Dan Primack

Highland Capital Partners has just begun accepting applications for its third-annual Summer@Highland program, which is designed to “provide selected student entrepreneurs with the environment and resources for advancing their startup initiative/company to the next level.” Specifically, selected entrepreneurs and teams will receive a financial stipend for the summer, complimentary office space in Highland’s Massachusetts or Silicon Valley locations and access to Highland’s investment staff (for advice, etc.). There is no investment commitment either by participating entrepreneurs or Highland, but if you really hit it off…

Today may be Friday the 13th, but the Small Business Administration is facing a real horror next Friday. That’s when the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant program is scheduled to expire. I know what you’re probably thinking: Why on earth does this matter to the peHUB audience? VC-backed startups are, you know, backed by VCs. If $100k is going to make or break them, then there are bigger issues to deal with. My answer is twofold: First, VC-backed companies could use SBIR grants to fund experimental research outside of their primary product plans. This is particularly true if a company could develop an application specific to DoE or DoD. After all, part of SBIR’s mission is to stimulate Moreover, SBIR grants could be used by seed-stage life sciences companies to pursue alternate applications for their developing therapies. Second, you’re right. This has no impact on VC-backed companies. Since the program’s inception, it has stated that qualifying companies must be 51%-owned by individual U.S. citizens. SBA’s initial interpretation

Michael Beckwith has left Sequoia Capital, one year after coming aboard to launch a public equities program. No word yet on why he left, or where he may be going. As peHUB reported last April, Beckwith was charged to lead what many considered to be Sequoia's forray into hedge funds. Sources said that he was putting together a public equities team that would be tech-focused, but not tech-exclusive. Among his hires was Chris Lyle, who is still featured on the Sequoia Capital website. It was, and remains, unclear if Beckwith's group was related to an outsourced endowment manager program that Sequoia also launched at around the same time. That effort is called

Want to insult a buyout pro? Don’t tell him that his fund was marked down. Tell him that it was marked down more than a venture fund was marked down. Ouch. Sting. Burn. Cambridge Associates has released new fund performance data, which shows that private equity firms (buyout, growth equity, mezz) lost more value for limited partners […]

A new fund is being shopped to invest in distressed and liquidating VC portfolio companies, peHUB has learned. The proposed principals are Marty Pichinson (Sherwood Partners), George Hoyem (Blueprint Ventures) and Colin Savage (formerly of Worldview Technology Partners). Doesn’t seem to have gotten much traction yet, but it sounds like an interesting idea on paper. My vote for the firm's name would be ABCapital... Pichinson is an obvious choice for this sort of thing, since he’s Silicon Valley’s official gravedigger. Hoyem is a bit more surprising, but makes sense when you consider that Blueprint has repositioned itself as an investor in corporate orphans (i.e., spinouts/carveouts). Savage certainly understands what a wind-down entails -- given that Worldview decided several years ago not to raise another fund.

What follows are six VC deals culled from recent Regulation D filings with the SEC. They have not been otherwise disclosed: PicoChip, a Bath, England-based provider of signal processing products for wireless communications, is raising $25 million in Series E funding, according to a regulatory filing. It already has secured around $15 million, including $5 million via the cancellation of existing promissory notes. Backers include Highland Capital PartnersScottish Equity Partners and Atlas Venture. It had previously raised over $64 million. www.picochip.com Cornerstone OnDemand Inc., a Santa Monica, Calif.-based provider of talent management software and services, has raised around $9 million in Series E funding

Element Partners, a cleantech-focused venture capital firm with offices in Pennsylvania and Silicon Valley, tomorrow will announce that it has closed its second fund with $486 million in capital commitments. So we've got 5 Questions for David Lincoln, the firm's managing partner: 1. Element Partners originally focused on both early-stage and later-stage investing, but this fund will drop the early-stage component. Why? Lincoln: We'd always had a mixed-stage focus, but the initial impression was that we were primarily early-stage, because of our association with Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In fact, we continue to get a ton of early-stage dealflow, but not as much in the growth or expansion-stages -- even though that's the area where we focused 80% of our attention. So we thought it was good to formalize and emphasize our growth-stage and expansion-stage strategy with this fund and fund announcement. Also, for this moment in the economy, we think there are better cleantech opportunities later.

Alert: A venture capital firm is about to hold a final close on a new fund. Yes, this now qualifies as headline news. The firm is Charles River Ventures, which we’ve learned is about to put the finishing touches on its fourteenth vehicle. The final raise is expected to be around $300 million, which is […]

Earlier this year, we reported that Kleiner Perkins was raising a series of annex funds, so that it would have available reserves to keep older portfolio companies afloat until the exit market returns. And Kleiner is not alone. Mohr Davidow Ventures is also trying to raise annex funds. So is First Round Capital. So is […]

Apparently you can now embed CNBC videos, which is a long overdue innovation. Here's my spot from this morning, alongside Robert Stewart of the Private Equity Council. It became almost exclusively about carried interest tax: