Connie Loizos
A new study published in the journal Information Systems Research and led by Rohit Aggarwal, an Operations and Information Systems professor at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business, finds that bloggers can have a massive effect on both the funding amount and valuations of startups. More interestingly, Aggarwal's findings have something to say about whether one should pursue 10 posts from popular blogs versus 1,000 posts from not so popular blogs.
Felix Investments may be battling the SEC, but that isn’t keeping the New York-based firm from charging into new territory on an almost monthly basis. Its latest pitch? A fund to acquire stakes in late-stage venture companies at a discount to current market valuations.
What a difference a year makes, at least when it comes to the venture industry’s 10-year performance numbers.
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is endeavoring to do something more ambitious than ever before. He’s trying to transform 1.5 miles of arid, dust-caked downtown Las Vegas into a bustling entrepreneurial center with up to $350 million of his own money. The question is whether he can pull it off without someone to simply say, “no.”
There’s little question that on November 6, tech titans will be on tenterhooks as they watch the presidential election results. For one thing, who wins may determine whether today’s laws around repatriation -- bringing overseas earnings back to the U.S. -- will meaningfully change.
The Benchmark General Partner tells LPs at VCJ’s Venture Alpha conference that there are a number of brights spots in the VC industry, but he’s worried that they didn’t learn to be wary of funds in excess of $1 billion.
Bill Gurley has a message for institutional investors: Stop blasting money at what have historically been top-tier venture funds. “You’re not in the stands. You’re in the field. And when you allocate [your capital] obsessively to firms in the top quartile, it will have an impact on how things play out.”
Sausalito, Calif.-based liveBooks, a 7-year-old photo content management platform, has acquired two on-demand photo companies, Pinhole Press and Pinhole Pro. Financial details were not disclosed.
In May, Adam Marchick left Bain Capital to start his own Palo Alto-based startup, Kahuna, which has already raised “several million” dollars and attracted as cofounder the founding CTO of SugarCRM, Jacob Taylor. Its tagline: “Harnessing the power of big data insights to deliver business value to mobile application developers.”
Zyngenia, a biopharmaceutical company that is based in Gaithersburg, Md., and is developing next-generation multi-specific antibody-based drugs, has approved the appointment of new board members:Christian Itin and Jason Rhodes.