Lawrence Aragon

With a growing number of venture firms unable to raise new funds, we wondered what soon-to-be fund-less VCs might do with themselves. Venture Capital Journal contributor Tom Stein tracked down five former VCs and found that they are not only gainfully employed, but really happy with their new careers. In every case, they followed their hearts to pursue something they were passionate about—from building custom furniture to making documentaries—even if it meant longer hours and a smaller paycheck. VCJ subscribers can read the whole story here. (It’s password protected.) For those of you who aren’t VCJ subscribers, here’s a taste of what you’re missing: For six years, Catherine Rohr had her “dream job,” hunting down the hottest venture deals, first for Summit Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., and then for American Securities Capital Partners in New York.

Full transcript of VCJ’s one-hour interview with Marc Andreessen, who co-founded new venture firm Andreessen Horowitz

Kleiner Perkins has made what is believed to be its first water-related cleantech investment, peHUB has learned. A source at KP confirmed that the firm had invested in Applied Process Technology (APT), which makes water-remediation technology, but did not share the dollar amount or other details. There are no other water-related companies listed among the 15 companies in the “Greentech” portfolio on KP’s website. “There’s a lot of nitrates in water, most of it from agriculture [and] fertilizers,” the KP source said. “About 4,000 wells in the [California] Central Valley alone are closed … We believe with this new remediation process—which is a bio-film, a live filter—we could open up the vast majority of those and increase the water supply—not just in California, but nationwide.”

Am I the only one who finds it peculiar that Marc Andreessen—the man best known for bringing the Web browser to the masses—doesn’t have an official website for his new venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz? If you go to www.andreessenhorowitz.com, you’ll find a Go Daddy ad. When I inquired about the lack of an official website, a firm spokesperson said via email: “There might be a website at some point. They’re just busy.”

he fact that Twitter hasn’t figured out a way to monetize itself yet is no big thing to newly-minted VC Marc Andreessen, but media mogul Rupert Murdoch says it’s very much an issue. At an investor conference today, Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., told Reuters that he has no interest in buying Twitter because it hasn’t figured out a way to make money. “Be careful of investing here," he said. Then again, we're not sure if Murdoch has any credibility with regard to the Web. Remember, this is the same guy who bought MySpace and ran it into the ground.

Lost in the shuffle of the July 4th holiday, the LogMeIn IPO produced one of the biggest returns for VCs this year—at least on paper. Mind you, there have only been six VC-backed IPOs so far. But still... LogMeIn (Nasdaq: LOGM) priced at $16 on July 1 and shot up to $20.02 by the end of the trading day. That was the second best debut of a VC-backed offering this year, behind only restaurant reservation service OpenTable (Nasdaq: OPEN), which rose over 59% on its first day. Following the IPO, five venture firms collectively held 10.8 million shares worth over $209 million at yesterday’s closing price $19.32. In addition, three of the VCs sold shares in the IPO for proceeds of more than $21 million.

Navin Chaddha joined Mayfield Fund less than three years ago, but he is already one of the firm’s most recognizable faces. The 38-year-old got his start as an entrepreneur at the age of 25 and successfully co-founded three VC-backed companies that were eventually acquired or went public: VXtreme, a VC-backed streaming media software company; iBeam Broadcasting, an Internet streaming media provider; and Rivio, which provided Web-based services to optimize operations for small businesses. Chaddha made the shift to venture in 2003, joining Mobius Venture Capital as an EIR, then transitioning to venture partner. A year later, he became a general partner at Gabriel Venture Partners, then joined Mayfield as a managing director in September 2006.

It’s common knowledge that VC funds have gotten considerably smaller over the past few years, but it’s always interesting to look at hard numbers. The recently issued “2009 NVCA Yearbook” shows that a little over 60% of U.S. venture firms (or 532 out of a total of 882 funds) managed $100 million or less in 2008. That’s quite a change from five years ago. As of 2003, about 50% of all U.S. venture funds (or (455 out of a total of 919 funds) managed $100 million or less.

Anyone have any ketchup for my plate of crow? You may recall that I wrote a post on May 13 entitled “Why It Sucks to Be a VC.” I ran some numbers based on the expected price OpenTable’s IPO ($13 per share) and found that the 12.5 million shares held by the VCs would be worth about $162 million. Given that they had collectively invested about $69 million in the online restaurant reservation service, the VCs were looking at a potential return multiple of 2.36. That was then. Today, OpenTable (Nasdaq: OPEN) priced at $20 per share and rocketed to $31.89 by the end of the day in what Reuters reports as the best first-day performance for a U.S. company in 18 months. As a group, the VCs are now looking at a potential multiple of 5.78x.

In yet another indication of how tough the venture market has become, the most active investor in April was none other than secondary investor Millennium Technology Ventures, according to preliminary investment data gathered by Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). I’ve been compiling a monthly “most active” list for Venture Capital Journal since 2002, and this is the first time in my memory that a secondary firm ranked No. 1 on the list. Our data show that Millennium invested in seven companies in April, beating out the likes of Sequoia Capital (five companies), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (four), Benchmark Captal