Mission Creek

from The Wannabe Venture Capitalist

New Companies:
- Revision3 founded by Digg co-founders and gets $1mm
- stashSpace, full length video editing online, launches
- slideshare launches: powerpoint + youtube

Fundings:
- Voxant: Video Syndication Network - gets $10.5mm
- Ecast: Digital Jukebox Firm, gets $20mm
- Wallop: Social Networking site, gets $10mm second round
- ContextWeb closes $15.5mm series C
- Nexaweb closes $10mm series B
- VideoEgg gets $12mm third round
- BuzzLogic raises $1.5mm
- Demand Media raises $100mm
- Visto secures $51mm
- Mintera secures $10mm
- PayperPost, controversial blog advertising company, raises $3mm
- Fotolog received $4.1mm third round
- Songbird gets $1mm
- Ugobe raises $8mm
- Yelp raises $10mm
- b5 media: blog network, raises $2mm
- CityVoter gets $1.1mm
- Voddler raises $2.2mm
- Ripe raises $32mm second round

New Funds:
- NGEN II Closes at $180mm
- OpenView Venture Partners launches

from cnet.com

Here is one media outlet’s take on the VC’s payout on Youtube.

The biggest winners in the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube by Google are YouTube’s founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who have parlayed their stakes in the 19-month-old start-up into Google shares that are probably worth tens of millions. YouTube’s roughly 60 employees are no doubt celebrating as well.

But only one venture capital firm–Sequoia Capital–got in on what has turned out to be one of the hottest Internet deals since Google went public in 2004.

Sequoia, which is among the most successful venture firms in Silicon Valley, invested a total of $11.5 million in YouTube from November 2005 to April 2006. It may be walking away with more than 43 times that amount. Its stake in YouTube has been estimated at roughly 30 percent, which would give it a value of $495 million.

full story here 

from law.com

nternet domain-name arbitration disputes have risen by more than a quarter since January 2005 — despite the expansion of generic top-level domain addresses like .biz and .info — as cybersquatters find more sophisticated ways of encroaching on legitimate Web sites.

The Minneapolis-based National Arbitration Forum reported a 25 percent hike in domain name-related disputes it administered in 2005.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which handles about half of such disputes, experienced a 24 percent jump in cases filed to 1,457 in 2005. For the first six months of this year, 900 cases were filed with WIPO. Complainants can choose an organization to handle their domain name disputes. The two providers that handle the vast majority of cases are WIPO and NAF.

full story here

from MSNBC.com

One media outlet’s discussion of the behind the scenes action in the Google/Youtube deal.

NEW YORK - YouTube Inc. announced deals Monday to license content from two major record companies just hours before the wildly popular video Web site agreed to be bought by Google Inc.

YouTube reached deals with Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment that will let the Web site post music videos and content from users that includes copyrighted material in exchange for sharing ad revenue.

full story here