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Cisco's acquisition of the wireless infrastructure company, announced this morning, may have created some happy venture capital firms -- and some happy Limited Partners who can now look forward to getting their checks. Highland Capital, North Bridge and Matrix were all early stage investors in Starent, and as of January 15 held substantial stakes in the company, according to an SEC filing.

Jason Calacanis stepped up his attack on angel groups that charge entrepreneurs to pitch their startups, circulating another long blog post with anonymous criticisms of two of the groups he's called out -- the Keiretsu Forum and privateequityforums.com -- and a claim that he expects Keiretsu to sue him by the end of the week. Not so, said Keiretsu founder Randy Williams. There's never been a lawsuit, Williams said, although he adds that Calacanis has his facts wrong and has misstated the fees Keiretsu charges. "I've not talked to an attorney or counsel. I always take the high road," Williams said. "My wife and family are very hurt by (the criticisms) -- there's a lot of collateral damage. But I think Keiretsu will get tremendous exposure because of this and more companies will come to us and we'll fund greater companies because of this."

NASDAQ OMX's Bruce Aust dropped this tidbit at the VentureWire conference this morning in Silicon Valley, although he wouldn't provide many details. The exchange would work under the NASDAQ's Boston license, which NASDAQ acquired a couple of years ago along with the Boston Stock Exchange, and would be a "lower-tier listing market" aimed both at emerging companies and companies that are financially solid but can't meet the NASDAQ's current listing requirements. It would be good for VCs. "We've seen (VCs and companies) looking for alternative ways to exit, and we want to create a market to make it easier," he said in an interview. NASDAQ has been working closely with the National Venture Capital Association on this project, but still has to get it approved by the SEC. He wouldn't say how long that might take.

It's expected to reach no more than $115 billion this year, according to New Energy Finance, which released third quarter figures earlier this month -- that's down from $155 billion last year and $148 billion in 2007 (although 2009 should still be better than 2006). Furthermore, although the group's analysts expect clean energy investments to triple by 2020 to more than $300 billion a year, that's only 60 percent of what they figure is needed to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Centigrade. Several scientists fear coastal flooding and other catastrophic climate change may happen if the world gets hotter than that.

Jason Calacanis's blog post Friday attacking angel investor groups who charge entrepreneurs to pitch their startups continues to generate Tweets, comments and blog posts, many from outraged entrepreneurs. VC Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures also weighed in for Jason, warning entrepreneurs to avoid not only angel groups that charge but also "startup agents that charge entrepreneurs upfront cash to make intros to potential investors...A basic rule of thumb for fundraising agents is that they must work on a success fee basis or you should not use them." However, representatives from two more of the groups Calacanis attacked by name -- Maverick Angels and the Keiretsu Forum -- called over the weekend to defend their practices.

Plenty of countries keep trying to do it, according to Chris Gill at SVASE (the non-profit Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs). He just got back from Japan, where he attended a conference with Kauffman Foundation Fellows to train Japanese who want to be entrepreneurs. Japanese entrepreneurs hit some serious roadblocks, he said, because their families want them to work for big companies, which has been the traditional road to success in Japan. Representatives of Ireland, Spain, the European Union, Canada and South America have also contacted Gill to see if SVASE could export Silicon Valley to their countries -- he gets about one request a month. But he can't, he said,

TechCrunch50's Jason Calacanis is circulating a long rant today against angel investors who charge entrepreneurs to hear their pitches. Maybe it's a slow Friday for Jason too, but he calls out five groups by name -- the Keiretsu Forum, Maverick Angels, privateequityforums.com, the Tech Supper Club and Angels Den UK -- and claims that if they don't stop charging, they'll be targeted for "elimination" with "competing, fee-free events directly opposite your events," which investors will be encouraged to boycott. Calacanis also writes that it's "low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time," and that entrepreneurs who do pay are either "less good" or less connected, because good ideas spread naturally. "If your only option is to pay to get in front of these folks you've probably got an idea that is weak or bad." I called these groups, and two of them got back to me. Their response was the same: Nonsense.

Here's an unpublished paper from two management professors -- Andrew Metrick at Yale and Ayako Yasuda at UC Davis -- on the economics of private equity. (The paper is due to appear soon in the Review of Financial Studies). The two have analyzed data on 238 funds (94 VC funds, 144 buyout funds) raised over a 13-year period -- between 1993 and 2006 -- and looked at the revenue earned by fund managers. The result? Buyout managers earn a lot more money than VCs. "BO managers build on their prior experience by increasing the size of their funds faster than VCs do," Metrick and Yasuda wrote. "This leads to significantly higher revenue per partner and per professional in later BO funds, despite the fact that these later funds have lower revenue per dollar. Conversely, while prior experience by VC managers does lead to significantly higher revenue per partner in later funds, it does not lead to significantly higher revenue per professional." Buyout managers who can successfully handle $100 million companies can transfer their skills to $1 billion companies and quickly grow their funds, while VCs can't:

The gene sequencing company is one of the top venture fundraisers of the year so far, with a $68 million round in August that took its venture haul to $266 million. It has spent $180 million of that money and hired 280 people -- all but 60 of them in research and development -- and it hasn't even shipped a product. That's been promised for the second half of next year, and CEO Hugh Martin said production is on track. But a $1.2 million grant that Pacific Biosciences announced today from the National Institutes of Health is just as exciting, Martin said, even though the amount pales in comparison to the venture capital the company has raised, because it could allow Pacific Biosciences to get into new businesses that go way beyond gene sequencing. "This was completely not planned from the beginning," Martin said. "We've built a phenomenal piece of detection technology" to observe individual small molecules "and (it turns out) we're just scratching the surface in what we've learned."

Friends of the Silicon Valley lawyer, who died this week at age 62 after suffering a stroke, will remember Johnson this Sunday with one of his favorite activities -- a bike ride. They're leading an 18-mile tour of some of his old Silicon Valley haunts, timed to end at 2:30 with his memorial service at Stanford, Johnson's alma mater, which riders are being asked to attend in their bike clothes. "A rolling tribute to a leader," as the ride is called, will pass by Wilson Sonsini where Johnson started his legal career, the house where he lived until his death and the first office of the Venture Law Group, which Johnson founded and which represented many Silicon Valley startups.