Southern California venture capitalists are mostly absent from Forbes’ latest Midas List — the magazine’s list of the most influential venture capitalists — with the exception of Domain Associates’ James Blair. The subjective list–based on Forbes’ assessment of how much venture capitalists did for their investors–has previously included Jim Armstrong of Clearstone Ventures, Brad Jones [...]

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Venture Capital by Benjamin Kuo

We covered this last night,  but  sadly,  Martin Schaedel — who advised many startups here in Los Angeles, and across the world — appears to be the second victim in the plane crash Wednesday at the Santa Monica airport. Our heart goes out to his friends and family. We had an  ongoing agreement with Martin, [...]

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Uncategorized by Benjamin Kuo

Jason Calacanis has reposted a long (but well written) discourse on the pitfalls of relationships going “all digital,” which provides more illumination on the whole Michael Arrington withdrawing from blogging story yesterday. Calacanis writes: I’m 100% convinced that the trend in 2010 and forward will be people trying to remove their virtual presence on sites [...]

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Blogs by Benjamin Kuo

It seems like it’s not all doom and gloom out there. Despite what seemed like a record day for layoffs Monday (by one count, over 75,000 jobs lost) it seems like a number of local high tech companies are talking about great Q4 quarters. Central Desktop just told us about a great Q4, mobileStorm also [...]

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Economy by Benjamin Kuo

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington — probably the most watched technology blogger in the world — said this morning that he’s going on hiatus for the month of February, in the face of death threats, a recent event where someone spat on him, and because he “can’t say my job is fun any more.” The announcement follows [...]

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Blogs by Benjamin Kuo

Alana Semuels over that the Los Angeles Times: how many goats do you need to sacrifice to get venture funding? All kidding aside (umm, pun not intended), having been chatting with a lot of the folks who have raised funding this year, it’s clear that the bar has been raised for companies seeking venture funding. [...]

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Venture Capital by Benjamin Kuo

Great post today on ReadWriteWeb: Technology is Great, but Are We Forgetting To Live? In the gadget driven world of high tech companies, it sometimes seems like we’re driving toward “the Matrix”–where you’re always connected, plugged in, and spend more conscious hours connected via a screen to the “virtual world” than in the world around [...]

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Technology by Benjamin Kuo

A new effort to spur venture investment in Los Angeles–called NITRO–has gotten under way, and is looking to bring together entrepreneurs with mentors and improve the quality of companies in the area. The NITRO effort is pulling together a list of local mentors — including Robert Flynn (Modern Feed & Supply), Bryce Benjamin (Tech Coast [...]

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Events, Startups by Benjamin Kuo

Self promotion alert: I’ll be speaking on an M&A and financing panel in Westlake Village tonight for the Gold Coast Business Forum, in case anyone is interested in hearing some views on how you might (cross your fingers) get your financing or M&A deal done this year.

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Events, Mergers and Acquisitions, Venture Capital by Benjamin Kuo

In President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, one passage jumped out at me as speaking particularly to entrepreneurs (italics mine): In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the [...]

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Entrepreneurship by Benjamin Kuo