Briac

* William Cohan: Bruce Wasserstein's last surprise * Sarah Lacy advances the Elevation Partners story, reporting that the firm quietly bought around $90 million worth of Facebook shares on the direct secondary market. * Adam Lashinsky digs deeper into Terralliance, the high-tech wildcatting company that has become a legal morass for both its venture capitalists and former founder. * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London slips early, European shares rise, the Nikkei hits 18-month high and Hong Kong shares rebound. * Hey MBAs: Wall Street is hiring again * Anthony Rodriguez on the state of academic entrepreneurs * Four children's gizmos that inspired scientific breakthroughs * The FT checks in with some of China's private equity princelings

* Practical advice for job interviewing at a VC firm * Noam Wasserman on salary inequality among co-founders * Nin-Hai Tseng: Can big banks blog or tweet their way into better reputations? * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London falls early, European shares retreat, the Nikkei hits 18-month high and China shares rise. * A return of cov-light loans? * Profitable lessons from freemium business models * Richard Ferri: Why the S&P 500 is an overused benchmark * Todd Bishop: What Microsoft learned from Jerry Seinfeld and BIll Gates * WSJ's Brett Arends writes about whether individual investors should buy into publicly-traded PE firms like Blackstone, Fortress or (coming soon) KKR. Unfortunately, he seems to miss the most fundamental point: Investing in a PE firm's stock is not equivalent to investing in a PE firm's fund (which remains open only to invited limited partners). A firm's new fund could become top quartile, but there is no guarantee that its success would be reflected in the share price. Moreover, most of the quarter-to-quarter revenue growth/loss on publicly-traded PE firms is based on non-PE-related fee income (capital marketrs groups, advisory groups, etc.). Ok, I'm done now...

* Max Abelson: Return of a subprime villain * Altos Ventures launches a Fat Startup Watch * We've previously discussed problems with the Dodd Bill vis-a-vis startup investments (particularly the preemption of Regulation D), but didn't notice a provision that apparently would give the SEC approval rights over angel deals. Got to look into this once I get the morning email out... * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London rises early, European shares hit 17-month high, the Nikkei climbs and China shares retreat. * What if women ran Wall Street? * Will robots replace journalists? * Bubble alert: Most battery startups will fail * GoDaddy follows Google out of China. But we're pretty sure some other softcore porn domain registrar site will take its place. * Bess Levin asks if CNBC can top the tortoise cam. Clearly Bess hasn't spent much time in Englewood Cliffs lately, where the stock-picking llama is awaiting its big break. * Private equity exec Dan Senor will not run for Senate in New York. Until this story, I didn't realize Dan Senor was considered a private equity exec.

* LBO revival being seen in default swaps * Mark Suster: Advice for dealing with journalists * Megan McArdle: Will healthcare reform spur entrepreneurship? * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London rises early, European shares climb, the Nikkei gains 0.4% and China shares keep rallying. * Is China heading toward a trade deficit? * Mark Davis: Why VCs say no to good ideas * Jim Jubak: Wall Street didn't die. It just moved * Dana Carney: The more power you have, the better you are at lying * Matthew Bishop: The Kravis Prize gets it right, by encouraging philanthropic scale rather than rewarding innovation.

* A strong argument against passing the Startup Visa Act, and an even stronger rebuttal. * Stocks rise when celebs take board seats: "If E*Trade had simply named Lindsay Lohan a director instead of mocking her in its incredibly cute baby commercials, the company might be booming right now." * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London falls early, European shares pare losses, the Nikkei keeps climbing and China shares hit 3-week high. * Why China is an incubator for female billionaires * Preqin: Private equity performance improved in Q3 * Sim Simeonov: 10 rules for better founding teams * Mark Gimein: What the Mafia can teach us about corporate fraud * Fat startups vs lean startups? Lee Hower says they're both right. * Tommy Hilfiger on weathering the ups and downs of retail fashion: "Keep the heritage of the brand intact."

Atomico Ventures, a European VC fund run by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, today announced that it has closed its second fund -- and first institutional one -- with $165 million in capital commitments. So we spent some time on the phone this morning with Zennström, in order to learn more about the fundraise and the state of European venture capital. Last May, Atomico said in an SEC filing that it was looking to raise up to $266 million. Why did you close on so much less? I wouldn't say we closed on much less. The thing our lawyers told was was that we needed to set a limit in the SEC filing, because if we went above it we'd have to do another filing. So we basically put a high number with a really big buffer. The reality is that, with the kind of investments we’re looking at, you don’t want to have too big of a fund.

* Ryan Block: The iPad may change computing, but not your life. And that's ok. * Paul Ingrassia on the nation's public pension crisis: The difference between General Motors and California is that California hasn’t gone bankrupt. Yet. * The Economist on why there are so few Japanese private equity deals, despite a plethora of homegrown private equity firms. Same question could be asked about Japanese venture capital... * Morning Call: U.S. futures point lower, London falls early, European shares dip, the Nikkei rebounds and China shares hit three-week high. * Why @ is held in such high design esteem. * SpeakerText founder Matt Mireles: How I judge venture capitalists * Justin Smith: Which media giant will pull the social gaming trigger first? * Fred Wilson disagrees with Ben Horowitz: Being fat is not healthy (we're talking startup euphemisms here). As an aside, good to see Wilson point out that his comments are specific to software startups, not VC-backed companies in general. Too many other VCs take an ego/sector-centric view on this topic, presuming either: (a) What's good for my type of startups is good for all types of startups; or (b) My types of startups are the only ones worth discussing.

* Big Buyout sticks to the script: What, me error? * Why there will never be a standard set of seed financing documents. * Data Marketplace launches as an Amazon for structured financial information. * Morning Call: U.S. futures are mixed, London rises early, European shares hit 17-month high, the Nikkei rebounds and Hong Kong shares gain. * Ireland's boom and bust * Rolfe WInkler: Would a Harley-Davidson buyout make sense? * Liz Tay: Employers should look to gaming to motivate employees. * Larry Summers objects to being called a "punk staffer" ("sleepy staffer" would have been okay, though) * Wal-Mart puts another category of small business on the ropes. But these are check-cashiers, so it's ok. * We've now sold nearly 800 tickets to our upcoming shindigs in Boston (3/31) and San Francisco (4/15). They cost just $10 each, with ticket proceeds going to a local charity that will be selected by event attendees. Get Boston tickets here, and get San Francisco tickets here.

* Ben Horowitz: The case for the fat startup * John Terrill: The moral imperative of investment banking * Larry Cheng: The tension between an optimistic CEO and a conservative CFO * Morning Call: U.S. futures point lower, London falls early, European shares slip on banks, the Nikkei loses 1% and tightening fears drop China and Hong Hong shares. * Micropayments and Subscriptions: How business models for startups are shifting * The men's NCAA tourney begins in just a few hours, and we've got our own pool going on (with prizes, of course). Get the sign-up info here. * Speaking of basketball, the hedgies crushed the PE pros in their annual charity game * Biz Insider goes beyond the NYC vs. Silicon Valley pissing match, and lists the 20 NYC startups you need to watch. * Scott Shane: America may benefit from policies that make it easier for certain immigrants to start businesses in this country (i.e., Startup Visa Act), but the basis should not be perceived differences in entrepreneurial aptitude between immigrants and the native-born. (as an aside: Has anyone seen a cogent argument against Startup Visa? I haven't)

* RRE Ventures: Not every entrepreneur deserves a trophy * Justin Fox: What business should want out of financial regulatory reform * FINRA tells the SEC (.pdf) that it would be "delighted" to help regulate PE placement agents, per the SEC's request. This means that the proposed federal ban is all but history. * Morning Call: U.S. futures point higher, London rises early, European shares rally, the Nikkei hits 8-week closing high and strong days for both China and Hong Kong shares. * Mobile startup takes on drug counterfeiters * Gordon Brown tables new European PE/hedge fund regulations * Ho Nam: What's with all this talk of entrepreneurial failure? * Coming soon: A sitcom about life in Silicon Valley, written by Fake Steve Jobs and a former Seinfeld scribe. * David Crow: Canadian entrepreneurs need to take responsibility for their industry, not blame others for its failure.