Lawrence Aragon

In this week’s Social Scene, Brad Feld of Foundry Group goes the distance (and more) for Fitbit, Mark Suster of GRP Partners is the butt of a bathroom joke at South by Southwest, while an angel, PE pro, marketing VP and venture advisor get ready to celebrate being one year older. Have a personal tidbit […]

Venture-backed IPOs have gotten off to a strong start this year. So far, a dozen venture-backed companies have gone public, raising just over $1 billion in proceeds, according to Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). For the same period a year earlier, just three companies went public, raising $379.5 million. Which VC-backed stock has cratered 35 percent since its offering? Which one has soared nearly 49 percent? Check out our slideshow to find out. (If you like the data, consider subscribing to Venture Capital Journal. In each issues, VCJ publishes even more detailed profiles of every VC-backed IPO, including the share holdings of VC backers. Click here for a free trial.)

Welcome to a new weekly feature called “Social Scene,” where we compile personality-related news from the worlds of venture capital and private equity. We’re starting off by trolling for tidbits on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, but long-term we want to get items straight from peHUB readers. What are we looking for? Birthdays, […]

I'm disappointed by the results of our poll about whether venture capital firms should ban their partners from buying and selling private company shares on secondary exchanges such as Sharespost. The survey grew out of a great story by colleague Jonathan Marino that exposed the practice and the potential conflicts of interest it engenders. A total of 130 peHUB readers took the poll, with 80 (or 62%) answering "yes" and 50 (or 39%) answering no. As I said in an earlier post, when I created the poll, I thought about coming up with a different question because I figured it was a no-brainer that most people would answer yes.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool. Lest you believed that sleazy behavior was confined to Wall Street, we point you to questionable activities of some of the residents of Sand Hill Road. My colleague Jonathan Marino today wrote about how some venture capitalists are buying and selling shares of private companies on secondary exchanges – and how quite a few firms don’t have policies forbidding these transactions. This truly is a black eye for the venture industry, which has been trying to regain credibility after a decade of under-performance. The message being sent by the VCs engaged in this behavior is, “Well, I’m not going to make any carry on my fund, so I may as well see if I can make a quick buck on SharesPost.” I’m sure the LPs paying fees on those funds are thrilled to hear that.

In Europe, there is neither the culture nor the sufficient number of people to exchange ideas about funding for startups

The CEE region, once full of former communist states, is seeing growth opportunities across all sectors

PeHUB has confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that Accel Partners plans to raise a combined $2 billion for four separate funds this year. Accel Partners, the first and largest VC investor in Facebook, is in the market with IDG Capital Partners for two funds targeting China, but it has not yet approached its limited […]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Accel Partners, the first VC investor in Facebook, is “raising four new funds this year with an overall target of more than $2 billion.” It cited “people familiar with the matter.” peHUB sought comment from two partners at Accel. We will update this story if we hear back. […]

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool. Connie Loizos hit a nerve with her post today about Mark Cuban's take on the current mania over certain Internet companies, such as Facebook, Twitter and Zynga. Cuban says we're really not in a new Internet bubble. Instead, we're seeing "the 2011 version of a private equity chain letter.” The early investors in these companies will do just fine, but the last VC who comes in at an insane valuation is going to be left holding the bag, Cuban says.