Connie Loizos

Since opening a Twitter account, former baseball player Jose Canseco has been entertaining and offending his now 334,394 Twitter followers with what are often grotesque tweets. Indeed, yesterday, Huffington Post published a slideshow of some of Canseco’s more absurd messages, including, “I am on the toilet thinking about writing a third book,” and, “I am […]

In addition to a newly released early-stage startup survey published by Silicon Valley Bank, SVB released a Silicon Valley CEO survey today, in which 153 executives, representing $1.7 trillion in annual revenue, answered questions about their biggest challenges and concerns right now. Near the top of the list, at number four, is the massively dysfunctional California state government. Other interesting data points: CEOs’ top concern continues to be housing costs for their employees. Valley CEOs strongly support increasing motor vehicle fees and gasoline taxes while wanting to see a reduction in corporate and personal income taxes. Local executives also want to see fewer state dollars dedicated to prisons, they aren’t fans of most of the

Last month, Silicon Valley Bank conducted an online survey of 304 U.S.-based tech and life sciences startups with annual revenues of less than $5 million to get a better idea of what’s happening in the early-stage environment. Worth noting, 127 respondents were from California — 96 of them from the Bay Area. Among SVB’s findings, […]

Thanks, Wall Street Journal, for this rare glimpse into the interior of one of the world's most luxe yachts. Designed by Phillipe Starck, the $300 million "A" is rife with enough mirrors, Baccarat crystal, and silverleaf to have made Liberace blush, but the greatest extravagance aboard the 394-foot colossus-- and the greatest eccentricity -- may be the room lined exclusively with stingray hides. (Really.) Melnichenko, for anyone who cares, is the billionaire chair of Russia's largest fertilizer producer, EuroChem. Video after the jump.

Pascal Levensohn always has been a particularly thoughtful VC, so it's no surprise that he's approaching the wind-down of his 15-year-old firm with a reasoned explanation. After the jump you can read a note authored by Levensohn this morning, and sent to peHUB. Not cited is whether or not the decision had to do with LP reaction to a possible fourth fund, which was rumored to have been in the works. San Francisco-based Levensohn Venture Partners is a San Francisco-based firm that has made early-stage investments in the digital media, security and demand-side cleantech space.

Just when you think it can’t get worse for CNet cofounder Halsey Minor, it does. Earlier this week, the California Franchise Tax Board released a list of the 250 most egregious tax delinquents. Topping the list — numero uno — is Minor and wife Shannon, who owe the state $13,120,479.39. Minor’s financial troubles aren’t new, if their depth […]

TechCrunch is now reporting that Groupon is on the verge of closing a $130 million Series C round at a stunning $1.35 billion valuation. According to TC’s source, Digital Sky Technologies, the same Russian holding company that’s become a major stakeholder in Facebook, is leading the round with participation from Battery Ventures and, presumably, Accel Partners, which led the company’s $30 million Series B just five months ago. The best part about this story? According to TC, Groupon isn’t raising the money for operations because it’s right now making money “hand over fist.” Instead, Groupon is taking the money to cash out insiders. If we were talking about twentysomethings without enough capital to buy themselves penthouse apartments, I could understand their rationale. But Groupon’s insiders are fabulously wealthy.

Jim Rose has some stories to share. Like a lot of ambitious young people, the now 36-year-old Wisconsin native moved to Silicon Valley in 1997 to make his fortune. Indeed, he quickly co-founded Mobshop, one of the first online startups to let consumers pool their buying power in exchange for discounted goods. The company raised more than $50 million from the likes of Marc Andreessen and Mayfield Fund before shutting down in the wake of the dot.com explosion. The experience of going “up with the bubble and down with the crash” wasn’t an easy one for Rose, but it taught him lessons about pacing — and fundraising. Indeed, Rose raised just $400,000 when he next founded a vertical search site called Vamoose that was acquired by Internet Brands for a “sub $10 million” exit one year later. Today, Rose is at it again with his third startup, StorySomething, an online storytelling platform that he recently cofounded with Jonathan Ehrlich, director of consumer marking at Facebook. We talked yesterday about StorySomething, what’s happening on the fundraising front, and what — as someone well-acquainted with the group-buying model — Rose makes of Groupon’s reported new valuation of roughly $1.2 billion.

As Twitter turns its attention toward real revenue and “official” Twitter applications, I asked Chris Sacca for some insight. Sacca is an angel investor in more than two dozen startups, including both Twitter and the URL shortener bit.ly (highlighted in a widely-read Biz Insider piece titled: "Here's Who Just Got Screwed by Twitter"). He weighed in on whether third-party Twitter developers really are cooked. What did you think of Business Insider's round-up? Is there room for small players to coexist alongside Twitter or is it now the case that if Twitter can build it, they will? Business Insider has attained a level of sensationalism that I can't take seriously as journalism any more. Just look at how many times they retweeted their own article today. The ecosystem developers have the lead right now. They have innovated faster than Twitter and they will continue to do so. They are smaller and nimbler and have the freedom to take more chances.

TechCrunch is reporting that the group buying site Groupon, which raised a $30 million round at a $250 million valuation in December from NEA and Accel Partners and has raised $35.8 million altogether, is raising more money right now at a stunning $1.2 billion valuation. You can read the story here. In light of the news, it might be interesting to contemplate the fate of some of Groupon’s predecessors, including the once-popular group-buying site MobShop, which raised $51 million from Marc Andreessen and Mayfield Fund before going belly up in 2001. As with Groupon, analysts loved, loved, loved the idea of MobShop. As with Groupon, MobShop had plenty of competitors. Know what? They all disappeared. Maybe it was purely bad timing. Maybe it was, a little bit, the sustainability of the concept, too. You decide. Is Groupon really worth $1.2 billion or are we heading down a well-worn path?