Connie Loizos

Earlier today, Bloomberg published a story about how Redpoint Ventures, which famously backed MySpace in 2005, is telling its startups to cut their staffs by 10 percent. The report said the firm “gave the job-cutting advice at a conference of its portfolio companies and limited partners last week,” citing Redpoint's Geoff Yang as the source. Considering that most firms had similar sit-downs with their portfolio companies beginning last October, I asked Yang tonight about the timing, as well as whether blanket advice to cut jobs couldn’t, in some cases, undermine the value of Redpoint’s portfolio companies. He got back to me almost immediately via email.

Entrepreneurs with one success in the rear view mirror are more likely to succeed in subsequent ventures than either first-time entrepreneurs, or those who failed in a past endeavor. So finds new research from the Harvard Business school that, unsurprisingly, also finds that success often begets success because of the support that gets thrown behind […]

A couple of years ago, I wrote a story for the San Jose Mercury News about venture capitalists who leave the industry to become entrepreneurs themselves. As I noted then, sometimes they leave over personality conflicts, or power struggles. Sometimes it’s because their firms are winding down or because their chances of promotion are bleak. Yet […]

It’s no surprise that in a crummy market, money disputes tend to surface more than when everyone is feeling flush. But it may surprise you to learn that those disputes are taking place over startups sold as long ago as in mid 2007. San Francisco-based Shareholder Representative Services (SRS) is seeing the trend from the […]

Josh Felser and Dave Samuel —  a team of entrepreneurs who’ve founded and sold two startups for hundreds of millions of dollars —  are getting into the early-stage venture capital business, and they’ve established some nontraditional objectives toward that end. “Ideally, we’re looking to invest in startups that raise less than $5 million from investors, […]

Maybe it was something in the water at eBay. Three years after the failed gubernatorial bid of former eBay executive Steve Westly, Meg Whitman, a 52-year-old Republican who became a billionaire as eBay’s CEO, has announced an exploratory committee to make a 2010 run for the California’s governor’s office. Whitman was most recently an adviser to Senator […]

Hope springs eternal in Silicon Valley. Or it did until recently. Like in the rest of the country, laid off employees are beginning to pile up, and no one knows how much worse things will grow before they get better. I talked with several investors and entrepreneurs this week for their perspectives.  In their own […]

Okay, so he’s a billionaire genius who lives in a 50,000-square-foot $125 million mansion. But Bill Gates isn’t so unlike the rest of us. When he wants to unwind, he sometimes does so by trying to learn something new, through teach12.com, a 19-year-old, Virginia company that sells CDs and DVDs on courses on everything from medieval history to fine arts and music. So he tells Arianna Huffington, who spoke privately with Gates at this week’s TED conference, and who has just posted part of that interview at her site. The conversation is mostly. For example, Gates teasingly tells Huffington that if he doesn’t sleep at least seven hours a night, “my IQ gets lower.” More interesting is what Gates reveals about his views on the current economy, which has drained the

For 20 years, Nancy Albertini has been recruiting candidates into the tech industry, most recently through her three-year-old firm Albertini Group. Though the small, 11-person, outfit is based in Dallas, Albertini works out of Silicon Valley, conducting executive searches for both startups and bigger corporate behemoths. We talked for a few minutes just now about where we are in terms of layoffs, and new job opportunities, in the Valley. The layoffs are really starting to pile up out here. Do you think there’s been an overreaction to the economic downturn, or have people yet to react strongly enough? Boy, this is a very difficult market. Overall, the venture community has a more global view than startups and they believe this crisis is deeper than the operational people do. So in some cases, I think they’ve pressed for cuts that are too deep, hoping to cut just once. At the same time, we’re

A year ago, News Corp. was one of a handful of names that consistently arose alongside talk of M&A. Now, getting acquired by the company seems as remote a possibility as flying unicorns -- especially after today's earnings call. Earlier this afternoon, the media conglomerate reported a $6.4 billion net loss for the most recent quarter, after taking an $8.4 billion writedown on its newspaper, TV and information service business divisions.