Alexander Haislip

Sand Hill Road has been surprisingly quiet on the subject of the Wall Street meltdown. Sure, some firms are getting waked by the sinking titans of banking, anyone who invested in Fluidigm is going to be in for a tough time when (if?) the company goes public Thursday, for example. But most seem to be […]

Electric car maker Think Global is out to raise $80 million before the end of the year, according to a report today in VentureWire. The company so far has raised more than $97 million from Draper Fisher jurvetson, Rockport Capital, GE Energy, Element Venture Partners, Capricorn Investment Group (Jeff Skoll’s money), Wintergreen Advisors, CG Holdin, […]

News that GlaxoSmithKline signed a $1.5 billion anti-inflammatory drug development deal with Germany-based Cellzome AG should be music to venture capital ears. Cellzome raised around $113 million in VC funding since 2000, from firms like Atlas Venture, SV Life Sciences, Advent International and Index Ventures -- and is one of a burgeoning number of pain-oriented pharmaceutical startups. Investment peaked last year, with VCs investing more than $720 million in 49 companies addressing pain, the largest amount they’ve invested in at least 10 years, according to Thomson Reuters (publisher of VCJ). Startups developing pain-relieving drugs make up the bulk of the fundings (21 such companies attracted more than $400 million last year), with device makers and others rounding out the total. The payoff could be huge

Advanced Equities took one on the chin from Forbes last month in an article calling the company out for foisting poor investments onto the unsuspecting. AEI fired back with a concise letter to the editor. Now the firm is out fundraising for a new investment vehicle: Advanced Equities Peregrine IV. The $20 million-targeted fund has […]

The electric car wars continue as Fisker Automotive gets a $65 million cash injection from Kleiner Perkins, hedge fund Palo Alto Investors and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Earth2Tech has the story and a reminder about the company's ongoing legal battle. The interesting thing here, outside the sexy looking car, is the source of the financing: an early stage venture firm (now growth investor when it comes to "greentech"), a hedge fund and the state-backed investment fund of an petrochemical-rich middle-eastern nation. Which of these investors doesn't belong?

Cleantech-related investment funds may seem commonplace these days, but Pangaea Ventures takes a slightly different approach. The Vancouver-based firm, which was launched in 2000, focuses on cleantech and advanced material companies, such as nanotechnology, Founder and principal Chris Erickson last month raised $32 million for the firm’s second fund. Limited partners include Asahi Glass, Umicore, Bekaert, BASF Venture Capital, Solvay, Ciba Specialty Chemicals and Toyota Tsusho America. So we've got 5 Questions for him after the jump.

Sequoia Capital has raised $929.5 million for Sequoia Capital U.S. Growth Fund IV, according to regulatory documents filed recently with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sequoia expects to earn $202 million in salaries and fees from its fourth growth fund, according to the regulatory filing (worth pointing out that recent study that shows compensation in […]

Beijing-based Zero2IPO, a research and publishing company that tracks the Chinese venture capital market, has raised nearly $60 million from 46 investors for a second fund, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The only limited partner listed on the regulatory filing is British Virgin Island-based Inter Private Equity. The managers listed […]

I had an informal discussion with the CEO of a large, private tech company last week, and talked about why he wasn’t going to be taking his company public any time soon.He cited the usual headaches associated with going public: regulation, road showing instead of managing, operating with quarterly earnings in mind instead of growth, […]

It might have been easy to write off In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, at the end of 2006. The organization couldn’t seem to keep a CEO. Gilman Louie left In-Q-Tel in January 2006. Successor Amit Yoran left in May. Then, in July, Managing Partner Mark Frantz, who had been offered the […]