Connie Loizos

TouchCommerce, a Los Angeles-based startup that sells online chat customer service to companies like Vonage, has just raised $10 million in what looks to be a fifth round of funding. The company, known as InQ until changing its name last fall, has now raised $31 million in its 10-year history, from firms like Partech International, Emergence Capital, Dolphin Equity Partners and Hudson Ventures (all of which participated in the new funding). TouchCommerce isn’t the only startup whose technology prompts a pop-up chat screen to assist customers during their online sessions, either at the visitor’s request or when it senses that someone is stuck. It is, however, one of the few that gets paid when that customer buys something; most others charge a subscription fee.

Simeon Simeonov, a technology partner in the Boston office of Polaris Venture Partners, has left the venture firm to launch a startup meant to coach entrepreneurs and introduce them to funding sources. Simeonov joined the firm seven years ago after leaving Macromedia (now Adobe), where he was a VP. He also cofounded year-old Plinky, a […]

A couple of years ago, while a little bored and awaiting the birth of my son, I Googled the avuncular doctor who was caring for me at the time. To my horror, I discovered that the link appearing topmost wasn’t straightforward information about his practice or even a positive Yelp review (of which there were many), but instead a blogger’s tirade that accused him of extreme negligence decades ago. Whether or not the blogger’s portrayal was accurate (I couldn’t bring myself to mention it and that doctor has since retired), it's those kinds of damaging links that the startup ReputationDefender exists to obliterate, and on which its investors are hoping it will thrive.

As if U.S.-Russia relations weren’t sufficiently strained already, now comes word that the space tourists who recently traveled to the International Space Station and return Wednesday have been living out a Cold War of their own. At least, NASA and the Russian governments would reportedly have it that way. Fifty-year-old Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka -- who’s currently in space with four other individuals, including Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi -- says immediately before the Russian Soyuz rocket took off from Kazakhstan, he was told he couldn’t use a U.S. gym aboard the space station, or to eat any U.S. rations, or even to use the same toilet(!) used by Americans. (That toilet, btw, apparently cost NASA around $19 million back in 2007.)

Revolution Money, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based startup that centers around both a new credit card and a person-to-person payment system a la PayPal, has just raised $42 million from the unlikely TARP triumvirate Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, and Morgan Stanley, bringing total funding for the company to nearly $100 million. In 2007 — the company, a […]

Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but vacancies are up on Sand Hill Road for the first time since late 2005. So reports the WSJ in a smart look at the extent to which the recession is impacting the venture capital firms, as judged by the rental market along the famous 1.5-kilometer corridor that’s home to August […]

Stephen Colbert last night sat down with Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, just as new rumors of a Google acquisition offer surface (and get disputed). The interview is, predictably, well-worth watching. See it here (embed messing up).

You know things are slow when Forbes’ editors take the time to discern what the world’s 657 self-made billionaires have in common, but I’m glad they did. In the mag’s just-published findings, they’ve found a number of shared attributes among the supremely wealthy (extravagant toys notwithstanding). 1.) Math. The magazine says a “significant” percentage of billionaires were born to parents who were themselves proficient in math, as evidenced by their own professions, including accounting and engineering. 2.) More American billionaires were born in fall than in any other season.

Three years ago, Chris Hill was working as an associate at the mid-market buyout shop Lake Capital in Chicago, when he decided that, rather focus on online marketing businesses for his bosses, he’d quit to start his own. Hill’s first idea was PerkSpot, which has been managing employee discount programs for clients including Fortune 500 […]

Greentech Media, an online media company and research company, released its first-quarter findings last night. I’ve no idea if they’ll jibe with other first quarter numbers beginning to trickle out of the NVCA and elsewhere, but according to the Cambridge-based firm, investment in so-called green technologies hit $836 million in the first quarter, spread across […]