Connie Loizos

Like many VC firms feeling the pain of a shuttered IPO market, a dramatic slowdown in M&A, and acutely cash-conscious LPs, Palo Alto-based Labrador Ventures is suspending any efforts to raise a new fund.   Asked about the decision, partner Larry Kubal told me that “Labrador is not currently raising a fund while working for exits […]

If you really love Silicon Valley — I do — you might find a new(ish) documentary interesting. Produced last year by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, it features interviews with 54 founders whose work has shaped the way we lead our lives. Here’s where to buy it. Below is a trailer, the best part of […]

Lordy. The global economy will probably rebound before the trial of billionaire Broadcom cofounder Henry Nicholas finally gets underway. A federal judge said today that he’ll delay Nicholas’s trial until February 2010, after the trial for his co-defendant, William Ruehle, the former CFO of Broadcom, now scheduled to get underway in October. Both have pleaded […]

Updated: Four firms that ranked among the top 10 most active U.S. venture firms in each of the first three quarters of 2008 didn’t make the top 10 list in the fourth quarter of last year, according to new Thomson Reuters’ data. It’s a notable bunch, too; those who slowed down are Kleiner Perkins and […]

Like everyone else in Silicon Valley (and lots of other places), I read the popular blog TechCrunch. I also scan the comments, which are often insightful. One of the toughest comments I’ve read just appeared on the site about an hour ago in response to Michael Arrington’s bullish write-up of 10-year-old Rearden Commerce, a company that […]

A couple of weeks ago, Erin wrote about a little tax rule designed to dissuade more than 2% of a fund’s LP interests from changing hands in a single year. The danger, as she reported, is that any fund that sees more than 2 percent of its LP interests sell on the secondary market is in danger of losing its “private” status, and the related tax benefits. Erin was writing about buyout funds, but I gathered the rule was applicable to venture funds as well, so earlier today, I called up Ben Berk, an attorney in the tax strategies and planning group of Howard Rice in San Francisco. Ben told me much more about the rule, and whether, given the uptick in venture shares trading around on the secondary market these days, VCs should be concerned about it. Can you put this 2 percent rule into some context for us? Sure, it’s one of at least three safe harbors that people try to structure into. The first safe harbor is that if 90 percent of the income of a fund is qualifying income -- basically capital gains dividends and interest income -- then you’re not going to be considered [by the IRS] to be publicly traded. If in any year, that qualifying income is less than 90 percent, then you have to move on to a second test.

Internet billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban may be facing an insider trading claim by the Securities & Exchange commission, but he has some useful advice regarding how to track down a real crook. At his site, Blog Maverick, Cuban says that were he working for the SEC or a news organization assigned to cover […]

Economic crisis? Puhlease. According to the January issue of Overhaul & Maintenance, extraordinarily deep-pocketed Americans are still buying up large luxury jets, particularly narrowbody and widebody models, like the Airbus A318 Elite, whose current list price is $62 million. “If you can afford to spend $62 million or more on an aircraft, then you are probably a billionaire, or well on the way to becoming one,” David Velupillai, product marketing director of executive and private aviation for Airbus, told the magazine. And apparently, there are still plenty of them floating around. Indeed, Velupillai says there’s so much demand for widebody planes -- the kind whose lavish living room areas, bedrooms,

Earlier last year, 38-year-old Erik Riesenberg was out with some colleagues in New York when after a few drinks, one of them gingerly suggested that Riesenberg, well, trim some unsightly nose hairs. Riesenberg wasn’t as embarrassed about the suggestion as he was at the thought of how long his friend had probably wanted to say […]

I don't have as much insight into Google as I'd like, though what I hear isn't always good, especially when it comes to pay. That Google has historically paid below market wasn't an issue for earlier employees who grew rich after the company went public. Today, however, despite the continued cache that working at Google confers, the low pay can sting. But that's apparently not the only gripe of people who've worked at Google. Over the weekend, TechCrunch obtained what looks like an authentic thread of emails from ex-Googlers elaborating on what they liked, and what they hated, about their experiences at the company. The list is long, and many of the same complaints resurface time and again, including around Google's "ruthlessly inefficient" hiring process, which has become notoriously long. (Google's 20th employee, David DesJardins, told me that back in 1999, he was offered a job three days after calling the company. Today, it routinely takes three to six months to land a job there.)