Connie Loizos

The New York Times published a revealing piece today about the angel scene, one finding that many individual investors are either sitting on their checkbooks or else buying up deeply discounted publicly traded stocks. Dan Martin, an angel investor who owns stakes in a handful of startups, told the paper that right now, the stock […]

You have to say this about Lloyd Chapman: He doesn’t sit on his hands. The president of the 100,000 member American Small Business League has been sending out a flurry of releases that condemn President Obama’s selection of venture capitalist Karen Mills as the new head of the Small Business Administration. (She’s still awaiting her Senate confirmation hearing.) “On day one she needs to start solving the SBA’s number one problem, which is the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants,” Chapman told the Long Island Business News a couple of days ago. “We’re concerned Mills, a venture capitalist, will support policies that will divert even more small business contracts to companies owned by venture capitalists.” It’s a new approach for Chapman, who until lately, has railed instead against the government’s Small Business Innovation Research program, which is up for retooling in March, when authorization

I’m sure most readers have seen the lists by now. A Facebook friend tags you, asking you to write 25 random things about yourself; you post it to your profile in a “note” and it shows up in your friends’ news feed. You can also tag up to 25 of your friends, asking them to […]

The National Venture Capital Association has just posted the most recent venture capital performance data available. It’s not as bleak as you might expect, largely because the data extends only through September 30, 2008. According to the organization: Turmoil in the broader capital markets and the closed IPO window drove the one-year all venture private […]

Al Waxman has an agenda. The founder of Psilos Group -- an 11-year-old healthcare-focused venture capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Santa Fe, and New York -- wants more VCs to forget about backing Web startups and electric cars and start focusing instead on finding startups that can meaningfully improve the nation’s disastrous healthcare system. Waxman isn’t interested in drug discovery. As he says, “that’s not our thing.” Instead, he says there are plenty of opportunities to create efficiencies around retiree health benefits, medical records and the like, and that it’s only American to start chasing them down -- now. For what it’s worth, Psilos’s biggest hit to date has been Active Health Management, a company that advised businesses and public health organizations on how to improve healthcare based on the

There’s been a lot of talk about Joseph Dear, the new chief investment officer at CalPERS, who was recruited from his post as executive director of the Washington State Investment Board. Yet no one has really addressed what it means that Bob Grady, a partner at the Carlyle Group and former chair of the National […]

Turns out that last year, 483 Israeli high-tech companies raised $2.08 billion from local and foreign venture investors, 18 percent above the $1.76 billion raised in 2007 and 28 percent above 2006 levels. That’s the good news for Israeli entrepreneurs. The bad news is that the sharp slowdown in investments made by U.S. VCs was mirrored […]

Minneapolis-based Yugma, which offers free and premium Web conferencing hosting, is in the market for a $3.6 million round right now, according to a new SEC filing. All things considered, it’s timing is pretty good. According to the consultancy Access Markets International, small and medium businesses with less than 1,000 employees are set to spend up to […]

According to Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, venture capitalist Scott Murphy, a managing director atventure fund network Advantage Capital, is among a small pool of contenders for the Congressional seat of Kirsten Gillibrand, New York's junior Senator as of earlier today. Evidently, the rural upstate seat is in a traditionally Republican-leaning district, but a Republican candidate would be far from a shoo-in after an election cycle that’s left the party reeling. New York Governor David Paterson is expected to call a special election, one that will likely fall in early March.

A team of executives out of the publicly traded software company Vignette is putting together an online community devoted to religion and spirituality. Called Patheos, the startup is based in Denver, and according to an SEC filing, is in the midst of raising a $750,000 seed round. Unlike other, narrowly focused religion sites, Patheos will […]