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 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 

Here is Peter Rep’s take on the meaning of Sevin Rosen not raising another fund…

“The over-simplified conclusion is early stage venture capital is no longer economically interesting – a.k.a “broken.” The more accurate self-assessment is that Sevin Rosen concluded they did not have a strategy to navigate the new dynamics of the market, not that the market itself was poisoned.”

full post here 

I think the real question will be the ability of these smaller funds will be their ability to remain as an aligned interest if the startup takes a longer than expected time for an exit event.

from mercurynews.com

To be a serious player in Silicon Valley, you’ve long had two options: working for a venture capital firm or becoming an angel investor and plowing your own considerable wealth into budding technology start-ups. Now a new model may be emerging, that of the microfund manager.

For a variety of reasons, a growing number of investors are raising their own, small funds of $10 million to $15 million. Three, all with a slightly different makeup, have sprung up in the past month alone, all with one thing in common: Each is run by one individual who is showing up at the table with other people’s money.

Some of these investors are frustrated with the structure of venture capital partnerships, while others want to invest in extremely small start-ups that traditional VC firms that have been ballooning in size have begun to ignore.

“It’s sort of the next step of angel investing,” says Mark Heesen, the president of the National Venture Capital Association. “VCs just don’t have ability to invest in extremely early stage companies any more, and someone needs to do that in organized fashion. So I think there is a market there, that the timing is right.”

full article here 

Here is an interesting discussion on east coast VC investing versus West Coast VC investing which was in response to this original post.

full post here

Just a quick note that one of my favorite sites has received an additional $10M in their piggy bank…

Here is a post about the investment

“I’m ready to do a deal on the valuation we’ve discussed, now lets talk about the details of what the transaction would look like and if we agree, let’s sign and move to the next step.”

full post here

Here is one former VC and lawyer’s take, she argues that a draft term sheet means either the pre-money value expectation of the company is too high, or the VCs are hedging.

I think that it also could be used as a tool to surface issues or educate a young management team on all the twists of a deal.

See post here 

from reuters.com

This is a testament to the power of the RIAA in the US government and the Russian mob in Russia’s government.  Ultimately it will come down to which group can have the most pull over their respective government.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia should shut down a pirate music Web site that is robbing U.S. recording companies of sales if it wants to become a member of the World Trade Organization, the top U.S. trade official said on Wednesday.

“I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone’s intellectual property rights,” U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters after a speech to a services industry organization.

full article here