Connie Loizos

I'm not quite sure why Michael Arrington of "Technical Crunch" sat down with Tom Cruise impersonator Evan Ferrente, but I've just spent the last few minutes laughing at this interview, so if you missed this:

In December 2008, we reported on what appeared to be the end of Doubledown Media, publisher of a handful of magazines aimed at rich Wall Street executives, including Dealmaker, Trader Monthly, and Cigar Report. Two months later, the business officially folded after losing its credit line, but its president, Randall Lane, is still reliving his surreal experience at Doubledown -- and that’s good for all of us. This month’s Vanity Fair excerpts Lane’s new memoir, The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane, and the feature, focused on Lane’s encounter with Pop artist Peter Max, is delicious reading...

If you've been reading over the past day, you know that I yesterday wrote a piece wondering if the reportedly stretched finances of entrepreneur Elon Musk are of interest not only to Tesla Motors, the pre-IPO electric car company where he is CEO, but also of the space exploration company SpaceX, which Musk founded and where he is both CEO and CTO. (Musk, who made his fortune as a PayPal cofounder, has since invested all of his liquid assets in both companies.) My interest was piqued after reading a WSJ piece reporting that SpaceX “needs a cash infusion of more than $1 billion in the next year or two to reach its goal of transporting astronauts to the international space station later this decade." The story went on to suggest that, given the Obama administration's plans to turn space travel over to private companies, "U.S. taxpayers are the most likely source of future assistance.” SpaceX board member (and fellow PayPal cofounder) Luke Nosek, told me today that Musk's personal financial picture is irrelevant. The reason, he said, is that SpaceX is expected to be profitable this year, as it has been for the past several years, owing to some very rich contracts. One is with Loral Space & Communications. A much bigger contract, valued at $1.6 billion, is with NASA, which is counting on SpaceX, as well as one of its competitor, Orbital Sciences, to transport cargo to the International Space Station once it retires its last shuttle in November. Tonight, Musk writes in with some more data points that are worth publishing.

Last night, I wrote about SpaceX after a Wall Street Journal article stated that the company “needs a cash infusion of more than $1 billion in the next year or two to reach its goal of transporting astronauts to the international space station later this decade. That’s twice the total investment by SpaceX since its […]

Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal published a compelling story about SpaceX, the space exploration company that hyperentrepreneur Elon Musk is running concurrently with Tesla Motors and that successfully launched a rocket -- called the Falcon 9 -- into a 155-mile orbit last Friday. The piece provides a detailed overview of SpaceX's past woes as evidence that privatizing space travel is a risky proposition, but it doesn’t ask a key question: whether SpaceX can continue competing for the U.S. government's business in light of Musk’s stretched personal finances. It was just a couple of weeks ago that Musk confirmed to VentureBeat that he has been living off the fast-dwindling personal loans of friends. The admission came after Musk revealed -- in a February court filing relating to his divorce from science fiction novelist Justine Musk -- that he ran out of his own money last November.

I chatted earlier today with Venky Ganesan of Globespan Capital Partners, and much as we all watch with fascination as the venture industry is downsized, Ganesan had an astute observation about the growing number of “walking dead” venture firms: “Fundraising is turning out to be an enormous pain for most VCs, but things can turn around, […]

Pepsi, the food and beverage giant, is ramping up the ways it connects technologically with its customers. Toward that end, the company just launched a new contest aimed at involving 10 startups in yearlong pilot programs with one of Pepsi’s dozens of brands, including Frito-Lay, Mountain Dew, and Tropicana. Organized in conjunction with Highland Capital Partners and Mashable, Pepsi is also offering winners access to its public relations and branding partners, including Weber Shandwick and OMD. “The idea is to identify young entrepreneurs with promising technologies but who don’t have a clear business plan to work with marketers,” says Seth Kaufman, PepsiCo’s director of media strategy and investment. Pepsi is hoping such relationships will help itself better connect with consumers -- “which is very important for us to figure out,” says Kaufman -- while serving as a marquee client off which the startups can capitalize down the road.

The night before last, Bill Gates and his father, Bill Gates Sr., sat before a sold-out audience in New York, where it was revealed, not for the first time, that Gates, who’d been nicknamed “Trey,” was more than a typical handful as a teenager. He was such a discipline problem, in fact, that the Gateses wound up in family therapy for a full two years. The disclosure’s timing wasn’t accidental. Gates Sr. just released an updated, paperback version of his memoir, Showing Up For Life, in time for Father’s Day. But according to Gates Sr., it wasn’t him who most wrestled with their independent-minded, boundary-pushing teenage son but his now-deceased wife Mary.

Let’s face it: VCs speak their own language, and it’s sometimes more frat boy than Thoreau. We all know the VC who says to “trust the process” or who goes on “pity dates” with entrepreneurs. Others might joke about “putting lipstick on a pig” of an investment, or point to a newly acquired startup and say of its founder that he or she “pulled a Patzer” (i.e., left money on the table by selling too quickly). I hate to say that Sigma managing director Greg Gretsch has inadvertently taken things to a new level with the title of his new blog post, “Don’t Let a Venture Capitalist De-flower Your Startup Without Making a Commitment.” Still, the post has a thought-provoking premise: If an entrepreneur is going to be dazzled by a top-tier VC firm that wants to help seed his or her company, that funding had better come with a board commitment from the VC. Without one, the entrepreneur is facing a “double-edged sword."

Back in January, online textbook rental service Chegg sent a lawyerly letter to rival Bookrenter, insisting that it stop referring to itself as “#1 in Textbook Rentals” -- a title to which Chegg had laid claim. At the time, Chegg had already raised a stunning $144 million in cash and debt, including from Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and Insight Venture Partners. BookRenter only had collected $6 million, from Storm Ventures and Adams Capital Management. Given their respective sizes, the decision to bear down on Bookrenter seemed ill-conceived, to say the least. (When I interviewed Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig back in March, he made a point of explaining that he “hadn’t even started at the company” when that letter was sent.) Today, BookRenter is fighting back, both with a fresh, $10 million round and a new direction that’s picking up traction. Unlike Chegg, which is placing an expensive bet on developing its own brand and competing with college bookstores, BookRenter thinks it can capture more market share by working with the universities. Whether it works longer-term remains to be seen, but since launching the platform in April, 75 schools around the country, including the University of Texas at Austin and the University of San Diego, have