AllThingsD » venture capitalist

Accel's Breyer Leads Forbes Midas List of Top Tech Investors Again, While Kleiner's Doerr Leads in Media Scrutiny

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:12:13 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Money Shot: Kara Swisher on Instagram's Billion-Dollar Ride in Vanity Fair

Kara Swisher — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:04:25 +0000

There’s no picture of the moment when everything changed for Kevin Systrom. But if there were, it would look something like this: A lanky, very tall, dark-haired man in his late 20s sits on a bench at the Caltrain commuter station in Palo Alto, Calif. A sepia tone and weathered patina might underscore the mood of weighty contemplation.

It was early April of last year, and Systrom was waiting for his business partner, Mike Krieger, to arrive from San Francisco. Systrom had just left Mark Zuckerberg’s nearby house and was still digesting the offer that the Facebook founder and CEO had made him: To buy Instagram, the photo-sharing app that Systrom and Krieger had launched just 18 months before. The price Zuckerberg offered was $1 billion — $300 million in cash and the rest in Facebook stock, an especially generous-seeming deal on the eve of his company’s much-anticipated initial public offering.

The offer was even more impressive given Instagram’s size and age. At the time, it had just 13 employees, operating out of a cramped space in the South Park section of San Francisco. Still, the small crew had managed to attract 30 million Apple iPhone users in just a year and a half by offering a service that allowed a person to quickly upload, prettify through the use of filters and publish images to the Web for friends to see. A version for Google’s Android mobile operating system had launched the week before, attracting another million users in a single day.

What’s more, although the app generated no revenue, it had attracted so much attention from venture capitalists that the startup had nearly closed an impressive new round of funding at a wildly high valuation of $500 million. Zuckerberg had just doubled that, leaving Systrom with a lot to think about on that train-station bench.

Click. If there ever was a money shot to take for Instagram and Systrom, that was it.

(Photo by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson, used with permission by Vanity Fair)

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

As Expected, Former Square COO Rabois Joins Khosla Ventures

Kara Swisher — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:00:02 +0000

As I previously reported was likely, former Square COO Keith Rabois will be joining Khosla Ventures as a venture capitalist.

The well-known entrepreneur left the prominent San Francisco-based payments company in the midst of unproven allegations of personal misconduct a month ago.

Rabois, who will start in March, has a lot of informal investing experience as a longtime angel, and is on many public boards, such as Yelp and Xoom, but for the most part, he has played the No. 2 to a string of high-profile entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel at PayPal, Max Levchin at Slide and, most recently, Jack Dorsey at Square.

And, in fact, Rabois was considering another job like that, deciding between Khosla and a top job at Airbnb, the San Francisco online rentals startup.

But he chose Khosla, he said in a blog post, because he has long wanted to formalize his interest in investing.

Wrote Rabois: “I moved to Silicon Valley in 2000, joining a bunch of misfits who had some provocative ideas about how the world should work. Three years later, I started investing to enable other driven people to chase their dreams. I quickly discovered that the more companies I invested in, the more brilliant and inspirational new people I could encourage. As a result, for twelve years I harboured dreams of becoming a VC who did this every day for a long time.”

The choice of two very attractive alternatives is in stark contrast to the more tense situation for Rabois just a month ago, after accusations of sexual harassment arose related to a relationship he had with a Square employee.

Rabois has denied the allegations aimed at him and at the San Francisco payments company, which have not yet turned into a lawsuit, and has thus far been backed by Square. Rabois called the accusations by the employee “fiction” and a “shakedown.”

That said, due to the controversy around the serious workplace issue, he stepped down from his job as COO.

Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey endorsed the move in a statement:

“I couldn’t be more excited to see two of the top entrepreneurs I know, join forces at Khosla Ventures to support and coach the next generation of entrepreneurs the world over,” Dorsey said.

Here’s the official press release from Khosla:

Keith Rabois Joins the Khosla Ventures Team

Angel investor, Internet Entrepreneur and Hands-On Advisor
Brings His Experience to Khosla’s Broad Portfolio of Companies

MENLO PARK, Calif., February 26, 2013 — Khosla Ventures, a venture assistance firm that focuses on sustainability and technology startups, announced today that Keith Rabois, a former PayPal, LinkedIn and Slide executive, will join the firm. Most recently Keith was chief operating officer at Square, a Khosla Ventures portfolio company, where he oversaw all aspects of business operations, including marketing, communications, business development, distribution, human resources and risk management.

While serving in executive roles, he has also developed a distinguished track record angel investing in technology companies, such as YouTube, Yammer, Airbnb, LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Quora, Palantir, and Eventbrite.

He will begin his new role at Khosla in March 2013.

“I love Khosla Ventures’ vision and passion for assisting the next generation of entrepreneurs,” said Keith Rabois. “The Khosla team encourages entrepreneurs to be bold. And the team’s legendary work ethic ensures that entrepreneurs will receive the best possible assistance.”

“We are thrilled to have Keith join us as he has shown himself to be a great investor, but even more importantly he’s a true advisor. Our extensive conversations with entrepreneurs repeatedly elicited comments like, ‘he asks the toughest questions’, ‘he pushes me the most and makes me think’, ‘he is always there when I need help’, ‘he is the most valuable among all my board members and advisors’, ‘he can imagine the future’,” said Vinod Khosla, founding partner of Khosla Ventures. “Our belief in bringing the best venture assistance to our companies is why we’re very excited about the newest addition to the Khosla Ventures team. He truly has earned the right to advise companies.”

Jack Dorsey, the CEO and founder of Square added, “I couldn’t be more excited to see two of the top entrepreneurs I know, join forces at Khosla Ventures to support and coach the next generation of entrepreneurs the world over.”

Keith currently holds board roles at Xoom (NASDAQ: XOOM), since June 2003, and Yelp (NYSE: YELP), since September 2005.

Go West, Young Geek: Chris Dixon on Why He Became a Silicon Valley VC at Andreessen Horowitz, and More! (Video)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:32:05 +0000

In mid-November, longtime entrepreneur, active angel investor, iconoclastic blogger and hardcore New Yorker Chris Dixon told the tech world something it least expected — that he had taken a job as a venture capitalist at one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful firms, Andreessen Horowitz.

Well, he’s arrived finally, and moved himself to San Francisco and his office to Sand Hill Road for real — even though he is still keeping his apartment back East.

It’s been a long and winding road to here for Dixon, who was CEO and co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, as well as recommendations engine Hunch, which was bought by eBay a year ago.

He is one of the founding members of Founder Collective, an East Coast-based seed-stage venture firm run by entrepreneurs, making a lot of investments in companies such as Skype, Invite Media and OMGPOP. Previously, he programmed financial algorithms at a high-speed options trading firm, and has also worked at Bessemer Venture Partners.

And, perhaps most intriguingly, Dixon has also blogged a lot about what needs fixing in the VC industry (a lot, according to him).

Yesterday, I motored the Mazda 5 down to Andreessen Horowitz’s office to talk about the move with the always clever Dixon, who is hoping to focus on a range of consumer-focused investments, and perhaps cast his freshly monied net more widely.

Here’s the video of the interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Greg McAdoo Exits Sequoia Capital

Kara Swisher — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 20:00:39 +0000

Longtime Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Greg McAdoo will be leaving the Silicon Valley firm. McAdoo, who will stay aboard for a few more months to smooth the transition, has made a number of significant investments as a VC over the years, including in Airbnb, DailyBooth and Y Combinator. Said Sequoia’s Doug Leone: “We’re grateful for Greg’s many contributions to Sequoia over the last 12 years. His wikipedic knowledge, quick wit, and uncanny ability to connect seemingly unrelated ideas made him a joy to work with.”

Mayer's 10X Challenge: Yahoo's Homepage, Mail and Search Traffic Show Significant Year-Over-Year Declines

Kara Swisher — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:45:18 +0000

This week in Las Vegas, the new management team running Yahoo — including CEO Marissa Mayer — is at International CES to schmooze with big advertisers and convince them that Yahoo is the place to put large chunks of their marketing budgets.

One of the longtime selling points of the company is the sheer size of its audience, especially for the key money-making parts of the site — the homepage, Yahoo Mail and search.

But private stats from comScore show that those three areas have continued their longtime decline over the last year, in some cases dropping significantly. In November and December, for example, compared to the same two months a year ago, U.S. search was down 28 percent and 24 percent respectively, while mail was down 16 percent and 12 percent.

This matters a great deal, since the troika of homepage, mail and search have been the critical driver of the Yahoo value ecosystem for advertisers.

The impact of those drops is felt all over Yahoo, whose music, movie, games and travel site have also seen massive drop-offs in traffic year over year in those same months.

Stopping the decline is critical for Yahoo, since Mayer herself has underscored the need for size in her pushing for new businesses at Yahoo that are 100 million users in size and/or have revenue prospects of at least $100 million.

While this is a lofty vision, the reality of traffic falloffs on key properties is a vexing issue, especially since they remain its main source of revenue and also an important element in launching future products Mayer is promising will turbocharge the company.

It’s not that Yahoo is not huge, especially compared to most sites on the Web.

As one of the top Internet brands, according to a recent Nielsen report, the average number of total monthly unique visitors for the longtime Silicon Valley Internet company in 2012 was 141.6 million, No. 3 behind Google and Facebook in the U.S. market. Similar rankings were reported by comScore, which placed Yahoo at the No. 2 spot after Google, with 171.4 million monthly visitors in November.

But, for many years, traffic to those important consumer destinations of Yahoo has been on a clear and unstopping decline, statistics (usually from comScore) that the company nonetheless always dutifully puts in its earnings slides — see below — for investors to get some idea of the major and vexing issues facing the company.

That was suddenly ended in the last quarter with the engagement slide removed from Yahoo’s public deck entirely. Not all companies include such stats, so when I inquired as to why the company had made the change, Yahoo PR never returned my phone call.

But it’s not hard to guess the reason for the shift — the numbers were not good and they called more attention to Yahoo’s glaring challenge, which is getting users reengaged with its products by creating what Mayer has dubbed several times “delightful” experiences.

According to numerous sources, that has also been the case within the company too, with the new regime restricting an internal transparency initiative pushed by former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving that shared product performance numbers with the top 100 leaders at Yahoo.

And while it’s an interesting strategic choice, several sources inside the company this week urged me to get ahold of increasingly worrisome numbers from comScore — available to its private clients — comparing November 2011 to November 2012 and also December 2011 to December 2012 at home and work in the U.S.

So I did, getting the same stats from numerous sources — numbers that a spokesman for comScore confirmed were correct.

And, as promised, they are worrisome indeed.

In November 2012, compared to November 2011, the monthly unique visitors to the homepage declined 17 percent to 91.8 million from 110.9 million; Yahoo Mail dropped 16 percent (from 92 million to 77.7 million); and Yahoo search dropped 28 percent (from 93.3 million to 66.9 million).

Also off significantly for all three areas, often by one-third, were a plethora of other stats: Percentage of reach, total minutes, total page views, total visits and more.

One of the only bright spots for Yahoo was the relatively small Flickr sites, which were up 37 percent — 26.7 million versus 19.4 million — in unique monthly visitors year over year. The photo-sharing site — which has been getting a much-needed refresh — was also up in all other stats.

But Flickr — which Mayer (pictured here) has laudably touted and supported after years of inexplicable neglect — is not a money-maker for Yahoo, even if its return does burnish the company’s tech and innovation cred.

In December 2011 to December 2012, the homepage was more stable, gaining four percent in monthly uniques from 109.4 million to 114.2 million, but with other key stats both rising and falling. Total visits were up 14 percent, for example, while average minutes per visit was down 13.6 percent.

But the trouble for mail or search continued, off 12 percent (89.9 million to 78.7 million) and 24 percent (88.7 million to 67.4 million) respectively in monthly uniques, with similarly major declines in all other stats.

Mail recently got a refresh too under Mayer, despite some recent security glitches, so new stats will show if that will help stem the declines. Search is another story all together, with Yahoo in what can only be described as a dysfunctional partnership with Microsoft that numerous sources tell me Mayer is seeking to end.

The homepage, too, is undergoing a redo, with a design that has a decidedly more mobile and social feel, and pushing an ethos of Yahoo becoming a hub for content discovery. It is hoped the new look will boost traffic relatively quickly from its current downward trajectory.

To be fair, there can be lots and lots of reasons for these declines, although most of Yahoo’s competitors are, at worse, seeing a flattening of growth and not outright declines.

And sometimes Internet sites complain that services like comScore undercount, although Yahoo had previously used the firm in its public documents. More to the point, as multiple sources within the company note, the stats are directionally correct in that they closely track with internal Yahoo numbers.

Which is to say, traffic is going down rather than growing. That is clearly why Mayer has loudly stressed mobile since arriving at Yahoo, an area not included in these numbers that many sources said has strong growth to about 70 million monthly unique visitors via its apps and mobile-enabled Web offerings.

But unlike the homepage, mail and search — which push and pull traffic all over Yahoo and are responsible for most of its current monetization — mobile also makes very little money now. And Yahoo — unlike Facebook, which recently did — does not break out mobile results.

So, it will be interesting to see if the company does so when it reports fourth-quarter earnings on January 28 and also if it says anything about continued traffic declines of its traditional Web business in the period and the impact on revenue.

Still, there are lots of ways to counter declining or flat revenues, even with declining traffic — via cost cuts, efficiencies, charging more and selling assets (as Yahoo did in the last quarter). And Yahoo has ably managed to keep its operating margins growing over the years, despite both the declines in traffic and moribund growth in its revenue.

But the real and only fix is the drastic fix to existing tentpoles Yahoo has and the creation or acquisition of products that excite consumers and, therefore, advertisers.

It’s not an easy thing, of course, as well-known venture capitalist Ben Horowitz recently wrote in his blog about the need to focus on products over building and improving culture — one of Mayer’s other big initiatives at Yahoo.

Wrote Horowitz in what I consider one of the clearest articulations of what it takes to win for startups, as well as big companies like Yahoo:

“The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter. The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it’s possible to do something 10X better, it’s also possible that you won’t be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before somebody else does.”

If you want to take a gander, here are some more of those old Yahoo quarterly engagement slides, which were recently eliminated from its presentations:

(Note: I reached out to Yahoo’s outside PR firm — since they do respond to queries — and also some company execs to get a comment on this story, but so far there has been none.)

"Something Ventured" Set to Air in January: The Risky Dudes Who Wrote the Checks That Made Silicon Valley

Kara Swisher — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:17:58 +0000

“Something Ventured: Risk, Reward, and the Original Venture Capitalists” is a documentary that celebrates — pretty much without a lot of criticism — the very first venture capitalists who were behind the tech giants launching companies like Apple, Intel, Cisco, Atari and Genentech.

Starting in January, “Something Ventured” is being aired on public television stations nationwide.

The film — which premiered at SXSW last year — focuses on the key VCs, including investor Arthur Rock, Kleiner Perkins’ Tom Perkins, Sequoia Capital’s Don Valentine and New Enterprise Associate’s Dick Kramlich. It’s full of great stories from them and others, such as remembering the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’s proclivity to not worry too much about showering.

And there are some tasty quotes, too:

Perkins: “I don’t know how to write a business plan. I can only tell you how we read them. We start at the back, and if the numbers are big, we look at the front to see what kind of business it is.”

Rock: “Steve Jobs is a national treasure. He is so visionary, and so bright. I had to fire him, though.”

Valentine: “I’m not interested in entrepreneurs who will do it our way. I’m not interested in entrepreneurs who think there’s a dress code. I’m interested in entrepreneurs who have a vision of doing something consequential –preferably that becomes big.”

And from Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, where Jobs once worked: “They (Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak) offered a third of Apple Computer for $50,000, and I said, ‘Gee, I don’t think so.’ I could have owned a third of Apple Computer for $50,000. Big mistake.”

Indeed.

Here’s the trailer.

Viral Video: Rolling First Round Style? Call Them Maybe.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:54:13 +0000

Here’s the annual holiday video lunacy from First Round Capital, which is always fun to watch, especially if it’s super awkward to see venture capitalists cavorting all around in costume.

And cavort they do in this mash-up of PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen, which are the two infectious musical hits of 2012.

(Last year, it was Rebecca Black’s “Friday” as the muse. Forgot her? Me too!)

First Round features their companies in its yearly video effort, using the song and dance.

Enjoy:

Demand A Plan: Tech Leaders Sign On to Mayors' Effort to End Gun Violence

Kara Swisher — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:35:53 +0000

This morning, a large group of Silicon Valley and New York tech leaders signed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times for Demand A Plan, a mayor’s organization pressing for gun safety in the wake of the recent tragic school shooting in Connecticut.

“It’s Time. Demand a Plan to End Gun Violence,” reads the ad, which was signed by a plethora of major digital players.

They include, in part: Lerer Venture’s Ken Lerer (who organized the effort); SV Angel’s Ron Conway, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Skype President Tony Bates, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, adviser Bill Campbell, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, Findery’s Caterina Fake, Emerson Collective’s Laurene Jobs, Code Advisors’ Quincy Smith, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Zuckerberg Media’s Randi Zuckerberg.

In addition, there is a large-scale social media effort under way for Demand a Plan, which signee and venture capitalist Fred Wilson likens on his blog to other Internet-wide campaigns.

“Like the PIPA/SOPA efforts last year, this effort is diverse, distributed, chaotic, and hopefully effective and powerful,” he wrote.

Here’s the ad itself:

Lolly Wolly Doodle's Brandi Temple Talks Facebook-Fueled, Real-Time Retail

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:30:36 +0000

When you have a name like Lolly Wolly Doodle, it’s hard not to get some kind of attention.

And, in fact, the online retailer of personalized, monogrammed children’s clothing has gotten a lot of it, mostly on Facebook, in what is one of the more successful efforts to take advantage of e-commerce on the social networking platform.

The company was founded by a North Carolina stay-at-home mom, Brandi Temple, who sewed clothes for her four kids. She started to branch out locally with simple A-line dresses for girls, then moved online at eBay and elsewhere, eventually almost primarily using a system on Facebook to sell her goods.

Essentially, Temple is doing a modified version of a flash sale, but with just-in-time retail elements. Customers fan the Lolly Wolly Doodle site, which puts daily sales alerts into the news feed. Once a new item comes up, the buyer comments on it with the size, the monogram desired and an email. The first people to comment get the item and pay for it immediately.

Only then is it actually made, in a kind of real-time social cycle. Unlike most retail, which is made and then sold, Lolly Wolly Doodle knows just how much demand is out there, and improves it with easy personalization.

It does not always work out on any individual item, but the fans have added up to 400,000, as have sales. With that success, Temple has raised $1.7 million in funding.

She was out in San Francisco recently, considering more investment to expand to new categories and improve on distribution arenas such as Pinterest, although she is definitely wary of taking too much money from venture capitalists for something that is already working well.

In other words, Temple is one sharp cookie.

You can hear all about it in the video interview I did below, explaining how she has turned shoulder bows and ruffles into an online phenom:

[ See post to watch video ]

Facebook's Sandberg Has Penned "Lean In" -- A Book on Women and Leadership -- Set for 2013 Publication

Kara Swisher — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:00:33 +0000

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has written a book on challenges facing women in the workplace that is expected to be published next year by Knopf.

Titled “Lean In,” the book is not a memoir, but a “call to action” with a lot of research and data, laced with anecdotes of the experience of one of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile female executives and also many other women.

“I believe that the world would be a better place if half our institutions were run by women, and half our homes were run by men,” said Sandberg in an email to me earlier this week. “The book contains practical advice for women — and the men who want to help them — on how to lean in and close the gap.”

Juggling leadership roles and family has been a central topic of Sandberg’s in numerous speeches she has given in recent years.

Among the key themes she has outlined — most prominently in a TEDTalk in 2010, which is embedded below — is the lack of progress for women in top positions and the loss to society when half the population holds only one-fifth of the top jobs across key industries.

The title comes from her advice in these speeches for women to lean in to their work rather than lean back, as many tend to do for a variety of reasons at key points in their careers.

In the speeches, Sandberg — who worked in a high-ranking job at Google and also did a stint in government at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration — also advised women not to “leave before you leave” a job.

In one speech, she said:

“So, my heartfelt message is: Don’t leave before you leave. Don’t lean back, lean in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the day you have to make a decision. That’s the only way to ensure you even have a decision to make.”

The book’s publication, largely due to Sandberg’s prominence, is likely to reignite a heated debate over the longstanding issue about women and work. That includes in tech, where there are still a paucity of female CEOs, board members and venture capitalists.

Speaking of debate, publishing such a book — or being seen as doing anything not related directly to Facebook’s business — at such a dicey time for the company is sure to attract some negative attention for Sandberg and possibly Facebook.

That’s especially true after its botched public offering, which has been followed by a deep drop in the stock to half its initial IPO price and worries about its core business growth.

To be fair, the ideas in “Lean In” have been developed over many years and Sandberg has long noted that the discussion of these issues is too important to wait.

Sandberg said she finished the book well before Facebook’s recent tumultuous IPO and on her own time.

She added that she would eventually promote it on her own vacation time, too, and that all her profits will go to charities that support women. But Sandberg did not volunteer the advance she got paid for “Lean In.”

Along with that possible (and inevitable) why-aren’t-you-fixing-the-stock criticism, penning such a book might also further encourage persistent rumors that Sandberg will eventually leave Facebook, including to pursue a political office.

Not true, said Sandberg, who said firmly that she plans to stay put at Facebook as the No. 2 exec to co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He has apparently known about the book project since its beginning and has encouraged it.

To complete the book — which is now being edited — Sandberg worked with a full-time writer, Nell Scovell, as well as a researcher, Marianne Cooper.

Scovell, a journalist and longtime television writer in Hollywood, started helping Sandberg with her speeches about two years ago. Cooper is a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and is the author of the forthcoming University of California Press book, “Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times.”

Until the book is out, here’s a taste of what Sandberg has had to say so far on women and leadership at both her TEDTalk in December of 2010 and also at a commencement speech at Barnard College last May:

Silicon Snowbank: A New Incubator for Buffalo to Give Local Start-Ups a Different Set of Wings

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:58:25 +0000

Actually, if truth be told, Buffalo, N.Y., is one of the loveliest places to visit in the summer, especially if you’re lucky enough to be right next to majestic Lake Erie.

And that is where the Z80 Labs will have its grand opening today in the Queen City, home of chicken wings and lots and lots of snow, by launching its first start-up, called AppVue.

While visiting the Western New York city this past weekend, I paid a visit to the new facility, which is in a large airy room on the first floor of the Buffalo News.

What’s most heartening to see, of course, is the definitely more earnest and rawer kind of entrepreneurism on display, of a kind that is often lost in the slick, well-oiled machine of Silicon Valley.

That was the point by well-known venture capitalist Jordan Levy of SoftBank Capital, who has long split his time between New York City and his home in Buffalo. He founded the incubator with SoftBank’s Ron Schreiber.

“It’s easy for entrepreneurs in places like Palo Alto to get going,” the voluble Levy said to me on my visit. “We wanted to find a way to keep really great techies here to create an ecosystem that would be able to jump-start even more and help this city keep jobs.”

The longtime investor (pictured here) had already made scores of wins from fundings of companies such as OMGPOP (sold to Zynga) and Buddy Media (sold to Salesforce.com). But Levy appears particularly proud of Buffalo-based Synacor, where he serves as chairman. It’s a successful cloud platform service for companies that want to put video online.

As the big tech dog in Buffalo, Synacor is playing a big role in Z80 Labs, which will focus primarily on making investments in digital media and mobile Internet companies.

The tech incubator — which will provide office space, support and mentorship to its start-ups — is also getting an assist from a $4 million Innovate NY grant provided by the state.

Such a solid base is just what the founders of AppVue — which “specializes in mobile apps that make trusted recommendations among social media friends and networks” — told me they needed.

Essentially, it’s another new take on app discovery, which is a vexing issue for both app creators and users.

After AppVue won the University at Buffalo’s Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition, besting 19 other companies, its trio of founders — Matthew Epstein, CEO; Andrew Cassetti, EVP of product development; and Chief Architect Nathan Schiffer — told me that, until now, there have been no other options but to leave the area to make it in tech.

“We wanted to stay here, and now we can,” said Epstein. “And we are getting the kind of attention we need to try to make this a real company.”

Let’s hope so. It’s already looking impressive at its start — both Forbes CEO Mike Perlis and New York power VC Fred Wilson will make appearances today for Z80’s debut.

I’d suggest Frank & Teressa’s Anchor Bar on Main Street — where chicken wings were apparently invented, and an arena in which Silicon Valley will never have an upper hand.

Venture Capitalist: Beware of Activist Holders

Joann S. Lublin — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:00:44 +0000

Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, whose firm has invested in era-defining technology companies like Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Groupon Inc., has words of caution for company founders: Beware activist shareholders.

Activists have spurred change numerous times, as seen by the recent exit of Yahoo Inc.’s chief executive and the pending breakups of McGraw-Hill Cos. and other big businesses. But some of those investors “have taken a good thing too far,” says Mr. Horowitz, a general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing venture-capital firms.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Mary Meeker Explains Internet 2012 in 17 Minutes: The Full D10 Interview (Video)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:55:19 +0000

Walt Mossberg and I have a longstanding rule against PowerPoint presentations at the D: All Things Digital conference — mostly because they usually bore the bejesus out of us and the audience.

So, letting longtime Wall Street analyst turned venture capitalist Mary Meeker loose onstage with a clicker and a mess of slides with to debut her annual Internet Trends report means that we think what she had to say was pretty entertaining and very informative.

And, indeed it was, with a lot of focus on important trends in social, commerce, media and, most especially, mobile monetization — or lack thereof.

But there’s more than that, as well as a quick interview we did with the Kleiner Perkins VC about where the digital industry has been in the last decade, and where is it going.

Here’s Meeker at D10, as well as the slides to follow along:

[ See post to watch video ]

Hey Mickey, You're So Fine: Meet the Man Who Landed Silicon Valley's Hottest Funding Deal in Pinterest

Kara Swisher — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:29:15 +0000

There’s no question that every venture capitalist within 100 miles of Silicon Valley wanted to squeeze their khaki-clad selves into what had become tech’s hottest deal of late.

That would be to get a piece of the new round of funding for start-up phenom Pinterest.

But while piles of VCs and other investors tried to work every angle possible to noodge into the action, the iconoclastic CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann decided to go big and go global by hooking up with a Tokyo-based Internet giant.

Japan’s Rakuten will invest upwards of $50 million in a $100 million round that values the social bookmarking site at $1.5 billion.

Rakuten is one of the largest online commerce companies in the world, with a flagship site Rakuten Ichiba, among others. It was founded in 1997 and had revenue of $4.7 billion in 2011.

Most important in Pinterest’s calculation was apparently the link with its CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, whose nickname is Mickey. One the richest men in Japan, Mikitani is one of the best known entrepreneurs there where he’s been described as “Richard Branson meets Jeff Bezos.”

I briefly chatted with Mikitani last night about why he decided on the Pinterest deal, in a conversation where he focused a bit on Rakuten’s famed “omotenashi” or “empowerment” philosophy. Simply put, the concept is that — unlike an Amazon — Rakuten is a facilitator of commerce, much like its shopping mall metaphor beginnings. The approach is to aid merchants rather than compete with them.

It’s a little eBay, a little Alibaba, some Etsy and even a little Amazon Web Services mixed in. It’s also a place that can move retail globally, which is presumably the attraction to it by Pinterest.

ATD: Why did Pinterest pick you?

Mikitani: We are not a venture capitalist. We got together and talked about our story and our history.

We agreed that we shared a vision of the future of Internet e-commerce.

ATD: Why make an investment?

Mikitani: When we started to talk about being involved in the round of investment, we wanted to invest as much as possible.

We were very impressed by their business model and also the management style.

ATD: What made Pinterest so attractive in comparsion to other similar companies?

Everyone is talking about social commerce and best solution to social commerce, but Pinterest really was the first to use graphics that well to connect with people.

Facebook has used connected ways to reach friends, but Pinterest had a totally different approach to using more graphical ways to connect interests.

Rarely have we seen such a powerful media and we were seeing huge traffic coming from Pinterest [to Rakuten sites]. It was much higher than anyone else.

ATD: What do you bring to the table?

Mikitani: I think there are some things we think we can do with our expertise. Ben and his team have an extremely strong commitment to make their products as attractive as possible.

I did not think we could compete with Pinterest at all.

But we have 40,000 stores in Japan and we can give them access to our customers and do aggregation to engage in everything. And we have sites in many other countries too.

ATD: How are you going to work together?

Mikitani: We are not going to stop them from doing dealings with other e-commerce companies. But we can have more constructive input on how to make their site more effective from e-commerce point of view.

We can drive revenue. We have strong experience in mobile. We can combine their apps with our apps.

This is a long-term arrangement and we have a strong committment and attachment to this business. We truly understand their business and respect their management.

GigaOM Buys paidContent (Like Peter Kafka Said)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:19:06 +0000

GigaOM finally fessed up and said that it had bought tech and media news site paidContent, as AllThingsD.com media ninja Peter Kafka had reported earlier this week it would.

The price is reportedly low, according to sources, but we’ll find out for you, since neither GigaOM nor the former paidContent owner, Britain’s Guardian News & Media, is talking. As part of the deal, though, the Guardian has gotten some sort of stake in GigaOM, and someone there is joining its board as an observer.

PaidContent founder Rafat Ali left his company a couple years after selling to the Guardian in 2008. The Guardian put it up for sale in the fall.

Malik has sold off chunks of his own business — one of the pioneering tech and media news blogs — to venture capitalists such as True Ventures (where he is now a venture partner) and Reed Elsevier Ventures, who have invested a total of $15 million.

In a blast from the past, here is a video interview I did with Ali in mid-2007 in Santa Monica, Calif., at what was then its new offices, talking about the bright future ahead for paidContent (sorry about the quality, but whatevs!):

[ See post to watch video ]

Here is Om Malik’s blog post on the subject, which goes into all (or almost all) the deets:

First the news: Yes, the rumors are true. We are indeed buying the assets of ContentNext Media from Guardian News & Media Limited. And no, we are not disclosing the terms of the deal, except that we are buying the entire group of properties — paidContent.org, mocoNews.net, contentSutra and paidContent:UK and that a representative of Guardian News & Media will join our board of directors as an observer.

A few weeks ago when Paul Walborsky, CEO of GigaOM, came to the board and suggested that we should try and acquire paidContent, my fellow board members — Jon Callaghan (True Ventures), Ammar Hanafi (Alloy Ventures) and Kevin Brown (Reed Elsevier Ventures) — didn’t hesitate for a minute. The ethos of paidContent and our company are in sync. GigaOM’s core belief is that as connectivity becomes ubiquitous, it changes everything from society to business to we the people. paidContent from the very beginning has been built on the idea that connectedness is and will change media. It makes perfect sense for us to team up. Since then, Paul and his team worked tirelessly to make it happen.

OK, now you know what. Let me tell you why.

Now, why are we doing this deal, clearly the biggest of our five-and-a-half-year history? Two simple but equally powerful reasons — the first and perhaps most important reason: people. I have been an admirer of paidContent’s editorial team from the very beginning of its journey. Rafat Ali and Staci Kramer were two of my favorite writers in the early days of professional blogging. And while Rafat (who is on our board of advisers) has moved on to new things, I am glad to have Staci join us. She has been instrumental in building ContentNext from the ground up, and in addition to writing, she has been building the company’s event business. I am thrilled to announce that she will remain the editor of paidContent.

Ernie Sander who spearheads the ContentNext editorial operations is the kind of veteran everyone on our team, including me, can learn from. And for that precise reason, Ernie is going to become the executive editor of our sprawling online editorial operations. Our managing editor, Nicole Solis, is being promoted to VP of Editorial Operations. And then there is the most awesome team of journalists — Robert Andrews, Tom Krazit, Daniel Frankel, Laura Hazard Owen, Jeff Roberts and Amanda Natividad. In addition there are a wonderful group of technology, business and sales people who are joining our company. I welcome them all to our growing family and can’t wait to break bread with them in weeks to come.

Location, location, location

These fine folks are actually going to help bolster our presence in New York and help increase our footprint in Europe, a region of key strategic focus for GigaOM. (We will be hosting Structure:Europe in Amsterdam, October 16-17.) With this deal, we are really pleased that one of the most forward-looking media outlets around, Guardian News & Media, will become a shareholder in our business.

As you all know, I am (and will always be) a displaced New Yorker; New York City is my spiritual home. By increasing our footprint in the capital of the world, I would get a chance to go back more often. But it’s not an emotional tug that is driving us to this decision. New York is fast becoming a major technology hub, as Ryan Kim outlined in his recent post. And we want to expand our coverage to Boston — thanks to Barb Darrow who joined us several months ago — and the Washington DC corridor as well. paidContent’s New York City offices are now GigaOM East.

Media is the new Wild West

We are quite strategic about our acquisitions — we acquire media entities only if we love the people and believe that we are at the starting phase of a trend. In 2008, we acquired jkOnTheRun as our tip of the hat to the growing demand for mobile devices and the changes it would bring into society. Later that year, we brought in The Apple Blog because we knew the best was yet to come for Apple. Both of those acquisitions have helped GigaOM cover the issues that matter most to our ultimate customers — you, the reader — in a smart, sensible fashion.

“The question that mass amateurization poses to traditional media is ‘What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away? What happens when there is nothing unique about publishing anymore because users can do it for themselves?” We are now starting to see that question being answered.” — Clay Shirky

Shirky’s observation means that we are in a time of chaos where the very idea of media is being questioned. And as a Chinese proverb says, from chaos emerges opportunity. I believe the best is yet to come for media.

Over the past few years we have started to see the transformation of media by new technologies, new methods of distribution and newer ways to consume information. Mathew Ingram has been writing about these disruptions on a regular basis, and now we are going to double down on what we think is a great new chapter in the media industry.

I have always believed that we’ve got to stop thinking of media as what it was and focus on more of what it could be. In the world of plenty, the only currency is attention and attention is what defines “media.” Zynga is fighting Hollywood for attention (and winning). Instagram is taking moments away from other media. They have attention. There are old companies that are dying and new ones that are being invented. We’re eager to expand our coverage of social and digital media editorially, in our research and at our events. paidContent is the best chronicler of the media industry, and by blending their coverage with ours, we hope to watch this fast-changing industry ever more closely.

Please join me in welcoming the ContentNext team!

Tidbits From the Facebook IPO Filing: I'll Have What SV VCs Marc Andreessen and Jim Breyer Are Having!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:44:15 +0000

Because I am an obessive-compulsive and Facebook is my new target of stalkery, I have re-read its IPO filing from earlier this week about nine times so far.

It’s chock full of interesting little bits of tasty info about the Silicon Valley social networking giant that I plan to shine a little more light on this week.

First up is not exactly a news flash: Besides graphic artists, VCs also clean up in the public offering docs.

But I am not talking about the variety of venture firms with their fingers in Facebook, which run the gamut from Accel Partners to DST Global and more.

I am talking about individual wins for venture capitalists, most especially Accel’s Jim Breyer and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz.

According to the filing, while Accel holds almost 190 million shares, Breyer himself holds 11.7 million shares personally in the “James W. Breyer 2005 Trust dated March 25, 2005.”

Depending on what Facebook’s valuation turns out to be, based on current estimates, that hovers around $300 million. One caveat, according to the filing, is that 10.4 million of those shares — which are currently Class B stock and will be converted to Class A stock — are “subject to a voting agreement in favor of Mr. Zuckerberg.” That would be CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who controls the company via such arrangements.

Not so the shares of super-VC Marc Andreessen, whose firm holds 3.6 million shares. But he himself has 5.2 million restricted stock units, presumably for board service and other advisory duties to Facebook. That’s a possible $125 million or more windfall.

Other board members have also gotten RSUs, but not in that large an amount. Washington Post head Don Graham holds one million of them, while Washington, D.C. political vet Erskine Bowles and Netflix’s Reed Hastings each clock in at only 20,000 each.

That’s a big delta, of course, which means it’s good times for VCs in Silicon Valley, both professionally and personally.

Yahoo for Sale: Possible Bidders Circling -- Including Marc Andreessen -- as Board Pressure Mounts

Kara Swisher — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:28:49 +0000

A range of major players interested in acquiring all or a large piece of Yahoo have been prepping possible bids and have been in touch with the Internet giant’s board over the last several days.

While Yahoo has publicly said it was not for sale, according to numerous sources both inside and outside the company, it has been receptive to the interest and its Chairman Roy Bostock and Co-founder Jerry Yang have spoken to several.

Among the possible players: Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is working with private equity firm Silver Lake, in a deal that also might include Russia’s DST Global and Yahoo’s Japanese partner Masa Son; former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin, who is partnered with Providence Equity Partners; and the possibility that Yahoo’s Chinese partner, Alibaba Group, might consider entering the fray in what could be a reverse merger of sorts.

Also being rung up by some of the parties: Microsoft — Yahoo’s advertising and search partner — which is being seen as a possibly moneybags in any deal.

The movement among these investors is against a backdrop of increasing pressure for Yahoo’s board, after it fired CEO Carol Bartz last week. In the wake of the dramatic move, shareholders have upped criticism of Bostock and the board and have been looking hard for alternatives.

Today, that included hedge fund investor Daniel Loeb of Third Point, which has a 5.1 percent stake in Yahoo. In a filing this morning, he said he might increase that amount, and described a testy hour-long phone call he had earlier this week with Bostock that ended abruptly with a hang-up from Yahoo.

Sources said Loeb called Bostock a “fool,” among other not-so-nice names, on the call and asked for Yang’s help in dumping him.

This comes as exactly no surprise, given his previously strong letter in which Loeb called for Bostock’s ouster.

Loeb has been calling out Bostock — who is also on the boards of Morgan Stanley and Delta Airlines — for a series of gaffes at Yahoo since he became chairman in 2008 (he’s been on the board since 2003).

Those have included: Yahoo’s bungled effort to stave off a takeover by Microsoft several years ago; the too-long enthusiasm for Bartz, who was hired in early 2009 and fired last week; sitting unusually still as competitors such as Facebook, Google and more have out-innovated and outgrown Yahoo; and, of course, the falling knife of a stock, which has dropped precipitously since Bostock has been in charge of the board.

As Loeb wrote in a letter he sent to the company last week:

“It is time that certain members of this Board were held accountable for its past failures and their individual roles. Accordingly, we insist that Mr. Bostock, who championed Ms. Bartz’s hiring and led the charge against the Microsoft deal, promptly resign from the Board.”

Loeb is likely to add to that later today at a high-profile investor conference in New York, where the colorful but tough-talking investor is sure to add more logs to the fire.

But it not only him. Other major shareholders of Yahoo are also in touch with possible outside buyers, seeking a change at the long-troubled company, after its shares have remained in the doldrums, its attrition rate of employees has spiked and its product pipeline has slowed to drip.

This has all been taking place — of course — during one of tech biggest and most innovative booms, in which Yahoo competitors have grown strongly.

Enter Marc Andreessen, the well-known entrepreneur who has transformed himself into one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capitalists.

He and his partner Ben Horowitz recently pulled off another similar deal — with Silver Lake — to take control of a then-troubled Skype. They later flipped it to Microsoft for a large return.

Sources familiar with the situation said the pair have become increasingly intrigued by the situation at Yahoo and believe that its assets and brand are still strong, despite its management turmoil in recent years.

One problem is the huge cost of almost any kind of takeover and also the complexity, given much of Yahoo’s $18.5 billion valuation is due to its Asian assets.

The sale of those shares, as well as the selling off of some of Yahoo’s less core properties, makes for a very complicated situation for anyone.

Said one person looking at the company: “It is one of the more massive hairballs around.”

That is a common sentiment among many of those looking at Yahoo, which has hired Allen & Co. to manage the process.

Also of worry is a bid that would include too many players. Yahoo has long been plagued by indecisiveness on the part of its execs and, mostly, its board.

But one thing all the possible buyers of Yahoo, as well as an increasing number of its shareholders, agree on: The Yahoo board needs a major shake-up.

As Loeb wrote last week, which many I interviewed also echoed:

“This letter details our principled demands for sweeping changes in both the Board of Directors (the “Board”) and Company leadership, and outlines the hidden value of Yahoo, which has been severely damaged — but not irreparably — by poor management and governance.”

It's Official: Arrington Out at AOL; Schonfeld New TechCrunch Editor (Plus Armstrong Internal Memo Too!)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:03:27 +0000

AOL and TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington have officially parted ways, almost exactly one year from the New York Internet portal’s acquisition of the popular tech news site.

He was replaced by longtime TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld.

The company’s statement said that the high-profile blogger had “decided” to move on, which was a decided understatement, given that the negotiations between the pair sometimes approximated a cage match.

The noisy media fight centered on a new $20 million venture fund that Arrington is now running, called CrunchFund, and his editorial status at TechCrunch with the new role.

Many, including myself, had raised questions about the conflicts of interest inherent in the situation, if Arrington had remained influential at TechCrunch. Arrington had argued that transparency took care of that.

The name of the fund, which is close to the name of TechCrunch, will remain, said Arrington onstage this morning at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

“This is my baby and I built this,” he said, in an understated appearance. “So, it’s a sad day.”

Before beginning an opening interview with well-known Silicon Valley investor and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman at the conference, Arrington got off a good joke — one of many to come, apparently (uh-oh!) — by wearing a t-shirt with the label: Unpaid Blogger.

It was a humorous poke at AOL content czar and former Arrington boss, Arianna Huffington, who had called him that in one of the many rounds of fighting of late.

It was all in good fun, finally, after not so much fun.

Along with a media firestorm, the fracas included Arrington posting an angry blog on TechCrunch itself demanding that AOL give him editorial independence or sell him back TechCrunch.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Huffington were inclined to do neither and, thus, Arrington had to go.

Here’s a statement that was just put out by AOL:

“The TechCrunch acquisition has been a success for AOL and for our shareholders, and we are very excited about its future. Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. Michael is a world-class entrepreneur and we look forward to supporting his new endeavor through our investment in his venture fund. Erick Schonfeld has been named the editor of TechCrunch. TechCrunch will be expanding its editorial leadership in the coming months.”

Oddly, Armstrong put the news of the change at the end of his weekly internal memo to staff, in which he noted that the company would continue as an investor in Arrington’s CrunchFund — a $10 million investment — which had started this whole controversy.

Tim, in old-timey journalism that’s called burying the lede, but here it is:

AOLers –

We’re right in the middle of the most important season of our year and we have some critical work to get done. I wanted to share the highlights of what we are expecting to have happen in the next 12 weeks. As I mentioned last week, we have prioritized our focus areas in a concise document.

The main items are below and there will be a steady set of reviews against these and related items at the weekly product reviews and monthly business reviews:

1. Traffic Growth: Full execution of the Bridge and Tunnel Project

2. Display Ads Growth: Premium formats and video growth/improvement in the quote to collect process for customers and sales

3. Video Platform: Launch of new video platform

4. Patch Monetization: Sales allocations/partnerships

5. Expansion of Content Verticals/Platform: Genre verticals in HuffPost/video expansion

6. Mobile: Content & ads priority match/move mobile engineering up the brand food chain

7. Expansion of Devil Network: Increase partners and scale production

8. Paid Services: Increase commerce partnerships

As we have discussed, the fall of ’11 will be about driving organic product improvement and reducing our focus to the high leverage opportunities. Every new opportunity at the company will be compared to our succinct plan. If we are going to add a new idea, an existing idea needs to be removed. There is room for execution and for improvement — everything else needs to be put on the back burner.

Finally, I’d like to announce that Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. TechCrunch continues to be a part of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group. AOL will maintain its initial investment in Michael Arrington’s fund and AOL Ventures will oversee our investment in the fund.

Have a great week everyone — stay focused and keep up the strong momentum –TA

Indeed, now that the disruption is over, it is long past time to focus on the entrepreneurs and start-ups that TechCrunch is built on. Here is the link to watch the live stream of TechCrunch Disrupt.

UPDATE: It’s not over until it is over, apparently. In a blog post of her own, Huffington took aim at The Wall Street Journal over its coverage of the internal battle at AOL.

Calling out a Journal story from over this past weekend as “shoddy,” she took issue with its characterization of AOL as having a “culture of clashing fiefs and personalities,” with a focus on fighting between her and Arrington.

The issue at hand wasn’t about personalities. It was about principle; a very simple fundamental principle about conflicts of interest that every journalistic enterprise adheres to — including the Wall Street Journal, as its former publisher L. Gordon Crovitz points out today. But you wouldn’t know that from the breathless opening grafs of the exceptionally misinformed, substance-lite, and anonymous-quote-riddled piece.

Indeed, it takes a full eight paragraphs before the Journal’s reporters Jessica Vascellaro and Emily Steel move away from their gossip girl caricature “clash of personalities” narrative and get to — or at least near — the heart of the matter: Can someone running a venture fund edit a site covering the tech startup scene? This has nothing to do with personalities, either Mike Arrington’s or mine.

If only we could only find a way to also include the doofus-is-not-disparaging fired Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz, this giant rumble would certainly be complete.

SECOND UPDATE: But, wait, what tweet through yonder smartphone breaks?

It is the Arrington, now seemingly taking a shot at Huffington about their clash of personalities.

Wrote Arrington on Twitter just now: “ok @ariannahuff. Let’s go ahead and talk about how this really played out.”

Oh, let’s — although part of me (and I know this might seem ironic) wants to make it stop.

New Early-Stage VC Firm, Freestyle Capital, Launches

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:00:52 +0000

Every day a bell rings, a venture capitalist gets its wings.

Okay, maybe not, but longtime tech entrepreneurs Josh Felser and Dave Samuel will announce a new early-stage VC firm called Freestyle Capital, with $27 million in new investment funds.

Felser and Samuel co-founded Crackle, which was acquired by Sony for $65 million in 2006; and Spinner.com, which was bought by what was then AOL Time Warner for $320 million in 1999.

The pair said the fund builds on 27 preexisting start-ups they had already made investments in.

Although Felser and Samuel are announcing Freestyle at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference today, they don’t run any tech news site for AOL — so all should be well.

Here’s the official press release:

Veteran Internet Entrepreneurs Launch Freestyle Capital, a Venture Capital Firm Focused on Early Stage Startups Freestyle Capital Receives $27 Million in Fund I Close

SAN FRANCISCO — September 12, 2011 – Today, at TechCrunch Disrupt, the industry’s early-stage startup networking event, Internet technology veterans Josh Felser and Dave Samuel formally introduced Freestyle Capital, a new venture capital firm focused on seed and early stage investments in consumer and web-based enterprise technology startups. Felser and Samuel, serial Internet entrepreneurs who together co-founded both Crackle (acquired by Sony for $65 million in 2006) and Spinner.com (acquired by AOL Time Warner for $320 million in 1999), also announced that they have raised $27 million in a new fund closed from limited partners including Cendana Capital and Hall Capital. The new fund builds on a pre-existing portfolio assembled by Felser and Samuel.

Freestyle Capital will focus on providing early-stage startups with both funding and counsel — drawing upon the investment capabilities and real-world experiences of Felser and Samuel — to guide technology startups to the next stage of development. Freestyle Capital is looking for young companies with transformational business ideas presenting seed funding and early stage investment opportunities in the range of $100,000-$500,000.

To date, Freestyle has invested in more than 27 companies, including: GoInstant; Byliner; CrowdFlower; Get Satisfaction; Typekit; about.me (acquired by AOL); BackType (acquired by Twitter); and CoTweet (acquired by ExactTarget).

“Every time we make an investment decision, we draw upon our own deep entrepreneurial experience to unearth the critical success factors for each company — an approach fundamentally different from that of most VCs,” said Felser, co-founder of Freestyle Capital. “Immediately post-investment, we provide a hands-on approach that leverages the knowledge we’ve gained as successful startup CEOs in developing, marketing and leading web-based businesses. Partnering with entrepreneurs at the seed stage is the next best thing to actually being founders ourselves.”

Samuel, who launched his first start up at the age of ten, said: “Like the rest of the world, Josh and I have seen how Internet technologies can transform our lives — but we also know first-hand the long road it takes to get there. This experience is what really sets Freestyle apart from many other investors. With a practiced eye toward bringing solutions to market for real-world business applications, we are excited to ‘pay it forward’ for the newest technology innovators.”

In This Episode of "As the AOL Turns": Will Arrington Appear at TechCrunch Disrupt?

Kara Swisher — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:52:05 +0000

With the continuing negotiations between AOL and high-profile TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington likely to come to some conclusion soon, the big question remaining is whether he will appear at its flagship conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, which officially begins tomorrow.

Sources said that seems more likely than not, although the talks between AOL and Arrington are not resolved as yet and his appearance at the highly lucrative conference is part of a whole package.

But it seems unlikely that neither Arrington nor AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and content chief Arianna Huffington wants to damage TechCrunch Disrupt, which makes piles of moolah from sponsors and fees, attracts thousands of attendees, and where a plethora of promising start-ups compete with each other.

And, in fact, some of the slated speakers I have contacted have said that they have not been told of any changes in the program.

A hackathon of those entrepreneurs is now taking place before the main event, where well-known Silicon Valley players will be interviewed on stage by the staff of TechCrunch.

The conference is mostly run by TechCrunch exec Heather Harde, as well as the site’s leading editor Erick Schonfeld.

But, of course, TechCrunch Disrupt has starred Arrington, the larger-than-life blogger now turned venture capitalist.

That shift and how badly it was done is at the center of complex severance negotiations.

As I previously wrote, sources said the company has so far refused Arrington’s bold demand, posted on TechCrunch itself, to either give the popular tech news site “editorial independence” or sell it back to him.

As I wrote last week:

The situation between the popular tech blogger and top execs at the Internet company — which bought his site earlier this year — comes after a week of increasingly testy back and forth between them, after it was revealed that Arrington was starting his own $20 million venture fund called CrunchFund.

The move caused a media firestorm over the ethics and propriety of the move, which was followed by an ugly internal war at the company, with Arrington and TechCrunch staffers on one side and Armstrong and Huffington on the other.

(Full disclosure: Although no one cares what I think, I consider the deal appalling and wrote that it was a “giant, greedy Silicon Valley pig pile.” Now, it seems to be 56 percent piggier!)

After many confusing messages from AOL, Arrington was removed from his longtime job at TechCrunch and placed in its venture arm, after editorial objections from Huffington.

That had supposedly been the the plan until it all blew up, with reveleations about what the CrunchFund deal — which includes $10 million from AOL — meant to TechCrunch and its news gathering.

That seemed clear from a widely cited quote from CrunchFund investor and well-know Silicon Valley entrepreneur Reid Hoffman to me last week:

“TechCrunch will get some real deal flow from entrepreneurs that we would otherwise not see, because they have established a prominent position as the SV/Tech industry information feed. As many tech entrepreneurs read it — both within Silicon Valley and globally — and view the information news feed to be their target for announcing themselves to the world, CrunchFund will have access to deal flow to these diverse and early stage companies. Some of these companies will be the kind of early stage companies with billion-dollar potential that Greylock invests in.”

There you had it: No one can afford to be out of the deal flow in these competitive times, even if it means cutting corners and using a tech news site as fodder.

Arrington obviously has another view of the deal he struck with Armstrong and, sources said, wants his powerful tech news platform back. He has been talking to many Silicon Valley power players about the situation, said sources.

More to come soon from this Silicon Valley soap opera. And, hopefully, it will be a happy — well, happy-ish — ending.

(Full disclosure: AllThingsD also runs conferences that could be construed as competitive to TechCrunch Disrupt, although we both we seem to do just fine. In addition, Walt Mossberg and I are getting along like peas and carrots, although we vigorously disagree over the humongous talent of Barry Manilow.)

Roger and Pre: Those Were the Days, McNamee (He Thought Palm Would Always Be)

Kara Swisher — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 02:30:26 +0000

Given all that has happened to the once promising Palm mobile platform this week, via the strategery machinating of its current owner Hewlett-Packard, it is long past time for a good laugh.

Ergo, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and pundit Roger McNamee, who always provides.

(He’s shown in the above photo pointing out the most excellent lady feature — a mirror, cuz us gals like to take a gander at our lipstick now and again — of the Palm Pre).

Mirror notwithstanding, here is the spoof video done by McNamee and former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, which was shown before their introduction to the stage at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in 2009.

In it, they are trying to figure out the right marketing message for the new Palm Pre, hindered only by McNamee’s penchant for telling tall tales about technology.

It is very, very funny and but a wee taste of a time of hope for the innovative mobile operating system. As everyone knows now, HP kicked Palm’s webOS to the curb earlier this week.

Along with the mock commercial — which remains better than Palm ever did seriously — is the full video of the interview the pair gave at D7 and also Rubinstein’s solo stage appearance at D@CES in early 2010, in which he talks about not using an Apple iPhone.

Enjoy (really):

[ See post to watch video ]

The Midas List, Or Why Facebook May Be The New Google

Zoran Basich — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:30:46 +0000

With hundreds of prominent venture capitalist gathered at the NVCA conference in Boston today, it was an interesting time for Forbes to release its sometimes-annual Midas list of 2011’s top 100 tech investors. We imagine some VCs gave their touch-screens a good workout as they scrolled through the list to see where they ranked – or if they ranked at all.

Such lists are always heavily subjective, since picking the methodology determines how the list will turn out (full disclosure: our friends at Dow Jones VentureSource provided the raw data for the Forbes report, though neither VC Dispatch nor VentureWire was involved in the project). And indeed, some VCs get irritated by the list, believing it doesn’t accurately reflect true returns.

But it certainly gets attention. The project examines returns gained from IPOs and M&As over $200 million in the last five years, and used a series of additional metrics as well as an expert panel to come up with the final list.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Google Ventures Sows Seed Funding With New Start-Up Lab (Video Tour)

Liz Gannes — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:00:02 +0000

As incoming CEO Larry Page seeks to recapture Google’s entrepreneurial spirit, Google Ventures thinks it’s in for a year of expansion and support from its corporate parent.

The VC arm, which gets $100 million from Google each year to invest as it sees fit, wants to give more early-stage companies seed funding, and to that end has taken over an enormous Google-owned building in Mountain View, Calif., and started filling it with companies. The space is mostly empty; there are just about 20 people working there now.

Google Ventures Partner David Krane took us on a tour of the Startup Lab, which opened in October and is currently occupied by start-ups like LawPivot (legal Q&A) and OpenCandy (software discovery), a product group from the vacation rental roll-up company HomeAway, and the yet-to-be-launched company of GrandCentral (now Google Voice) founder Craig Walker (which Google Ventures hasn’t invested in yet, though it’s made Walker an entrepreneur in residence).

The companies each pay $5 per month for as much space as they need, filled with recycled furniture from AdMob. They get a ping-pong table, free bikes and a microkitchen filled with snacks, courtesy of Google. They also added their own barbecue for the universal getting-to-know-you activity of grilling meat.

“This is not to be thought of as any sort of curated environment,” Krane said, anticipating the are-you-copying-Y-Combinator question. “This is merely work space.”

Krane said he mostly leaves the companies at the Startup Lab alone, stopping by about once a week. Google Ventures occupies its own floor of a building over on the other side of campus, right below Google’s autonomous car team, and also has offices in New York City, Cambridge, Mass., and Seattle.

Google Ventures has made about 30 total investments to date, with one exit: Ngmoco to DeNA. Just last week, it closed its first deal with a company led by former Google employees, the Web security provider Dasient.

It’s kind of crazy that a two-year-old venture firm with a staff of about 20 former Google employees wouldn’t have stumbled into investing in a former Googler’s company before now. And this is at a time when Google is fighting a talent war against its own employees’ entrepreneurial urges, which often lead them to join younger companies or start their own.

Krane said to expect more deals with former Googlers as Google Ventures “will do substantially more than 30 deals” this year.

“We don’t advocate or want people to leave Google,” Google Ventures Partner Bill Maris said, “but if someone has the entrepreneurial bug at that exit interview…”

[ See post to watch video ]

Lerer Ventures Considers New $50 Million Fund With Hippeau Addition

Kara Swisher — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:17:51 +0000

One of the more interesting pieces of news that got pushed deep down in stories in the noisy swirl around AOL’s $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post was the move of its CEO Eric Hippeau back to the investor side.

He’ll be going to Lerer Ventures, which is run by HuffPo co-founder, chairman and major investor Kenneth Lerer.

(In case you wondered: Yes, everyone is interconnected.)

Before landing at HuffPo in mid-2009, Hippeau was a high-profile venture capitalist at SoftBank Capital for many years, starting with his involvement in the legendary $100 million investment in Yahoo at its start.

Hippeau went to SoftBank Capital after selling Ziff-Davis to its parent SoftBank Corp. for $2.1 billion in 1995.

Now he is headed to Lerer, where Hippeau has been an adviser. It which has been run by Lerer and his son Ben–as well as VC and entrepreneur Jordan Cooper–as an angel investing at early-stage seed level.

About a year ago, the New York-based investment fund raised $8.5 million, all from friends, and has focused on 35 start-ups in the city.

Those have included GroupMe, a group texting service, and ad service AdKeeper.

Now, with the addition of Hippeau as a general partner, while still spending down the initial fund, Lerer Ventures is considering a second fund of up to $50 million to allow it flexibility to invest in later stages.

That’s an increasingly common strategy of late, most prominently at Andreessen Horowitz.

“I am really glad to be getting back into investing, since the New York area is especially vibrant at the moment,” said Hippeau in an interview today, who noted that Lerer Ventures also has some investments in Silicon Valley. “And we are really determined to look at changing the way funds are organized.”

And now that he’ll not have a job with the AOL buy–”It has a very good CEO in Tim Armstrong,” joked Hippeau–and having just also stepped down from the Yahoo board, he will have plenty of time to consider all that.

Hippeau listed social, mobile and commerce as big investment arenas, as well as companies related to tablet devices.

“At the Huffington Post, we could see the changes happening to how we distribute our content were becoming profound,” Hippeau said. “It’s a completely different experience.”

I also talked to Ken Lerer, who said that the fund–started off pretty simply–will be trying to define itself more in the coming months before fundraising begins.

“Ben and Jordan are especially plugged into the New York scene–these start-ups were created by their friends,” he said. “And Eric and I bring a different skill set and perspective on top of that.”

Lerer also expressed interest in commerce, as well as local and real-time technologies.

“While it is always an interesting time on the Internet,” he said, fresh from the AOL sale of the HuffPo, in which he was the largest individual shareholder. “But right now is a really interesting time.”