debbiegage

Former Bricsnet CEO Ethan Jinian left the software company in September and was indicted last month for embezzling over $1 million from Bricsnet, a charge that Jinian denies. Now another former employee of Bricsnet -- acting chief technology officer Kevin Horio -- claims that Jinian owes him money too. Horio says Jinian borrowed at least $350,000 from his technology consulting company, Dimensia, over a period of several years when the two were business partners. According to Horio, they were brought into Bricsnet in 2004 to assess Bricsnet's technology because Bricsnet's Madrid investors were considering shutting the company down. But the technology was good, Horio said, and the two started working for Bricsnet -- Horio as a technology consultant and Jinian as CEO.

We asked VCs this month about the most significant trends of 2009, and this was one of them -- that after years of waiting, small business owners finally saw it as worthwhile to get themselves and their companies onto the Web. "People used to think it was impossible to sell to small businesses, except through the Yellow Pages, who put armies of people on the street going door-to-door asking businesses to advertise," said Sharon Wienbar of Scale Venture Partners. Then she ticked off several Scale portfolio companies that do online marketing for small businesses -- HubSpot, MerchantCircle, Reply.com -- adding that each had a strong year. ReachLocal's proposed $100 million IPO today (S-1 filed here) is more evidence that she's right. The six-year-old company connects small businesses with potential customers by managing both their online and offline ad campaigns and has raised $68 million, according to Thomson Reuters -- including a Series D of $55 million a little over two years ago.

The target is $450 million, according to an SEC filing. Psilos did not return calls seeking comment, but Thomson Reuters says the firm manages around $550 million in capital. Its portfolio has been focused on healthcare services, healthcare IT and medical technology, and especially on companies that can both improve healthcare and lower costs. In September I wrote about a holding company that Psilos put together that combined technology from several of its portfolio companies -- including electronic health records, software that administers claims for employers who insure themselves, and transaction processing that manages plans -- and created a subsidiary in San Francisco called SeeChange that sells insurance plans for people with chronic but manageable diseases. Take care of yourself, and you and your employer save money.

Mohr Davidow this month named four researchers -- two from Stanford and two from UC Berkeley -- as recipients of a new Innovators Award that the venture firm designed last year. Each researcher will get $50,000, which Mohr Davidow's partners are taking out of their own fees, to work for a year on a high-risk project. Researchers are picked by senior faculty at their schools and can't be tenured. "This program is designed to identify, award and accelerate the early careers of professors we think have high potential for research and commercialization," said MDV partner Erik Straser. All four winners -- assistant professors Nick Melosh and Thomas Jaramillo at Stanford, UC Berkeley assistant professor Ali Javey, and Delia Milliron, who works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- are pursuing projects that may have applications to clean tech, including new ways to capture solar energy and make buildings more energy efficient. One of last year's winners, assistant professor Yi Cui of Stanford, who specializes in nanotechnology, said he is talking to Mohr Davidow about forming a company

The company designs and manufactures photovoltaic panels and has raised more venture capital this year -- $286 million in the third quarter, over $512 million total, according to Thomson Reuters -- than any one else. Equally impressive has been its ability to get money from the government. In March, Solyndra got a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to build a second solar panel fabrication plant in California -- the first clean tech company to get such a loan. It has applied for a second loan from the DOE of $469 million, according to the S-1, and estimates that the next phase of the fab will cost $642 million.

The Latin American social network -- which is headquartered in Buenos Aires and comes in English, Spanish and Portuguese -- says it will expand in Brazil and add new products. So far it claims 43.8 million users, most of them outside the U.S. The new money is an extension of a $4.3 million first round raised 18 months ago from DN Capital and individual investors. In a refreshing change from American social networks, Sonico has made privacy a core part of its site. Users can set up separate profiles for friends and family, business associates and the public -- "focused in the connection, not in the exposition" is the way the Web site puts it. Sonico also claims to moderate content to "make sure that information posted on the network is accurate and appropriate." Last year Connie Loizos caught up with one of Sonico's investors -- Stephan Paternot, whose great grandfather founded Nestle.

In light of today's reports that Google and maybe other companies are negotiating to buy Yelp, we wonder what an acquisition would mean for the various lawsuits that are filed against Yelp's users. Foster City dentist Yvonne Wong, for instance, sued a Los Altos couple -- Tai Jing and Jia Ma -- for defamation last year in Santa Clara County Superior Court, after they posted a highly negative review about her work on their son. She also wanted to sue Yelp, but held off when she found out that the site might be immune under the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which allows websites a lot of leeway in publishing material posted by third parties. In September, meanwhile, another dentist, Gelareh Rahbar, filed a similar suit in San Francisco Superior Court against one of her patients, Jennifer Batoon, after Batoon posted a negative review of Rahbar's work.

How do Jewish VCs -- or anyone who's Jewish for that matter -- get through the Christmas season when even those of us who celebrate Christmas may already be getting a little tired of the songs? Continuing in the spirit of the season, here's a piece from 2005 that was passed on by Foundry Group co-founder Brad Feld on the difference between Christmas and Chanukah (start by picking your spelling). Feld didn't write this, but it's cute. Get it after the jump.

Even though I said I wasn't surprised by this week's 2010 venture capital predictions, one item did catch my attention -- the slide where 48% of U.S. VCs said they expect more foreign LPs to invest in their funds next year. VCs are telling the National Venture Capital Association that the percentage of foreign money in their funds has been climbing from 5% to as high as 15% or 20%, said president Mark Heesen. Some LPs are attracted to the U.S. because funds here tend to offer more exposure to early stage startups than European or Asian funds, which are very late stage and more like private equity. Also, foreign investors are more sophisticated than they used to be -- an inevitable outcome of globalization. "They think, if I learn it in the U.S., maybe I can do it in my own geography," Heesen said.

There was a vigorous debate at the Churchill Club this morning on how startups should grow. This is the type of activity that passes for entertainment in Silicon Valley, but it was fun and a lot of good points were made. Pursue venture capital? Jon Fisher, who teaches entrepreneurship at the University of San Francisco and has sold a company to Oracle, claimed you can get by without it. Go public? Nearly impossible now, although everybody hopes that will change, and Josh Stein from Draper Fisher argued that mergers and acquisitions "preserve the static order of things," while IPOs reward disruptive innovation because big companies aren't good at innovation. ("How successful would Tesla be as a division of GM?"). Also, public money is cheaper than venture capital.