting a price on carbon. Right now we tell people it’s okay to use the global commons as a sewer. It’s not. The market is telling polluters it’s okay to pollute, so of course they will. A carbon tax and cap are important.

Number two: Governments should create a green bank of development for renewables. Moore’s law is not a law of physics. It’s a law of investment. Chip power grows fast now because investors invest in R&D to make it grow fast. Same thing can be true for green R&D like photovoltaic electricity.

Q: Please talk about Apple. Senior talent there — if you look at their background, prior to joining Apple, they don’t look like world-class guys. Very different background than the resumes of the Google guys. So one’s not better than the other, but how does Apple think about talent? Also: Please talk about the Apple board — lots of folks have criticized the Apple board. (Gore is a member, of course.)

Gore: First of all, the way the executive team at Apple are chosen is not all that different from a lot of other places — they proved themselves in other positions and worked their way up.

As for the Apple board, I won’t talk about what goes on inside. But I will say this: “I have the deepest respect for my fellow board members, we’re all very good friends… I think that people who specialize in kibitzing about these things — I respect them, it’s good for them to think about this kind of stuff, but I wouldn’t change a thing about the way the Apple board has operated.”

We handled privacy and medical issues and succession all correctly there. “If you were running a corporation, and you had a star-studded executive team, would you really think it would be a smart thing to lay out in public your thinking about who’s going to move to what position over the next couple years? Of course not!”

Q: Please talk about impact of tech on the news business.

Gore: I used to be a journalist for the Army. I’ve watched the evolution of the business. The most important part of the problem you’re getting at is that with the transition to Internet journalism you don’t get enough critical mass to throw off enough revenue to create good investigative journalism. Crowdsourcing helps, but that’s not a substitute for real investigative journalists who can make a decent living doing what they do best.

Where will it go? It’s literally impossible to predict. I have a great iPhone 4S and an iPad, but “most of the quality stuff is still produced by newspapers and magazines.”

Walt: You don’t have the model for a new journalism, right? You just want there to be a new one?

Gore: Current TV has won a lot of awards. Those guys do a great job. And “60 Minutes” is great. But, increasingly, shows that used to do news are moving into infotainment.

I turn on the morning news and a program that used to do news is doing a segment about a kid who’s hiccuping. But I do have to confess it’s pretty interesting.

Q: What should Google do in China?

Gore: [Waits a beat.] “God bless you.”

Q: Advice for Obama going into 2012?

Gore: I’ve given it privately.

Q: What about the T-Mobile-AT&T merger. What do you think?

A: My guess is that Justice so rarely takes a move like they made — “I think it’s going to be hard to overturn that decision.” They’ll fight it, but they should think about other plans.

Q: Question about the failing of American education.

A: I’ve tried hard! I have an “our choice” app about environmental education. I had a documentary on TV, etc. But we have a major party embracing the rejection of science, even while the majority of American people believe in the science.

Q: Can you talk about financial reform in the U.S.?

Gore: I think financial reform and political reform are connected. “Money plays such an unhealthy role” in U.S. democracy — “way more than in the past”. There are four anticlimate activists for every member of the Senate.

“We need to move toward sustainable capitalism. Capitalism is the best system for organizing economic activity … but we have to pay careful attention to how those incentives are structured, and what they are applied to. We have to measure the full system of value.” And not just discard things that are difficult to measure — externalities. “So if we’re committed to capitalism, as I am, we have to make it sustainable.” Price tag can’t be the only marker of value.

Lots of conventions of modern-day trading and investing are “functionally insane.”

Q: [Didn't catch.]

Gore: The last century and a half is an exception to the longer history, in which Asia has been the dominant force in the world. China is becoming more competitive, “and I wish them well.” But I also remember when the Soviets were going to eclipse us. Didn’t happen. Japan Inc. Didn’t happen. So, is China’s rise inevitable? I don’t know. Chinese labor costs, inflation are going way up. I’m not so sure that we can predict in a linear way what’s going to happen in the future.

Ends with plug for AllThingsD. Thanks, Al!

Al Gore Session Photos

Waze now has seven million users, up from the two million it had last December, when it raised $25 million led by Blue Run Ventures. The company’s services are powered by passive driving data collected by users, plus their reports of accidents and hazards on the roads.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, which recently rewrote all its apps, expects to dedicate some of its new funding to partnerships, in order to launch in China.

The round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with other investors participating, including Access Venture Partners and New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira.

The business sounds a little bit like a timeshare, but without a lot of the restrictions.

Members pay a one-time initiation fee of $15,000 and an annual membership fee of $2,500. Members can travel as often as they like and can pick from a property portfolio of 85 residences in 25 destinations, for which Inspirato has entered into long-term leases with the property owners.

Members receive deeply discounted nightly rates, no black-out dates and no brokers’ fees.

The company was founded by Brent and Brad Handler, the co-founders of another travel club called Exclusive Resorts, in January.

So far, the company says it has sold more than 900 memberships and says it is cash flow positive. It plans to use the capital to add even more vacation choices for its members.

But after spreading its bets to clean technology — and missing out on early-stage investments in some of the hottest new Internet companies — the firm is scrambling to grab a leadership role in the latest Web boom.

That was evident at a June event in San Francisco, where the firm hosted a packed room of entrepreneurs. At the front of the room, Kleiner venture capitalist Bing Gordon spent an hour onstage espousing his theory of “gamification” — that is, how start-ups can benefit from using online gaming techniques — to the gathering.

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Here’s a delicious juxtaposition you don’t get often: Various reports indicate that reality show empress Kim Kardashian’s upcoming wedding to New Jersey Nets basketball player Kris Humphries will be held at the Montecito estate of Google’s Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt.

And, according to another report, if not there, then at a house owned by one of Silicon Valley’s most famous VC legends.

Schmidt won’t be a guest at what is sure to be a heavily chronicled event — which the New York Post said will have a $20,000 cake, three dresses and 500 guests.

You know, simple nuptials.

Instead, it appears Schmidt rents out the lush house, which he bought from talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in 2007 for $20 million.

Fun fact: It is the same spot where Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck — or Bennifer, as I like to call them — were set to be hitched in 2003, before they called off their engagement.

According to blog site The Real Estalker, who also wrote about the possible rental:

The privately situated and heavily secured luxury compound’s architectural heart and soul is a 5,000-plus square foot main house with 4 bedrooms and 4 full and 2 half bathrooms designed by beloved Santa Barbara architect George Washington Smith. Staff and/or guests can be comfortably accommodated in a detached 1-bedroom guest house with kitchen and an additional studio space tucked into a quiet corner provides private respite from family members and all the full-time staff people required to maintain an estate of this magnitude.

At the time Mister Schmidt snatched up the property, the extensively and meticulously landscaped grounds included a long winding drive, massive motor court, championship grade tennis court, extra-long swimming pool with raised spa area, wide terraces, broad lawns, and a stunning allée with colorful tiled fountain that screams out for a highly stylized celebrity wedding designed — we presume — by an efficient, innovative and extremely well-paid event planner.

[UPDATE:] Later, The Real Estalker changed its report and said the wedding might not be held at Schmidt’s place, but at another over-the-top estate owned by Silicon Valley venture legend Frank Caufield, one of the founders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

I have a call in to the Kardashians, who are usually so shy with the press, so I will update as soon as I hear or a camera crew arrives at my house.

Until the I-dos are done, below are some pretty pix of Schmidt’s fancy spread from back in 2006:

A Google spokesman had no comment, obviously.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, best known for investing in Google, Amazon, Twitter and Zynga, has made a bet on Turkey as the next big market with its first major investment there.

The receiving company — Trendyol.com, an e-commerce site based in Istanbul — is announcing today that it has raised $26 million from Kleiner Perkins and Tiger Global.

Trendyol is similar to other flash sales sites in the U.S., such as Gilt Groupe, Rue La La, and Ideeli. The site sends out daily emails offering a heavily discounted selection of clothes. Consumers have a limited amount of time to purchase the items before the sale expires or quantities run out.

The company was founded by Demet Mutlu, a 29-year-old dropout from Harvard Business School — she is now running the company with about 350 employees.

Kleiner partner Aileen Lee said a combination of a hardworking executive team, the company’s phenomenal growth, and Turkey’s increasingly attractive market opportunity led to the investment. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to introduce e-commerce to a market that doesn’t have a strong brick-and-mortar environment.

Check out some of these facts:

• Turkey has 35 million Internet users, representing the third largest Web market in Europe.
• Turkey is a socially engaged country, ranking fifth-highest for Facebook usage globally; eighth for Twitter and first for FriendFeed.
• Turkey has a high credit card penetration rate of about 60 percent with 46 million credit cards.
• In the past 16 months, Trendyol has signed up four million members, translating into one out of every nine Turkish Internet users.

Lockerz’s CEO Kathy Savitt said so far $36 million has been raised, but that the total amount should be final in the next 60 days.

The led investor is DAG Ventures, with Lockerz’s previous investors, Liberty Media and Liberty’s CEO, Greg Maffei, as well as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also participating.

New to the round is Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. Already, Live Nation has started to work with Lockerz to sell concert tickets for Britney Spears, Rihanna, Blink-182 and others. Members of the Lockerz community can use points they earn to get discounts on those tickets.

Savitt, who started the company in 2009, said it has started to see some significant traction, clocking 46 million unique users a month, who spend an average of 17 minutes on the site, and with most of the users falling between the ages of 13 and 35.

With the round of funding, Savitt said they will be expanding the number of places users can redeem their points, making them more valuable. To date, they’ve only been used in Lockerz’s own shop, but going forward, she said, they can be used for concert tickets, like with Live Nation, but also in restaurants and retailers.

“The whole notion of points is to be a social loyalty currency that would reward engagement in a meaningful way. The first phase offered a limited number of prizes, and then discounts on merchandise, and now we are taking that next step to make it a true global currency, by making them redeemable all over — on Lockerz and off of Lockerz,” Savitt said. “We have a lot coming in the next 60 to 90 days.”

Members of Lockerz can earn points, technically called PTZ, in more than 10 ways, including uploading photos, answering polls, watching videos, listening to music, inviting friends, or just logging in. More information on how Lockerz works and its target demographic of Gen Z can be found in this interview with Savitt from February.

The money will also go toward future acquisitions. Earlier this year it acquired Plixi, a photo-sharing site, and more recently purchased AddToAny, a content sharing site, which will ultimately become Lockerz Share. Savitt said they have a third acquisition coming in the next few weeks in the social content space.

The company has about 65 employees, and previously raised $30 million in capital.

The new round was led by venture-capital firm August Capital, with participation from Insight Capital and existing investors including Jafco Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Bessemer Venture Partners, said Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik. The round, which Fertik said was oversubscribed, brings the company’s total capital raised to more than $65 million. It was the company’s fourth round of institutional financing, otherwise known as a Series D.

Fertik said Reputation.com decided to raise more money because it is planning a big push into a new line of business. To date, the company has offered several services that help consumers manage their privacy, information and reputation online. Now Reputation.com has also built a dataset business–essentially, the start-up has collected data on individuals and layered that information with its own technologies–which allows the company to come up with assessments on people, among other things.

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The plan is to raise as much as $1 billion at an implied valuation of $10 billion, though The Wall Street Journal, citing people close to the situation, says the offering could raise as much as $2 billion and value the company at $20 billion. The company didn’t give a price range but said it had 562.5 million shares of Class B common stock as of March 31, plus an additional 20.5 million shares of class C stock.

The big number that everyone is going to focus on is the value of the $43 million compensation package going to executive VP and former Myspace CEO Owen Van Natta. That includes nearly $29 million in options and more than $14 million in stock awards. His base salary is $77,000 a year and he earned a $48,000 bonus is 2010.

Behind Van Natta was Steve Chiang, co-president of games, whose total compensation was north of $28 million, including $25.7 million in stock and a $2.9 million bonus. The bonus included more than $600,000 in a relocation bonus, the filing says.

Another big earner is CFO David Wehner, whose package is worth $18 million, $16 million coming from stock awards and $1.8 million paid in a bonus. Half a million of that was a retention bonus.

So who owns what? Founder and CEO Mark Pincus owns a big piece of the action. The filing shows he owns 91.4 million shares, or about 16 percent, of the Class B stock, and 20.5 million shares of the Class C stock. Both classes of stock are convertible into Class A common shares. Assuming the Journal’s sources are right and Zynga is worth $20 billion, then Pincus’s stake should be worth $3.2 billion on the Class B shares alone. (I’m not sure exactly how the Class C shares work into the calculation, but Pincus is the only one who has any, except for a block of 5.3 million shares that were sold to a bunch of mutual funds let by Morgan Stanley.)

Pincus, incidentally, is not only founder and CEO, but also Zynga’s landlord. The filing shows that the company leases office space he owns and paid him $500,000 in 2009 and $400,000 in 2010. The lease puts the current rent on the office space at $28,000 a month. Zynga also reimbursed Pincus $25,000 in 2009 and $120,000 in 2010 for the use of his personal plane, on occasions where he uses it for business travel.

Venture Capital firm Kleiner Perkins holds 11 percent, or slightly more than 64 million, of the Class B common shares. That works out to a stake worth $2.2 billion, assuming the $20 billion valuation.

Other venture funds with a piece of Zynga: Institutional Venture Partners, which owns 34.3 million shares, or 6.1 percent of the equity, worth $1.2 billion. Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures also have 6.1 percent of equity, or another $1.2 billion each. Union Square Ventures has a stake worth 5.5 percent, or $1.1 billion. And Russia’s DST Limited has a stake at 5.8 percent, worth $1.16 billion.

The filing says that Zynga has raised $845 million in three rounds of funding, though the filing makes it look like some rounds were closed in smaller increments. Other funds and individuals known to have invested — but not listed as major shareholders in the filing — include Andreessen Horowitz, the Pilot Group, Tiger Global Management, and Peter Thiel, head of Clarium Capital, according to its Web site.

Reid Hoffman, the former LinkedIn CEO who’s also a Zynga director, has 3.1 million shares, which amounts to less than 1 percent of the equity, though elsewhere in the filing, the value of stock awards as a director is valued at $9.5 million, assuming a grant price of $6.435 per share on the date of the grant.

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Square, the mobile payments provider that is trying to redefine the way consumers spend money and the way merchants charge for it, has secured $100 million in a third round of funding, led by new Square investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with participation from Tiger Global Management.

The extraordinarily large round comes at a $1 billion valuation, the WSJ reports.

I guess it’s fitting that a company whose primary business is accepting credit cards can practically print cash.

Only seven months ago, Square raised $27.5 million round in a second round of funding. Now that looks like pocket change.

Since then, the San Francisco-based company has expanded significantly.

It has quickly evolved beyond its original model, which consisted of handing out magnetic swipe readers that allowed users to accept payments via their mobile phones. That business was met with warm reception by small business owners, ranging from individuals at a garage sale to musicians selling CDs at a concert.

Last month, it continued its vision by rolling out an iPad-based solution for small retailers and merchants who were looking for a way to replace the clunky register on their counter, and also a new way to track inventory and manage a menu.

An accompanying mobile app enables individuals to open a tab at their favorite local merchants, store digital receipts and browse nearby directory and menu listings.

The words that Square’s CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also the head of product at Twitter, said earlier this month at D9 ring more true now than ever.

While on stage, All Things D’s Kara Swisher asked Dorsey: “Want to tell me about your IPO?”

Dorsey answered: “Which one?”

Square might still need every dime it can get to fend off the competition, which includes Google among many others.

As part of the financing, Mary Meeker, a partner at KPCB, will join the company’s board.

Think of it as the Netflix for fashion.

The 18-month-old company lets you rent high-end dresses and accessories for special occasions. It even gives you the prepaid envelope to send it all back when you are done–no dry cleaning necessary.

If you didn’t know better, you would have thought Rent the Runway starred in the hit movie “Bridesmaids.” That’s because there are dresses for most occasions, even a wedding that you aren’t willing to break the bank over.

Rent the Runway was founded by two Harvard Business grads, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, and is announcing today that it has raised $15 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The funding follows a first round by Bain Capital Ventures and Highland Capital totaling $16 million. Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, will join Runway’s board.

On the site, women browse from 25,000 dresses from 95 designers, such as Dolce and Gabbana and Vera Wang. Next, they enter a date for the event and their dress size. After that, you make a reservation, and can even get a back-up size free, so you don’t have to worry about it fitting on the big night.

Rental prices vary depending on the price of the dress. For example, a knee-length dress from Sachin + Babi rents for $125 and retails for $660. But a $2,250 peach-colored dress from Nina Ricci rents more than twice that at $300. In general, the colors and styles seem endless.

The investment will allow Rent the Runway to offer a wider selection of brands and price points. It also will go toward some of the less glamorous work, such as beefing up its back-end systems to handle future growth and pay for new warehouses outside of New York City (coming in January 2012).

If the model doesn’t already sound like the mail-order DVD rental business, the company is willing to draw the comparison itself. In a release, it said it will also be personalizing the shopping experience “using proprietary algorithms rivaling that of Netflix.”

So far, the company claims to already have more than one million members.

Part of its business proposition is also exposing women to new brands.

In that way, Fleiss, the company’s president, says the company can be used as a marketing and customer acquisition channel for its partnering brands. In a release, she said, “Ninety-eight percent of our customers are trying brands they’ve never before worn. We are introducing experiential brand marketing into the fashion industry–not just a onetime transaction–which is the power behind Rent the Runway.”

But not for lack of offers.

In an interview with iFund manager Matt Murphy, he said several of the fund’s 18 companies have received verbal offers during a recent six-week stretch.

And, even more impressive, all of the companies have turned them down.

“I feel like everyone is realizing how massive mobile is, and some Internet companies are thinking that they should snap these up while they can still be leaders,” Murphy said.

The interest in mobile companies is fairly predictable.

Big public companies, like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, have deep pockets capable of buying companies to fill out a particular niche. Likewise, private companies with public-like valuations, like Facebook, Zynga and Groupon, also have plenty of cash and incentive to grow.

But what’s more unusual is the preference by the entrepreneurs to go big and stay independent.

Indeed, the darker moments of the recession appear to be behind us.

IFund companies include Booyah, Pelago and Flipboard. Cooliris, which lets you view photo and video, announced it has raised $9.6 million in funding today. Shazam is another iFund investment, and it could be headed for an IPO in the next year or so.

One of the more public deals was Kleiner Perkins-backed Path, which turned down a $100 million offer from Google and decided to raise nearly $10 million in venture capital to remain an independent mobile social network.

We also hear that Los Angeles-based GOGII, an iFund company, turned down an offer from Zynga, which is averaging about an acquisition every month. Instead, it plans to raise more money and evolve its group-texting platform.

GOGII’s Scott Lahman declined to discuss any negotiations, or whether the offer happened at all, but said he thinks people are waking up to the fact that everything is mobile, and “new platforms introduce new winners.”

The one iFund company that did sell was Ngmoco, which was bought late last year by DeNA for $400 million.

Heck, maybe even think that was a mistake now (although its CEO Neil Young would disagree).

Murphy said the offers the companies are receiving are not low, and are not just from companies seeking mobile talent–the valuations are too high for that, and the teams they are after are too big.

So why is everyone saying no?

“For entrepreneurs, the decision is, ‘what do I want to do for the next few years?’ For passionate entrepreneurs, it’s too early to give up on the dream. If it’s wildly successful, the achievement of going through it all is never replaceable.”

Murphy also says the business is encouraging right now because of the growth rates companies are seeing.

It took Ngmoco more than a year to hit its first $1 million month in revenues. But now Murphy can name multiple game companies that have hit $1 million a month in less than half that time. “If you are the founder, and you are growing revenues 100 to 150 percent year-over-year, why sell today?”

The growth is expedited by the fact that more people are buying smartphones, and the mechanisms are in place to make money.

Almost a year after the iFund was started, Apple enabled in-app commerce, allowing people to buy virtual goods and other items within a game or application. Once it did, it took only a couple of months for companies’ revenues to increase five-fold, he said.

Now the iPhone has come to Verizon Wireless, which expands the market, and Google is coming out with in-app purchasing for Android soon.

Does Murphy mind that these company’s aren’t selling?

No, he said. If they choose to sell, “we may be disappointed.” What gets him excited is when an entrepreneur says, “Hell no.”

VentureWire reports today that Kleiner is taking a small stake in Facebook by buying as much as $38 million of stock from other shareholders at a valuation of $52 billion–a bit higher than the $50 billion price tag that Goldman Sachs and DST Global set when they recently invested $1.5 billion.

Kleiner, which made billions of dollars during the dot-com boom from early bets on Google, Amazon.com and Netscape, missed out on Facebook in 2005, choosing instead to stick with another social-networking site it sunk money into in 2003, Friendster. Since then, Kleiner has had to play catch-up to restore its reputation as one of the premier Internet investors.

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The company has a not-too-shabby 35 million downloads to date of its Wall product, and is the default media gallery for Google’s Android. But now it’s venturing out into the oh-so-hot mobile media-sharing space (see: Instagram, Path, Picplz) with a photo app called LiveShare–for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and the Web–that’s focused on groups.

Cooliris is also announcing today that it’s raised $9.6 million in Series C funding from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (which also recently backed Path), Deutsche Telekom’s T-Venture, DAG Ventures and the Westly Group. The five-year-old Palo Alto-based company has now raised a total of $28.6 million and employs 45 people.

Cooliris’s new LiveShare app helps users create photo streams for a particular event or group of people. Everyone who is invited to a stream can share photos, taken on a phone or elsewhere. Cooliris CEO Soujanya Bhumkar said that he thinks this “hyperpersonalized” approach fits with how people think about sharing: With respect to the four aspects of space, time, interests and relationships.

What does that actually mean? While Path pushes users to identify their closest 50 friends for intimate sharing of personal photos and videos, LiveShare gives users the option of sharing with whoever is appropriate for any context.

There are many alternatives to LiveShare, especially for Apple’s iOS platform. Will users want to install yet another app because of its particular set of nifty features and the flexibility of its sharing options? Perhaps not, but people seem to increasingly utilize tools to segment their online identities, so LiveShare could become part of that trend.

There’s also competition from the social Web giant Facebook, which provides a similar way to filter its Web site based on designated friend groups (though it has not disclosed how popular the product is with users). LiveShare, like many social apps, gets its friend network information from users plugging into Facebook.

But Cooliris isn’t starting from scratch with this product. For instance, the company is making use of its existing relationship with Google, so LiveShare will be incorporated into Android’s Gallery. But with nearly $30 million raised, expectations for LiveShare will be very, very high.

The round was co-led by existing investor Kleiner Perkins and new investor Greylock Partners. Also participating is First Round Capital and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, as well as new investors TriplePoint Capital and Marissa Mayer.

If you haven’t heard of it, San Francisco-based One Kings Lane is an online retailer that sells designer home items, ranging from large oriental rugs to sophisticated and modern side tables, at deep discounts. The offer, which is sent to your inbox on a daily basis, is limited and can sell out in five minutes or five hours.

Typically, the merchandise comes from unsold inventory at luxury or high-end interior designers, which is why it can be sold for so much lower than retail.

The concept is part of a burgeoning new industry that is being called “private sales” or “flash sales.” Companies in the space include Gilt Groupe and Rue La La, which are mainly focused on fashion and clothing.

One Kings Lane has another differentiator: It is not building big warehouses to store all the items it wants to sell, nor is it committing to purchasing any of the inventory in advance. Therefore, the costs are lower because One Kings Lane doesn’t get stuck with any excess inventory.

On the other hand, it doesn’t have complete control over the shipping process, meaning shipments can sometimes take one to two weeks to reach customers.

CEO Doug Mack said he doesn’t expect the model to change with this funding.

The site was founded in late 2008 by Susan Feldman and Alison Pincus (who is married to Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, the social games company that has also raised funding from Kleiner Perkins–albeit on a much larger scale). One Kings Lane launched in the spring of 2009.

Last year was a pivotal time for the company.

Mack, who was hired in June, quickly ramped up the management team, hiring other executives from Hotwire, eBay, Walmart.com and Zappos.

It grew revenues five times over 2009 and boosted its membership base to around one million. It launched an iPhone app in November that generated two to three percent of its sales on the first day. Since then, the app has sustained those revenue levels.

Mack says the home furnishings are top of the line, and are compelling because they’re nothing you’d ever see at Ikea, or even in a department store like Macy’s.

While quality is hard to convey over the Web, he says the company has slowly gained customers’ trust over time. Often, customers will start by purchasing something small, like a candle. From there they might work their way up to a cashmere blanket, and eventually take the plunge into something as large as an armchair or area rug.

One of the more telling statistics that supports this is that 70 to 80 percent of sales are from repeat buyers.

This round of funding follows its Series A, which it raised back in December 2009. That was led by Kleiner Perkins, with Hoffman also participating. Hoffman introduced One Kings Lane to Greylock, where he is also a partner.

Mack says the capital will be used for three things: Accelerating the growth of its membership base, expanding the catalog of merchandise and scaling customer service as its membership grows.

To attract more members beyond the viral growth the company has already experienced, Mack says it will begin its first meaningful Web campaign, addressing its target of middle- to upper-class women, ages 35 to 55, in metro areas.

“In the grand scheme of things, we are only scraping the surface. Anyone with a home or apartment could use one of the things we sell,” Mack said.

In relation to the funding, James Slavet of Greylock will be a board observer, joining Aileen Lee of Kleiner Perkins, who has a board seat,  and Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, who is also an observer.

To be sure, there’s no shortage of clones.

In an industry that is only a year-or-so old, the trend of the past five minutes (or so it seems) is to target a small segment of Groupon’s and LivingSocial’s audience, with an emphasis on families and mothers, who tend to get the credit for being the decision makers of the household.

Today, San Francisco-based Plum District, a daily deal service devoted “to savvy moms and their families,” has raised $8.5 million in a first round of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. General Catalyst Partners also participated.

Beyond the generalists, like Groupon, LivingSocial and smaller companies like Tippr and BuyWithMe, there’s a deal site sprouting up devoted to a specific niche almost every day of the week.

Los Angeles-based FamilyFinds launched a daily deal site in December. The company’s co-founder and president, Brian Barnum, said: “We call the mom the Chief Purchasing Officer for the home….The family vertical is attractive. They tend to be very local.”

The company purchased a small competitor from Chicago to operate FamilyFinds Chicago. It’s already up to 18 employees and has raised $5.75 million in venture capital to help expand to 10 to 20 markets in the next year or so.

On the other side of the country is Wakefield, Mass.-based Eversave, which is part of an 11-year-old online marketing company. Over the past year, it has transitioned from helping big brands, like Kraft and Proctor & Gamble, create online relationships with customers through email and other means.

It’s now offering daily deals on its own, and targeting females ages 25 to 55. It serves 57 markets as part of its bigger online marketing business, and plans to have local deals in up to 15 markets by the end of the quarter. CEO Jere Doyle, said: “We turn down a lot of deals that are younger, or male-oriented. We are looking at the soccer mom. It’s not as urban; we are a surburban play.”

Doyle said there will likely be a shakeout in the broader deals market, with some companies getting purchased and others going out of business, but with room still for successful niches.

“There will be some consolidation. There always is in a booming market, and then you’ll see people focused on niches,” he said. “We are looking at the female audience, but there will be others focused on the inner city, or food or travel. It feels like if you can get a niche under your belt, there’s lots of room to be successful.”

Of course, even in these market niches, companies approach the business differently.

For example, because of Eversave’s marketing background, it’s focused on helping retailers with follow-up campaigns to turn deal seekers into returning customers.

Likewise, Plum District, which is in more than 20 metro areas in the U.S., is trying to differentiate itself by how it sources local deals.

Plum District has a “multi-level marketing sales approach,” meaning that the same moms who are receiving the deals can also act as its sales force (a la Mary Kay). Local moms source deals in their own cities and neighborhoods to find bargains on groceries, family outings, children’s classes, restaurants, spa treatments, fashion and travel. They also help drive awareness of the site by discussing it among their offline network of friends and affiliations.

The incentive for getting good deals is making money. For example, the top Plum District sales mom (which the company calls a “district consultant”) for Newport Beach, serving Orange County, is projected to make six figures if her earnings are annualized.

Plum District said the new funding will allow it to expand into Portland, Dallas and Raleigh-Durham in the coming year. It has also secured serious national interest from Best Buy’s Geek Squad, Drugstore.com and eBags.com, which will provide deals in the coming weeks.

Next week, at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, BoomTown will be interviewing one of my favorite start-up CEOs: Andrew Mason of Groupon.

And what’s my very first question for the adorkable toast of the digital town, who has just collected a billion dollars in funding, giving his hot social buying site a $4.75 billion valuation?

No, it’s not about what Mason is going to do with all that moolah.

Not, it’s not about why Groupon spurned the $6 billion acquisition offer from Google (and the Yahoo one before that).

No, it’s not about what hair care products Mason uses to get his hair looking so much like Justin Bieber’s coif.

Most of all, what I want to know is how he’s going to manage his ridiculously large–and, let’s be honest, very opinionated–investor group, which is made up of a big chunk of the digital arena’s most prominent VC firms, institutional investors and angels.

Consider the list, which is much more diverse than Facebook’s at a similar time in its gestation (and, in fact, it feels a lot like the social networking site’s current investor stampede):

Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group (formerly DST Global), Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis and others.

(How in the world is the ubiquitous Ron Conway not shoved in this pig pile? Or is he?)

And, of course, the inevitable Allen & Company acted as financial advisor for this massive funding, which also feels like a bit of a private pre-IPO.

It will be interesting to see exactly whom among this shareholder group that Mason and the other top Groupon execs will listen to and who will have the most influence over the next year.

None of the new moneybags got a board seat, which is probably a good thing. As most entrepreneurs know all too well, investors can be a tricky thing–at once helpful and then not so much.

Mason, a clearly gifted exec, certainly has his hands full now, managing expectations for the fast-growing company, as well as the business itself.

Let’s hope that now that this surreal investor sideshow circus is over, that Groupon’s precious time can be focused on just that.