Lawrence Aragon

Following are the five slideshows most popular with peHUB readers the week of April 25. 1. Slideshow: New York City Shindig Photos! 2. Slideshow: Top 10 List Shows Cleantech Becoming Dominated by Handful of Investors 3. Slideshow: Carlyle’s Rubenstein, T.H. Lee’s Sperling, AlpInvest’s Doeksen, Others Speak at Buyouts New York 4. Slideshow: The Cleantech Companies Best Positioned to Go Public 5. Slideshow: The Best Time for a VC Promotion

(Reuters) LOS ANGELES, April 27 – Visa Inc. has thrown its weight behind a mobile payments venture created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The credit-card company has made an unspecified investment in Square Inc., a 2-year-old service that helps businesses and consumers pay with credit cards on a mobile phone or Apple Inc. iPhone, both […]

You came, you drank beer, you ate hot wings ... and sliders ... and tiny sandwiches ... and potato skins. Hey, it was a party, so the calories don't count. About 225 of you turned out last night for peHUB's New York City Shindig at Conolly's Pub and Restaurant on West 45th Street. Not only do you look marvelous -- judging by the photos in our slideshow -- you're a generous group. As part of the Shindig, you donated $3,000 to Children International, a humanitarian group that helps fight poverty. A big thanks to the folks over at Golub Capital for sponsoring the event. See you at the next Shindig in Chicago in June!

Want to catch up on the slideshows that your colleagues found most interesting on peHUB last week? Here are the top 5 that garnered the most pageviews from our regular readers from April 18 to April 22. No. 1 Slideshow: Inside Look at Kleiner’s 30 Deals for Q1 No. 2 Slideshow: Top Ten Most Active VCs for Q1; Brand Names Boost Deal Making No. 3 Slideshow: Legends Of PE Share Greatest Misses No. 4 Slideshow: Top 10 VC-Backed Acquisitions for Q1 No. 5 Slideshow: Old School Semiconductor Investing Sees Big Rise in First Quarter

In this week's Social Scene, VCs and techies scramble for tickets to President Obama's town hall meeting at Facebook, Ryan McIntyre and Jason Mendelson are rocking a new band, David Hornik's son shows entrepreneurial fire at 13, Leglise, Higginbotham and Kim get ready to celebrate their birthdays, and lots of clever tweets. OUT & ABOUT The biggest news in Silicon Valley this week was President Obama’s town hall meeting yesterday at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto. CEO Mark Zuckerberg donned a white dress shirt, tie and suit jacket for the occasion, but he couldn’t be talked out of wearing jeans and running shoes. (What is he, 12?) About 500 Facebook employees

Acquisitions of venture-backed companies appear to be continuing at a decent pace, with the announcement yesterday that eBay has agreed to buy VC-backed mobile ad startup Where Inc. Given that the purchase price wasn’t disclosed, it’s unclear how Where’s backers will fare on the deal. The Boston-based company raised a total of $16.1 million over […]

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was tied for the most active U.S. VC in the first quarter, according to peHUB’s analysis of data from Thomson Reuters (publisher of this blog). Overall, the storied Sand Hill Road firm backed 30 companies, up from 19 in the same period a year earlier, but down slightly from 35 […]

U.S. venture firms as a group are doing fewer deals, but big, brand name firms are picking up their pace, according to peHUB’s analysis of data from Thomson Reuters. Overall, U.S.-based VCs invested in 1,055 domestic and international companies in the first quarter, down from 1,160 in the prior quarter and 1,097 in Q1 2010. […]

In this week’s Social Scene, Steve Jurvetson shows his wild side, George Zachary finds himself agreeing with Bernie Madoff, Paul Allen gets his 60 minutes, Gary Rieschel and Josh Kopelman share a birthday, and more. OUT & ABOUT On the edge… Steve Jurvetson may seem nerdy — he earned his EE from Stanford in 2.5 […]

As we previously reported, VCs are increasingly doing bigger deals. More evidence of this appears in today’s Q1 MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. The report, which tracks investment in U.S.-based startups, shows that four American companies raised rounds of more than […]