Lawrence Aragon

Zynga registered with the SEC for its highly anticipated IPO today, finally offering a look inside the social gaming powerhouse. We now know the answers to some burning questions, such as whether it is profitable (yes, it posted net income of about $90 million last year). For most of us, the most intriguing question has […]

You’re just as skeptical as we are about the merits of a VC or PE firm adding a celebrity to its roster. In this week’s poll, 27% of peHUB readers said celebrity hires produce real ROI for VC and/or PE firms, but 73% said such hires are little more than publicity stunts. “I think this collision of pop culture and VC produces great PR and thus probably some great deal flow, but actual returns? Hard to see the direct connection,” wrote Lisa Suennen, founding partner of venture firm Psilos Group Managers and a peHUB contributor. “I did write about this very topic recently on VentureValkyrie when MC Hammer joined up with venture incubator NewME.” Three others who wrote extended comments said the real benefit of bringing on a big name is that it helps with

About 150 of you turned out last night for the peHUB Chicago Shindig at Glascott’s Saloon on North Halsted St. Besides beer, the drink of choice was a gin and tonic, says peHUB Editor Jon Marino, who helped tend bar (and is standing on top of it in the following slideshow). On the food front, we hear the egg rolls were particularly popular. As part of the Shindig, attendees donated a thousand bucks to the Boys and Girls Club of Metropolitan Chicago. Thanks for your generosity. Also, a big thanks to the folks over at Golub Capital for sponsoring the event. We’ll see you at the next Shindig in San Francisco in October, which will be the night before our Venture Alpha conference on Oct. 20. In the following slideshow, click on any photo to make it larger. (Slideshow photos shot for peHUB by Sara Collins of Peanut Gallery Photography.)

Gaikai, a privately held cloud gaming firm whose backers include Electronic Arts, Intel Capital and Akamai Technologies expects to sign deals with major publishers and video game makers, as the market shifts from console-based games to online titles, according to Reuters. CEO David Perry, 44, who founded Gaikai in 2009, said he is “going back […]

Five venture capital firms are going to wake up stinking rich on Wednesday, thanks to the successful IPO of Pandora, which operates an Internet music sharing service. As a group, the five firms own 105.6 million shares, which are worth $1.69 billion at the IPO price of $16 per share. And they're not the only ones. The Hearst Corp. is sitting pretty, too, as are Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren and several other insiders. Of course, this is all theoretical, since the VCs and Pandora's officers and directors are locked up from selling any shares for 180 days. Assuming the stock holds steady when the lock up ends in six months, here's how Pandora's top 10 largest shareholders will make out.

Menlo Ventures has added tech entrepreneur and angel investor Shervin Pishevar as a managing director. Pishevar, 37, will focus on investments in consumer Internet and mobile startups. He most recently served as the chief applications officer and GM of Mozilla Corp., developer and of the Firefox Web browser. Pishevar is Menlo’s eighth managing director, joining […]

VCs are largely avoiding work today, judging by what they’re sharing on Twitter. The most shared link is a page that allows Facebook users to join a beta test of Turntable.fm, a new music-sharing service, according to peHUB’s new Tweetminster-powered service, which tracks trends on Twitter. The second most popular item being shared right now is a link to a Twitter broadcast by a Brazilian band called Sorriso Maroto. For the remaining top 10 most shared links, click on the “Read more” button below. As I noted on Friday, we’re not making our Tweetminster service live yet because we want to give the company’s algorithm more time to identify experts and analyze their tweets to identify key trends. If you’d like to check out the service and share your feedback with us, please let me know and I will shoot you a password. I’m at Lawrence.Aragon@ThomsonReuters.com or you can DM on Twitter @laragon.

We’re trying out a new service run by Tweetminster that tracks content shared on Twitter by experts in various fields. In our case those experts are focused primarily on venture capital, technology and entrepreneurship. Long term, we hope to track content shared by private equity pros, but there just aren’t that many PE experts on Twitter at this moment. We’re not making the Tweetminster service live just yet. We want to give the company’s algorithm more time to identify experts and analyze their tweets to identify key trends. If you’d like to check out the service and share your feedback with us, please let me know and I will shoot you a password. I’m at Lawrence.Aragon@ThomsonReuters.com or you can DM on Twitter @laragon. In the meantime, here are the top 5 most popular links being shared by our experts right now. Let us know what you think. 1. Spark, Lightbank And Yuri Milner Get In On OnSwipe’s $5M ‘Series Awesome’ (TechCrunch) 2. Slideshow: Top 10 Winners in pre-IPO Cash-Out at Groupon (peHUB) 3. Windows 8: The Beginning of the End of Windows (MobileOpportunity blog) 4. Let's Not Get Too Cocky About the Bubble (TechCrunch) 5. Pandora Sets IPO Terms; VC Shares Are Potentially Worth Over $950M (peHUB)

One of the most intriguing factoids to come out of Groupon's IPO filing today was that the daily deals website didn't raise $946 million earlier this year for expansion. Instead, it raised the money primarily to provide huge pay days for the company's founders, insiders and early investors. Of the total amount raised, $136.2 million went to working capital and general corporate purposes, according to the company's S-1. The remaining 86% percent of the capital, or $809.8 million, was used to "redeem voting and non-voting common stock from our existing stockholders at a purchase price of $15.795 per share (on a post-stock split basis), and Series D preferred stock and Series E preferred stock from our existing stockholders at a purchase price of

Nearly three years after splitting off from Insight Venture Partners, Benjamin Levin and George McCulloch have raised $120 million for what appears to be their first fund, according to a May 31 regulatory filing. Levin and McCulloch, who were previously partners at Insight, are listed in the regulatory filing as co-CEOs of Level Equity Partners. […]