Venture Capital

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win… John F. Kennedy, September 1962 InnovationI teach entrepreneurship for ~50 student teams a year from engineering schools atStanford, Berkeley, and Columbia...Read Full Story

Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital — Facebook's venture capital firms — will likely get first dibs on promising deals for years to come thanks to the social media site's pending IPO. The dynamic is straightforward but powerful, according to this article by Reuters, which points out that entrepreneurs seek a VC firm, or an individual partner, that has not only made a great call but now has a special relationship with a company that could help their nascent business...Read Full Story

The investment climate for tech startups has undergone dramatic shifts over the last few years. Since roughly 2008, institutional VCs have taken a hit, as angels, super angels and – to a lesser degree – accelerators and incubators altered the investment landscape with fast-moving seed and early-stage deals that VCs typically didn’t want.  As these other investors eventually began to compete for deals classically scored by institutional firms, the VC world became divided between the have’s and...Read Full Story

I recently had conversation with a New York tech entrepreneur about the growing ability of the top venture capital firms to drive media coverage for their portfolio companies.He not only validated my sense that many tech and business journalists take their cues from prominent VCs, but explained that a company like Andreessen Horowitz allegedly directs its partners to reach out to "their friends in the media" when they ink a new deal. "PR is paramount there."I ran these observations past the...Read Full Story

Do you have a great idea for a new start-up but you live too far away from Silicon Valley to ever pitch your idea? Now you have the chance to meet some of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capitalists, and you will be giving to worthy cause to do it. Going on right now is the 2012 Venture Capital Master's Lunch Series benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Greater San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, presented by the Motion to Dismiss Cancer. Here’s how it works: there are six auctions on...Read Full Story

Ann Winblad, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, discusses where to find the next big innovation plays in Silicon Valley and the future of Facebook's success, with Henry Blodget, Business Insider CEO & editor-in-chief. < Prev   Next >Read Full Story

April 2 (Bloomberg) -- Tim Draper, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, talks about the outlook for funding of start-up companies after Facebook Inc.'s strategy of trading shares on SecondMarket Inc. He speaks with Cory Johnson on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg West." Emily Chang also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)Read Full Story