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.

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.

That’s not great, but it’s a marked improvement from the 2.77 the Index registered in the fourth quarter–its lowest point in five years. Why the sudden change? “While concern over the state of the national and global economy and financial system remains, a sense of foreboding appears to be giving way to an expectation of eventual, if slow, recovery in the high-growth venture environment,” Mark Cannice, the author of the survey explains. “This mustard seed of hope appears to be taking sprout among a majority of the venture capitalist respondents who provided their insight to the March 2009 survey. And it is nurtured by venture capitalists’ faith in the resilience of entrepreneurs to build efficient enterprises with disruptive solutions, more modest expectations for growth and valuations, and the early stages of a stabilization in the financial system.”

In short, no reason at all. The economy is still deteriorating, perhaps less quickly than it has been, but deteriorating nonetheless. And venture investment is still declining. But there’s a sense that things are going to get better. And they surely will. Certainly, it’s not too difficult to do better than no IPOs two quarters running. And, as Sandy Miller of Institutional Venture Partners reasons, an economic environment like the one we’re in often gives rise to disruptive new technologies. “While the environment seems gloomy with no end in sight we need to remember that some of the best companies have been founded and built during bleak times,” he said. True entrepreneurs will continue to find ways of moving their ideas forward. From a venture investor standpoint 2009 and 2010 should be an attractive environment for new investments though there will be little liquidity for existing investments.”

As Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz often notes, the best time to invest is often “when people are cowering under their desks.”

[Image Credit: VC Wear]

It loses a bit of its luster, though, when that healthy optimism and patient money are themselves cowering under the desk. And make no mistake, they are cowering under the desk. VC confidence at its lowest point in the five years after its sixth consecutive quarterly decline, according to the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index. Sequoia recently called an emergency meeting of its portfolio companies to warn them of what one partner said could be at least a 15-year downward cycle (seriously?). Michael Moritz is out telling the Financial Times that “many of start-ups that emerged in the recent start-up boom will end up ‘spattered on windshields and radiator grills and be forgotten.’” Just one venture-backed company, Rackspace Hosting, has gone public in the past nine months. And now the National Venture Capital Association’s annual survey forecasts a 10 percent decline in venture investment for 2009. Of the 400 venture capitalists surveyed by the NVCA…

• 92 percent said they expect a slowdown in investing in 2009
• 62 percent said they expect investment will decline more than 10 percent and fall below $27 billion in 2009
• 60 percent said they expect a decline in seed investment and 64 percent said they expect a decline in early stage investments
• 96 percent of venture capitalist said VC firms will not be able to raise money for investment in 2009

“2009 will be a year of anticipation for the venture capital industry as the economic turmoil will engender a fair amount of Darwinian change,” NVCA President Mark Heesen said in a statement. “The recession and shuttered IPO market will place tremendous pressure on portfolio companies to tighten their belts and re-tool where necessary. We will likely see a marked slowdown of new investments as venture capitalists turn their attention to supporting these existing companies.”

Today, a panoply of prominent tech and Internet leaders is taking a very public stand against a controversial initiative before California voters, which would eliminate the current legal right of same-sex couples to marry.

Forming a group and taking out a full-page ad in the San Jose Mercury News tomorrow, the execs hope to convince voters to reject Proposition 8, which is titled “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.”

Silicon Valley has had a long history of supporting gay rights. And recently, Google (GOOG) Co-Founder Sergey Brin has made a strong statement opposing Proposition 8, while Apple (AAPL) gave $100,000 to help defeat it.

The honorary co-chairs of “Silicon Valley Leaders Say NO on Proposition 8″ include: Brin; Bill Campbell, Chairman, Intuit; David Filo, Founder, Yahoo; Chuck Geschke, Founder and Chairman, Adobe Systems; John Morgridge, Former CEO and Chairman, Cisco Systems; Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman, eBay; Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook; Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google; and Jerry Yang, Founder, Yahoo.

In a statement in a press release set to go out this morning, Yang said: “Silicon Valley has always been an example for the rest of the country of how diversity and openness help to drive innovation and value creation. This divisive measure is the antithesis of those values that make Silicon Valley so unique.”

An ad the group–which also includes star venture capitalist Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital, as well as Palm Founders Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins, and many others–is putting out tomorrow in the Mercury News reads:

Silicon Valley Leaders Urge You to Stand for Equality.
Vote No on Proposition 8.

As Silicon Valley leaders, we are committed to equality and fairness. We are opposed to Proposition 8 because it would change our state constitution to take away rights from one group of people. It would set our state, and our country, back in the fight for fundamental fairness and equal rights.

Please join us by reaching out to friends and neighbors and asking them to stand for fairness: Vote No on Proposition 8 on November 4th.”

(The ad and a longer list of tech leaders opposing Proposition 8 is below.)

If passed by a majority of voters, the California Constitution would be amended to include a new section stating “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court held that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry under the state’s constitution.

Former California State Controller and former exec at eBay Steve Westly noted that his own interracial marriage was once illegal, which is one of the reasons he was opposing Propostition 8.

“It really is the civil rights issue of the day … people stood up and fought for people like me and now it is time to stand up for others,” said Westly, who was an early supporter of gay marriage and is said to be eyeing a run for governor of the state. “While this is a polarizing issue, it is mind-boggling to me not to support the right of any two adults who love each other to marry.”

One thing is certain–the issue is indeed polarizing. Currently, the vote on Proposition 8 is very close, and a huge amount of money–more than $60 million–has been spent by both sides in the battle, which is considered one of the most contentious and high-profile in the nation.

Here is the ad (click on the image to make it larger):

LEADERS (partial list):
Deborah Barber, Principal, Jackson Hole Group
John Battelle, Chairman and CEO, Federated Media
Larry Birenbaum, Former Senior Vice President, Cisco Systems
Lorna Borenstein, President, Move
Larry Brilliant, Executive Director, Google.org
Owen Byrd, President, Byrd Development
John Chisholm, Chairman and CEO, CustomerSat
Barry Cinnamon, CEO, Akeena Solar
Tod Cohen, Director of Government Affairs, eBay
LaDoris Cordell, Administrator, Stanford University
Sue Decker, President, Yahoo!
Jack Dorsey, Chairman, Twitter
David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development & Chief Legal Officer, Google
Donna Dubinsky, CEO, Numenta
Alan Eustace, SVP, Engineering and Research, Google
Naomi Fine, President & CEO, Pro-Tec Data
Rachel Glaser COO/CFO, Reunion.com
Carl Guardino, President and CEO, Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Andre Haddad, CEO, Shopping.com
Jeff Hawkins, co-Founder Palm, Handspring, and Numenta
David Karnstedt, Investor
Scott Kaspick, Managing Director, Kaspick & Co.
Steve Kirsch, Serial Entrepreneur
John Koza, CEO, Third Millennium
Ross LaJeunesse, Head of State Policy Western US, Google
Gary Lauder, Managing Partner, Lauder Partners Venture Capital
Laura Lauder, General Partner, Lauder Partners Venture Capital
Len Lehman, Investor
John Luongo, Former CEO, Vantive Corporation
Roger McNamee, Managing Director & co-Founder, Elevation Partners
Ken McNeely, President, AT&T California
Michael Moritz, Partner, Sequoia Capital
Susan Packard Orr, CEO, Telosa Software
Randy Pond, Executive Vice President, Cisco Systems
Amy Rao, Founder & CEO, Integrated Archive Systems
Jana Rich, Managing Director, Russell Reynolds
Miriam Rivera, Former Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Google
Dan Rosensweig, Investor
Dan Rubin, Partner, Alloy Ventures
Hilary Schneider, Executive Vice President US Region, Yahoo
Len Shustek, Chairman, Computer History Museum
Jeff Skoll, Former President, eBay Inc.
Stephanie Tilenius, SVP, eBay North America
Joy Weiss, President and CEO, Dust Networks
Steve Westly, former California State Controller & former SVP eBay
Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter

[UPDATED on 11/05/08] In the interest of full disclosure, I am obviously not a supporter of Proposition 8. And, after I wrote this piece and hours before it passed last night, I got married in California under its recent same-sex marriage law, which the initiative has now overturned. It is still legally unclear what that will mean for people like me who married before Proposition 8 was passed, as it is not retroactive; as of now, the marriages remain valid. In any case, please see this disclosure related to me here.

As you will see, it is quite the Bubblefest, with all sorts of geeky bonhomie and aspiring hopefulness of also landing a $15 billion valuation, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg noted he was about to do onstage yesterday.

Other luminaries onstage yesterday included Google exec Marissa Mayer, Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis and super-VC Mike Moritz. Today’s slate: Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, eBay’s Meg Whitman, Philippe Dauman of Viacom and other various and sundry Web poo-bahs.

Of course, most of the action–as always–takes place in the halls of the Palace Hotel, where the schmooze factor is always ratcheted up to 11. There’s nothing a bunch of nerds likes to do more than debate each other over code and funding and which start-up is about to tank (not theirs!).

Here’s a video of the scene from Day 1:

Though I jokingly congratulated Calacanis on the investment from a “toddler VC,” because of the 33-year-old Botha’s freshly-scrubbed and youthful looks, I’d be pretty pleased if my two sons–2 and 5 years old–could be involved in a multibillion deal after only a few years on the job.

“You have to put yourself in a position to be lucky,” said the South African-born Botha over lunch at the Sundeck on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley recently.

Here’s a video I did of my visit with Botha, where I both incorrectly note the address of Sequoia and willfully refuse any effort at pronouncing his name with any grace:

Botha, who is the clear protege of Silicon Valley uber-VC Mike Moritz of Sequoia (of Yahoo and Google fame), seems to be awfully good at that, after scoring a big win for the firm when he turned a $12 million investment in YouTube into a $450 million windfall after the online video site was sold last year to Google for $1.65 billion.

Botha’s previous stint at PayPal (where he met the team that later put together YouTube), a job he got to earn money while at Stanford Business School, ended with him being CFO at the time of its 2002 IPO. It was soon sold for another $1.5 billion to eBay.

His background is actually more in math, with his first job as an actuary. Botha later became a consultant, before he came to Silicon Valley to get his MBA from Stanford.

While many mistakenly think he is related to former hard-line South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha, he actually is the grandson of a well-known former foreign minister Pik Botha, a liberal politician at a time of not-very-liberal policies related to apartheid.

He arrived at Sequoia after PayPal, although he noted that he had no experience in being a VC, and he has been intent on finding companies that “solve consumer problems.”

Currently, he is invested in another online video start-up, the high-profile Joost, as well as instant-messaging site Meebo and shoe and accessory online retailer Zappos.com.

He is also foraging around in the world of “bioinformatics,” which he thinks is a promising new arena marrying Web and medical technologies.

First, Heidi Roizen–at whose luxe house in Atherton, Calif., the event took place–was also honored. Roizen’s close friend and onetime VC Ann Winblad gave her the award, and Roizen gave a gracious speech about her house, the award and the need for community and connection.

It was good she got an award, too, as I made a joke onstage right before about the diversity of the honorees this year (four middle-aged white guys whose differentiating elements were blazer colors and facial hair) and throughout the awards’ 10-year history. Most of the nearly five dozen SDForum honorees overall have been men, which is no surprise in the tech industry.

But the accomplished women are: Donna Dubinsky and Esther Dyson (1998); Ann Winblad and Kaye Caldwell (1999); Cate Muther (2001); Sandra Kurtzig (2002); JoMei Chang (2003); Carol Bartz and Carly Fiorina (2005).

Second, Mike Moritz wasn’t quite as flat as some reports noted, such as here (and note to Valleywag: I am not kissing up to the uber-VC).

His speech was too short, but he did get a good line off about his more nearsighted qualities as an investor, noting some of his bad choices by saying it took “a lot of vision to fund Webvan, PlanetRx, eToys and RedEnvelope.”

And it was nice that wireless legend Craig McCaw was introduced by his wife, Susan, who is also a big wheel in her own right as U.S. ambassador to Austria. She was diplomatically gracious–as in no really juicy stories–about McCaw, who is unusually sassy compared to a lot of tech figures.

And games exec Trip Hawkins got off two good ones. First, he noted perfectly deadpan that the disaster at his once-hyped 3DO “enhanced my faith in God.”

And he poked fun at former boss Steve Jobs, telling a story about how the computing legend asked him one day: “You’ve never taken LSD before, have you?” Then, without a pause, Jobs added, “No, I didn’t think so…”

Lastly, as the clever Tom Foremski writes about the event in this post on his great blog, Silicon Valley Watcher, that I “looked very rock star, arriving in black shades and jeans, in a rebellious disregard for the smart attire suggested for the event.”

Actually, Tom, if I am what passes for glamorous in Silicon Valley, we are all in trouble. And it was totally unplanned.

I had just come back directly from a trip to Los Angeles, where I stayed out too late at the Joost party there Tuesday, where I learned about some interesting new content initiatives for the online video site from budding entrepreneurs, and then elsewhere (this is L.A. after all–hence the much-needed sunglasses). I also simply forgot to pack my power suit, because I am really absentminded.

Also here is another piece on the event from Dean Takahashi of the San Jose Mercury News.

And here’s one very short video snippet I left out of Walt, Craig and Susan McCaw and former Microsoft resident brain Nathan Myrvold yukking it up, with me not being able to get a word in edgewise (which can, I realize, be seen as a good thing).

The not-for-profit group for-profit gave out its yearly awards to four tech figures, including The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg, who is also my partner in the D conference and the AllThingsD.com site, and, more important, my close friend. I was there to introduce him.

Other recipients were big tech players including wireless legend Craig McCaw (now running Eagle River Investments and Clearwire); game pioneer Trip Hawkins, now CEO of Digital Chocolate; and supercharged venture capitalist Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital.

There were cocktails, food and high-level schmoozery, along with the expected speeches and handing out of heavy glass awards. This was no Oscars, of course, given the distinct lack of evening gowns and no red carpet–the closest thing to glamor were discussions about the functionality of the iPod.

Here is my longish video of the event, with some snippets of speeches by Hawkins, McCaw, Moritz and Walt at the end: