Joanna Glasner

The venture arm of hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group is cutting staff, eliminating its health care practice, but it will continue to make new and follow-on technology investments, Managing Director Alex Wong tells peHUB in an exclusive interview. Wong will continue to lead the firm’s venture group, along with two senior members of the tech team, […]

A lot of people in the venture industry have spent a lot of time discussing what’s wrong with the VC model and what can be done to fix it. But few have thought as long, come up with an analysis as detailed, or enjoy talking about it quite as much as the folks at InLab […]

Industry Ventures seems to have a good strategy to get out of paying recruiters. When it needs to add a new managing director, the Silicon Valley-based secondary investor just taps one of its limited partners. Last fall, the firm added as managing director Roland Reynolds, an LP and founder of Little Hawk Capital Management, which […]

Despite a few large fund closings, venture capital fund-raising is on track for a drop in the third quarter. With just over three weeks left in the quarter, just seven U.S. venture firms have held final closes on funds collectively valued at just under $1.88 billion, according to a preliminary look at the Thomson Reuters […]

To be recognized as a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum, it helps to have a few things already in one’s favor: First, it helps to be American. Over half of the 31 companies that won a Technology Pioneers 2011 award this week, meant to honor the world’s most innovative startups, were U.S.-based. Second, […]

Ask an LP what they like about venture capital, and the gut response these days is likely to be a long pause. Limited partners used to have standard answers -- usually something about above-par returns for patient investors and an early entry in the growth sectors of the future. With venture returns for the decade now in negative territory, however, those reasons no longer sound so compelling. Clearly, LPs are rethinking their venture strategies and overall commitment to the asset class. U.S. venture capital funds raised $1.9 billion in the second quarter of 2010, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association -- the lowest level of dollar commitments in nearly seven years. And while this quarter is shaping up a bit better, fund-raising is still well below pre-financial-crisis levels. In September’s Venture Capital Journal cover story, "Choosy Shoppers," I interviewed close to a dozen LPs and advisors involved in the fund-raising process to see what -- in this exit-scarce environment -- investors do like about venture. (VCJ subscribers can read the story here.) A few strategies emerged. In some cases, LPs are taking a more hands-on approach to venture holdings. Case in point: Arizona State Retirement System, where private equity portfolio manager Richard Henkel says he looks for how companies and funds in which it holds stakes can benefit each other. This includes leading introductions between, say, a startup software developer and a mature, private equity-backed company that might use its application or even acquire it outright.