Connie Loizos
Talk about an October surprise.
Two executives of Seattle-based software startup Entellium have been arrested and charged with having cooked the books in an effort to attract, and to keep attracting, venture capital funding.
Entellium’s former CEO, Paul Johnston, and its former CFO, Parrish Jones, appeared in U.S. District Court in Seattle late today, where neither entered a plea. Johnston is being held at the SeaTac Federal Detention Center because he’s a citizen of the U.K. and considered a flight risk, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. Jones was released on bond after putting up his Seattle condominium as collateral.
Late late month, an HR employee of Seattle-based Entellium -- which sells online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software -- discovered financial information in the desk of a former sales VP that suggested Entellium's revenues were repeatedly misrepresented
You'd be crazy to call Esther Dyson a space cadet, right? Dyson’s cred as technology prognosticator and influencer is about as solid as it gets, thanks to a decades-long career as a prolific angel investor, writer, and until 2006, organizer of PC Forum, the gold standard in tech conferences for more than 20 years.
Yet a space cadet Dyson will be if certain stars align. The space enthusiast is spending the next six months in a $3 million cosmonaut training program at a center near Moscow, where she is being instructed as back-up for billionaire Charles Simonyi.
Not many people choose to leave the comfy confines of venture capital. After five years as a principal at Columbia Capital in Alexandria, Va., Roland Reynolds did just that.
A couple of weeks ago, TechCrunch wrote a piece that asked whether venture firms could count on their LPs -- considering that a lot of wealthy individuals are now watching their net worth slip away like sands in an hourglass.
Today I discussed that scenario with Mac Hofeditz, a partner with San Francisco-based fund placement firm Probitas Partners. We also talked about fund-raising activity, and what the credit crunch and acne have in common (he said it, not me). Read the Q&A after the jump.
Pierre Lamond, a general partner with Sequoia Capital since 1981, is retiring from the firm, according to two sources — one of whom says to expect other retirements to follow soon. When asked about his plans, Lamond sent a non-denial denial email to peHUB: “Connie, my answer is: What retirement?” Lamond didn’t respond to a follow-up […]
Disgraced Broadcom co-founder Henry Nicholas can’t catch a break. Not only has Vanity Fair just published a must-read feature about his surreal life, but in today’s news, the Orange County Register discovers that federal agents recently seized the billionaire’s 15-year-old Gulfstream G-IV, asserting that it was used to move illegal drugs like cocaine and ecstasy for […]
Tom Crotty, managing general partner of Battery Ventures, told me yesterday that his firm believes that that “between 25 and 30 deals provides the proper portfolio effect.” I’d never heard a VC mention the ideal portfolio size with such specificity, so I asked what he meant. “If you build a portfolio of less than 20 deals, […]
"Where are these guys going to find another career that pays them nearly as much to do next to nothing? I mean, being a mediocre VC, it doesn't get any better. The funny thing is, if you tell a VC that, he laughs, thinking that you're talking about the next guy."
While most of Silicon Valley has resigned itself to a future with three options—sell, acquire or fail—Lise Buyer has spent the last two years counseling companies on how to go public at her consultancy, Class V Group.
I just spoke with Buyer, who first made her name as an Internet analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in the ‘90s and later helped architect Google’s IPO. Among other things, we discussed the IPO picture going forward, and how a severe recession might impact her own path.
Jeffrey Sohl, the Director of the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire has a proposition for VCs, and, well, they aren’t going to like it. His suggestion? That they return part of their funds.