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bits.blogs.nytimes.com - 1/5/2009

After a Dreary 2008, Venture Capitalists Are Cautious

— bits.blogs.nytimes.com — Public offerings and acquisitions of venture-backed companies were down sharply in 2008, prompting a slowdown in new start-up investments in 2009. (more) After a Dreary 2008, Venture Capitalists Are Cautious

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techcrunch.com - 12/31/2008

Angelsoft Gets An Upgrade, Opens Network To Venture Capitalists

— techcrunch.com — Angelsoft , a New York based company that develops a platform for connecting early-stage investors and entrepreneurs and managing investment deal flow, has released a significant update to its software and is finally opening up its network to VCs ... (more) Angelsoft Gets An Upgrade, Opens Network To Venture ...

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New Year's resolution for VCs: Survival
BloggingBuyouts — ... However, this doesn't mean that VC fundings will go dry. Basically, top firms will continue to do deals, but the approach will be more cautious and certain categories will get starved (such as social media and Web 2.0). ...

As VCs remember revenue, open source could benefit
The Open Road — In a not-so-surprising turn of events, The New York Times reports that Silicon Valley venture capitalists actually care about revenue again. After years of investing in Web 2.0 companies that generate eyeballs and weird company names but little revenue , VCs have decided that businesses that actually make money are a priority: For Web sites that do not already have large audiences, "your business model may be just as plausible as it was 18 months ago, but we're all more cautious about giving you a slug of money," [Accel partner Theresia Gouw Ranzetta] said. ...

New Year's resolution for VCs: Survival
BloggingStocks — ... However, this doesn't mean that VC fundings will go dry. Basically, top firms will continue to do deals, but the approach will be more cautious and certain categories will get starved (such as social media and Web 2.0). ...

Roundup: LG’s TVs get streaming Netflix movies, VCs get cautious, New Lively is born
VentureBeat — Here’s the latest action: LG and Netflix strike deal: The pre-CES announcements are flowing in now as LG announces today that its newest high-definition TVs will be able to stream Netflix movies straight to the TV screen. That means the marriage of the TV and the Internet is finally here. The International Consumer Electronics Show gets under way Tuesday in Las Vegas. Our preview is here. Venture capital outlook: Venture investors interviewed by the New York Times say they’re interested in cleantech, enterprise, personal healthcare and mobile, but Web 2.0 is mostly ...

After a Dreary 2008, Venture Capitalists Are Cautious
Bits — ... Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association. “I think there’s a lot of anticipation for January and February,” when investors hope the markets will calm down after President-elect Barack Obama takes office. Venture capitalists are trading their usual optimism for newfound caution, as evidenced in their predictions for promising investment opportunities in 2009. (To read a story and listen to audio clips of top venture capitalists discussing their 2009 outlook, click here .) “‘Caution’ is not normally a word in venture capitalists’ vocabulary, but it’s ...

Pure Mobile Content Is Overinvested—VC
mocoNews — Venture capitalists are not excited by mobile content at the moment (although to be fair, they're pretty cautious about everything) according to the New York Times in an article about what VCs are focusing on. "Pure mobile content is overinvested, but hardware is underhyped," said David Weiden, a partner at Khosla Ventures. The VCs are skeptical of the returns available by selling ads or applications on mobile phones, and are sticking to carriers and manufacturers. Of course, this is a journalists interpretation of the opinion of a few VCs—it's worth noting that Jeremy Liew, managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, indicated that ...

2009: Year of the Business Model
Internet Evolution: — Social networking, bookmarking, "eyeballs" -- those buzzwords are so 2008. Now, according to some VCs, unless you come with a specific plan for dollar-making, such words will not get your startup off the ground in 2009. That's right, if you're a startup looking to make it in the Web 2.0 space this year, you may actually need (gasp!) a business model . The New York Times ...

Clean Tech Still Sizzles As Venture Investments Cool
Bits — Even though venture capitalists raised $28 billion in 2008 to invest in new start-ups, they are holding that money tight. Venture investing slowed to a crawl in 2008, the first year since 2003 that total investments declined. When investors did decide to dole out dollars, they were more likely than not to invest in green technology start-ups. Venture capitalists invested $28.3 billion in 3,808 companies in 2008, an 8 percent decrease in dollars and a 4 percent decrease in deal volume from 2007, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Thomson Reuters. The fourth quarter, unsurprisingly, was the worst, with $5.4 ...

Polyvore Raises Money for Do-It-Yourself Fashion Site
Bits — Venture capitalists may not be the most fashionable bunch, but they are certainly interested in Polyvore , a fashion site that lets its users create collages featuring clothes from across the Web. Polyvore announced Tuesday that it raised $5.6 million in fresh capital and brought on a new investor, Matrix Partners, and a new board member from Matrix, Dana Stalder . That is on top of the $2.5 million it previously raised from Benchmark Capital and several angel investors. At the beginning of the year, Mr. Stalder, who joined Matrix from PayPal last year, told me in an interview that he was on the hunt for start-ups that would revolutionize ...