In what (to me) is a fascinating story, Intel investor, and LA billionaire Max Palevsky died yesterday in Beverly Hills. Amazing and fascinating, because of his story (he sold his first firm, SDS, to Xerox in 1969 for $920M, and bankrolled Intel as an angel/venture investor along with Arthur Rock, of Venrock Associates) — and the fact that [...]
This morning, we published the results of an extensive study of the impact of venture capital companies on Southern California in terms of exit values, finding that exits from VC-backed firms between 1995 and 2009 generated an astounding $48 billion (billion with a capital B) in value. The study, which was conducted by Jon Funk [...]
Venture capital rating site TheFunded released their 2009 “most loved VCs” list via TechCrunch Tuesday — with a surprise, in that they actually had some Southern California venture capitalists ranked on the list. The SoCal folks I noticed on the list: 2. Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners, rated 4.8571 by 7 CEOs 23. Mark [...]
A couple of Tuesday links: Wiring Los Angeles (John Savageau) – a look into how downtown Los Angeles became a telecom hub, converting empty office space into one of the most densely connected telecom hubs in the world VC Funding Season Ends Next Week (Mark Suster) – Yes, there is such a thing as VC [...]
An interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the Wall Street Journal today has him citing Silicon Valley’s weather as one of its key differentiators: When I’m asked about this, and I’ve been asked this for years, I answer this the same: It is the weather. There’s a reason why generations of young people [...]
The Los Angeles Venture Association has launched a new entrepreneur and startup focused event next month, at their Meet the VC event, which will allow entrepreneurs to get to meet pretty much every one of the local (and some non-local) venture funds in a “speed dating” session. A few of the folks involved have told [...]
Not getting enough of Jason Nazar, founder of Santa Monica-based DocStoc, at his many Startups Uncensored events recently? Nazar gets the spotlight, pitching Kara Swisher in this video.
An interesting chart in today’s report from the NVCA on venture capital’s impact on the U.S. economy shows the aggregate amount in venture capital–in billions– invested in the U.S. since 1970: It’s interesting to note that — if you look all the way back to 1970, how Southern California isn’t all that far up in [...]
Mark Averitt, a venture capitalist at Okapi Ventures, has posted an open letter to Congress about pending legislation — the Privacy Fund Transparency Act — which threatens to derail the venture capital industry. Well worth a read.
Red Herring recently published their list of Top 100 Global Venture Capitalists ostensibly to help people identify the most successful VCs. The handful of Southern California firms to get into the list were GRP Partners (#23), Redpoint Ventures (#39), and Zone Ventures (#100). Leaving argument about how these lists typically are constructed (who knows who, [...]
Thoughts and commentary from Benjamin F. Kuo, publisher of socalTECH.com.
