Alexander Haislip

Rennovia, an early-stage chemical development company, recently raised $6 million in startup funding from 5AM Ventures and Versant Ventures, according to regulatory documents. The funding is the first infusion of a proposed $12.3 million Series A round that the company is seeking, documents show. The stealth Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup is working to make specialty chemicals from renewable feedstock. The company has not disclosed what chemicals it will make. A chemical company such as Rennovia is something of an anomaly in Silicon Valley, where information technology and life science companies vie with cleantech for attention from venture capitalists. Still, some VCs are willing to go out on a limb for a compelling chemistry process applied to an industry that has long relied on petroleum as the principle input for its products.

Michael Marks made the business of manufacture and supply-chain outsourcing safe for Silicon Valley to embrace, by building Singapore-based Flextronics into a global giant. During Marks' reign, Flextronics made products as diverse as Legos to Microsoft Zune to XBox, and few people know more about how technology goes from concept to product. Now he’s turned his substantial expertise, and that of his Flextronics CFO and CTO, toward private equity. Marks is a founder of Riverwood Capital, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm that last year began raising its debut fund with a $1.25 billion target.

Well, the inevitable has finally happened: Tim Draper and Carlos Santana laid down a track together. It was only a matter of time before one of the greatest syndicators and collaborators of Silicon Valley ran into one of the greatest collaborators of the music world. Call it “Risk Master Remastered” to the tune of Santana’s […]

People start blogs about the Silicon Valley tech scene every day, but the Forbes Velocity Blog is particularly notable because it’s written by one of the best journalists in Silicon Valley. Brian Caulfield is a relentless reporter and skillful writer and the blog effort he spearheads is an important strategic addition to the Forbes family of publications. Outside of the Midas List and Brian’s coverage of the computer and gaming industry, Forbes has been surprisingly weak in its coverage of such a key part of the global wealth generation equation.

Dan said earlier today that there's a "giant glut of private companies looking to go public," and it's my sense that he's right. There has to be, right? So many venture dollars have been poured into private companies that there's bound to be portfolios with companies just chomping at the bit to file a slew of S-1s. But how many companies are out there that could go reasonably go public today if you assume that a public company has to have $50 million in revenue and has to have reached break even?

So you’ve raised tens of millions of VC dollars and you’re starting to look around for what’s next. Will you work to raise more money from private equity shops and project financiers, look to nuzzle up to strategic acquirers or jump into the public market? Traditionally, executives and venture capitalists have turned to investment bankers to help them think through these questions and offer advice. And there have been plenty of bankers willing to help out, many with serious experience in technology. But how do you evaluate a cleantech investment banker? Do you look for someone with a long history of done deals in the cleantech space or do you rely totally on their pitch? Do you go with a big-name firm or a

“I don’t know what kind of a career I’m going to have in venture capital.” That’s what I was recently told by a managing director at a well-regarded Silicon Valley venture firm. His comment had little to do with his own interest or ability in the VC business. In fact, he’s one of the more […]

Zappos is the first big win for Sequoia Capital’s eleventh fund, and it won’t likely be the last. The firm’s $425 million, 2003 vintage fund caught startups in a weird time -- after the dotcom bust but before Web 2.0 kicked into high gear. It invested in dotcom survivors like Zappos and eHarmony, as well as companies that presaged Web 2.0, like LinkedIn and Kayak.com. The firm used the dotcom downturn to its advantage, picking up enviable stakes in attractive companies. Though six years into the fund’s life, however, Sequoia has yet to reap many of the rewards of its investing. So far, Sequoia has sold eight of the 36 companies in its 11th fund, according to data from Thomson Reuters (plus some supplemental work by peHUB).

Zappos this evening issued a public statement that it wants to quash rumors that Sequoia Capital "forced" the company to sell itself to Amazon. The implication is that peHUB claimed that Sequoia "forced" the sale. To be clear, we made no such claim. We wrote, in part: “Two sources who do not hold board seats, but are directly involved with Zappos, indicated that Moritz and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh came into conflict about the company’s future. Moritz, the sources say, wanted Zappos to sell while Hsieh wanted to remain independent.” We stand by our reporting. A venture capitalist and CEO disagreeing about the future of a company happens all the time. The two groups may disagree on how best to serve shareholders, fight hard for

The decision to sell hot online shoe retailer Zappos to Amazon.com was more in line with the interests of Sequoia Capital than the company’s CEO, according to two sources close to the company. One of the sources says Zappos was financially strong enough to wait for the IPO market to recover, if it chose to […]