Dan Primack

peHUB has learned that venture capitalist Tony Sun is leaving Venrock, where he’s been working since 1979. A firm spokeswoman has confirmed the information, but also stressed that his departure isn't coming anytime soon. Sun will actually leave Venrock in the middle of next year, which also is around the same time that the firm expects to be raising a new fund (last one raised in 2007). In other words, it sounds like an orderly retirement. It's also worth noting that Venrock partner Rich Moran will transition into an executive-in-residence role within the next four or five months. Among his immediate plans

Email of the Day comes from Sean, who doesn't seem thrilled with how VC funds have been lumped into the Hedge Fund Transparency Act. Specifically, he took issue with a Senate staffer, who told me: "The bill takes this approach to avoid getting into the impossible task of distinguishing between hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds, and other types of funds, while providing a low-cost, reasonable means for the SEC to obtain basic information about these investment companies." Sean writes: *Impossible* to distinguish between hedge and venture funds? Any person who is unable to articulate such a distinction has no business drafting legislation to regulate these entities. This is a cop-out, plain and simple, and highlights the misunderstanding of the venture industry and its role in job creation. On the one hand, Sean's analysis seems obvious. It's hard to confuse a $2 million investment in WidgetWidget with a $300 million short of Ford Motor Co. On the other hand, the lines

CMEA Ventures has quietly changed its name to CMEA Capital. Jim Watson, a CMEA managing director, says the move was made to better reflect the firm’s plan to broaden its investment strategy. It will continue doing early stage deals, but also plans growth-stage and other sorts of funds in specific sectors. For example, CMEA is currently raising a Green Growth fund, and soon could do similar things in spaces such as IT or healthcare. CMEA historically has invested around 75% of its capital into early-stage deals, with the remainder going to growth or late-stage opportunities. "It's all about how you attract the best talent," Watson says. "You could do one big fund, or look for people to come in and fund a more specialized fund. We debated both sides of it

For years, part of my morning newshounding has been to check www.SEC.gov for any new S-1 or RW filings. Basically looking for new IPO filings or withdrawals.Of late, however, I've only been searching for withdrawals, since new IPO filings seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur (or, perhaps, the way of completed IPOs). In fact, the last IPO filing from a VC-backed or PE-backed company had been Bridgepoint Education on December 22, 2008. Before that, you had to skip November to find a few October strays. But could all that be changing? We've had two new filings since last Wednesday: One for Medidata Solutions, a VC-backed provider of electronic data capture and data management software for clinical researchers; and one for OpenTable, a VC-backed operator of an online network for restaurant reservations (which I happen to use, and love). It's not exactly a flood, but relatively speaking...

"Long Tail" author Chris Anderson today wrote a WSJ piece called The Economics of Giving It Away, arguing that most online businesses can no longer succeed if CPM-based ads are their only revenue stream. I agree, which is why we at peHUB offer both Premium Subscriptions and host various events (like the Shindigs). But I do take issue with one line in Anderson's piece, in which he says: For the first time since 2001, the overall tide of investment and advertising won't rise. Indeed, it will almost certainly fall. Venture capital has dried up... It is true that venture capital activity has slowed down, but to say it has "dried up" is a massive overstatement. In fact, it's closer to a canard. Venture capitalists funded 833 U.S.-based companies in Q4 2008, for a total of $5.47 billion. That's well off the $8.08 billion invested in Q4 2007, but it's hardly "dried up." In fact, it's pretty close to where the VC market was at the end of 2005, when just $5.79 billion was invested in 810 companies. Moreover, not a single quarter in 2004 even broke the $5 billion mark.

peHUB has learned that Atlas Venture is in the midst of some personnel “restructuring,” after closing its eighth fund well below target. Leaving will be Boston-based IT partner Ahmet Ozalp and London-based IT partner Martin Gibson, while Boston-based IT partners Eric Hjerpe and Barry Fidelman are transitioning into venture partner roles. The firm also is […]

We just got a funding release from Vital Juice, a free email newsletter publisher focused on women’s health, nutrition and beauty. Seems it raised an undisclosed amount of cash from The Pilot Group, which last struck content gold with DailyCandy. Pretty interesting deal, in the sense that most VCs have been shying away from ad-based […]

VC firms have added lots of job titles over the years, including venture partners, special limited partners and entrepreneurs-in-residence. But quant analysts? That’s one of the positions at Correlation Ventures, a San Diego-based firm that currently is raising its debut fund. Details are sketchy at this point – it’s not talking, natch – but it kind of sounds like a venture index effort. In other words, Correlation has developed an algorithm that would be used to passively invest in venture deals being led by other firms (it’s already “signed” some brand-name partners).

Last month, I moderated a panel discussion about reinventing the venture capital model. I’ll be doing the same next Friday in New York. In both cases, the underlying thesis was that the venture capital model is broken at worst, and dysfunctional at best. It’s a thesis with which I won’t argue, given that median fund returns since 2002 are underwater. When most LPs would have been better served by putting their money in the mattress, it’s clear that something must be done. Unfortunately, almost all of the discussion to date has been around the edges. Very reminiscent of the 2002-2003 “back to basics” era, which focused on things like reduced fund sizes, more conservative valuations and fewer investments into saturated spaces. Those were necessary steps, but in many cases slowed the bleeding rather than stemmed it. What we may need is something far more radical. The trouble with radical proposals is that they’re tough to come by. Luckily, a Boston-area VC has come up with one such suggestion, which I lay out below. For reasons that should become obvious, he asked not to be identified. There are obviously a lot of moving parts here – both pragmatic and philosophical – and I’ve already gotten feedback from some prominent LPs and GPs. I hope you’ll also contribute either via email or comments. And if you have a different concept for reinventing venture capital, please be sure to pass it on:

When we last heard from Brad Garlinghouse, he was stepping down as Yahoo's senior VP in charge of such massive properties as Mail, Messenger, Groups and Flickr. That was around six months ago -- 20 months after his infamous memo -- and it seems that he's finally working on a new project. Garlinghouse has founded a Menlo Park-based software startup called WithoutStripes, according to a regulatory filing. Details are so thin as to be virtually nonexistent, although it's perhaps notable that www.WithoutStripes.com redirects to the homepage of Zimbra -- a provider of open-source email server software that Garlinghouse helped Yahoo buy in late 2007 (Update: Garlinghouse is simply using Zimbra to host WithoutStripes' email -- the two companies are not related). Garlinghouse is listed on the filing as the company's president, and only executive. Listed as a director is Michael Rolnick, a Bay Area venture capitalist whose last fulltime gig was with ComVentures.