Mark Boslet

Seed stage investments have become so popular that even angels are finding it difficult to keep up their pace. To wit: Half of the deals done by angels between 2002 and 2007 were with seed and early stage companies, but that figure fell to 35 percent last year and is likely to be 35 percent or […]

It was easy to try to put a brave face on this morning’s venture fund-raising figures. The third quarter money hunt brought $3 billion to 51 45 U.S.-based venture funds, according to the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters (publisher of his blog). That was a 40 percent increase from the second quarter and a ...

New financings have picked up this year, but that doesn’t mean entrepreneurs are seeing better deal terms, especially in the Midwest. In fact, competition for deals is down, and entrepreneurs are paying the price, says attorney David Millard (pictured), chairman of the business department at Barnes & Thornburg LLP, a law firm with 11 offices, […]

Stealthy startup Teos (formerly known as SuperBulbs) is preparing to rollout its first LED light bulb next spring, an energy-saving product it hopes to price at $20. LED, or solid-state, lighting is expected to be a major growth market for cleantech companies as businesses and eventually consumers replace today’s bulbs with more efficient ones. Teos […]

Solar module maker MiaSole will announce within two weeks “one of the larger solar financings this year,” according to a source familiar with the financing. The prospect of another large round for a solar company breathes new life into a sector many VCs view as over-invested. The news confirms a report last month that 9-year-old MiaSole […]

Britain’s six largest banks are expected to pledge next week to create a $1.6 billion fund to bailout small businesses stretched by the continuing downturn in the U.K.’s economy, according to a report by the Financial Times. The fund is to inject equity into companies and better enable them to qualify for loans bridging the […]

Is crowdsourcing becoming, well, crowded? Several recent fundings are bringing new attention to crowdsourcing, where tasks traditionally performed by employees or contractors are distributed to an amorphous community of workers via the Web. There is likely more money on the way. The latest cash-rich startups include uTest, which last month raised a $13 million C […]

The IPO market is on the mend, but the revival is nothing to crow about. There were 14 venture-backed IPOs during the third quarter, down slightly from 17 in the second, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters (publisher of this blog). While the decrease isn’t alarming, the bigger picture […]

The edgy economy is spilling over into cleantech venture investing. That seems to be the conclusion to draw from today’s preliminary cleantech investing numbers from the Cleantech Group. The research firm found that $1.53 billion went into 152 deals worldwide during the third quarter, down 11% in dollars from the same period a year ago […]

Barry Diller isn’t cut from the cloth of a typical Internet entrepreneur. First of all, the chief executive of IAC/Interactive Corp. was born in 1942, during the early years of World War II. So at 68, he is something of a dinosaur walking among the 20- and 30-something Web entrepreneurs designing social networking sites and […]