Connie Loizos
How hot is the New York tech scene? Maybe a little too hot, suggests Owen Davis, managing director of NYC Seed, a three-year old seed fund that provides up to $200,000 to New York startups via a partnership with the New York City Investment Fund, the New York City Economic Development Corp., and other local organizations. […]
Tech culture tends to celebrate renegade entrepreneurs who drop out of school to pursue their passion. But that was never really Garrett Camp’s bag. Though Camp co-founded the popular discovery engine StumbleUpon as an undergrad at the University of Calgary, he didn’t quit to focus narrowly on the company. He went in the opposite direction, spending the […]
If you don’t like fundraising, you probably shouldn’t be an investor. And you most definitely shouldn't work for San Francisco-based Crosslink Capital, whose partners fundraise year round. The reason, as some readers will know, is that Crosslink invests out of three funds: a venture capital fund, a crossover fund that backs both private and public companies, and a hedge fund that exclusively invests in public companies.
The firm closed its sixth and most recent venture capital fund with $200 million last September. (Its previous two venture funds closed with $250 million and $230 million respectively.) Rather than kick back and celebrate, Crosslink is out raising its crossover fund, whose target is anywhere from $450 million – the size of its last crossover fund – to $280 million, the amount of its second-to-last crossover fund.
“If we come in somewhere between those two, we’ll be really happy,” says Jim Feuille, a general partner who has been with Crosslink since 2002 and sits on the board of Pandora along with nine other companies.
Given that Feuille knows a thing or two about fundraising, as well as late-stage investing, I’ve been wanting to get his views on the spate of late-stage funds and investments we’re seeing today. I finally caught up with him this afternoon. Our conversation has been edited for length.
Last night, reading a TechCrunch profile of the weeks-old startup Zaarly, it was possible to imagine that the company — whose mobile app connects people with things that they don’t have the time or resources to secure themselves — could be the next Foursquare. It wasn’t just the piece itself was bullish. But the absence of […]
Wow, new data coming out of the IVC Research Center and KPMG may surprise those who haven’t been following the Israel’s celebrated tech industry. Evidently, not a dollar was committed to Israeli venture capital funds last year, a disaster even compared with 2009, when just $234 million was raised — $200 million of it by Sequoia […]
If you live in Silicon Valley, you may be hearing more Briticisms than usual this week. The reason: 18 U.K.-based startups have descended on the area for a week-long schmooze fest organized by WebMission, a competition that identifies the fastest growing “Web economy” companies in London, then gets their founders in front of those who can help […]
Earlier this week, Andreessen Horowitz’s newest general partner, Scott Weiss, sang his new employer’s praises, telling me that Andreessen Horowitz is a well-run organization that solicits 360-degree reviews of its GPs yearly, including from its CEOs and (presumably anonymously) other employees within the firm, including its other GPs. The firm isn’t the first. Tens of venture firms […]
I’m constantly amazed by how short news cycles have become and the extent to which the Twitter echo chamber now defines how we judge a hot startup. Valuation news is regularly leaked, for example, then relentlessly retweeted, seemingly providing instant validation for many companies, when in reality, valuations for private companies mean very little. Unfortunately, […]
Kevin Covert says he built the media and software groups at Montgomery & Co. from scratch. Maybe he did too good a job. Last year, Covert quietly left the 12-year-old Santa Monica-based investment bank to launch his own eponymous platform, Covert & Co., and its mantra this time is to stay small and remain focused. […]
The Seattle-based cleantech company Powerit Solutions has raised $5 million in funding, led by Black Coral Capital, with participation from existing investors, which include @Ventures, Expansion Capital Partners, and Stellar Holdings. The company has raised roughly $18 million to date. It has also brought aboard as CEO Matthew Schiltz, most recently the president and CEO of […]