Alastair Goldfisher

At the NewTeeVee Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, a Twitter exec noted that more people are using Twitter while they watch TV to comment on programs and interact with others doing the same. That observation is good news for TVmoment, a San Francisco-based startup (located in the pariSoma loft) that is aiming to […]

My take on various PE and VC-related events and news last week. Notable Fundraising. Connie Loizos reported last week that Union Square Ventures is looking to raise a third fund, and the word is it’s going to be a big one—some $500 million. Perhaps the firm is taking a page from Andreessen Horowitz when it […]

The benefit of Twitter is that it helps companies to reach the customers in ways that they wouldn’t normally. That was one of the takeaways on Thursday from TWTRCON, a one-day conference in San Francisco that focused on the business use of Twitter and other real-time tools. Maksim Ovsyannikov, vice president of product management at […]

I’ve noticed a surge in deal activity and other announcements during the first two weeks in November, and I’ve assumed that folks are trying to get plenty of work done before the holidays arrive in earnest and we’re on break. Not so, according to Egnyte, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of cloud file share solutions […]

In June, I wrote about the food search site Yummly, which had raised some seed funding and was looking to close a larger round. Today, the company, which came out of private beta testing in June, announced that it closed on a $1.85 million seed stage round from Harrison Metal Capital (which led the funding), […]

“The health care sector is perceived as not being as sexy as Web 2.0, or even cloud computing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build a health care company into something sexy and worthwhile,” says George Roberts, a partner at OpenView Venture Partners. The Boston-based firm obviously believes strongly in health care. The firm is […]

The number of .co domains is growing. About 600,000 .co domains have been registered after nearly four months of availability. While that is paltry compared with some 90 million .com addresses spoken for already, the new domain is proving to be popular with startup entrepreneurs. One San Francisco-based entrepreneur, who’s starting a travel-related site and […]

Fresh off of its sale of storage provider 3PAR to Hewlett-Packard, Menlo Ventures is backing Coraid Inc., a cloud-based storage solutions provider. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company announced this morning that it has raised a $25 million Series B investment led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners. Coraid, which develops Ethernet-based storage products, previously raised a $10 million Series A round from Azure and Allegis in late 2009. As part of the deal, John Jarve, managing director of Menlo Ventures, has joined the board of Coraid, which already includes Lara Druyan, a GP with Allegis, and Paul Weinstein, a GP with Azure. Menlo was interested in taking part in Coraid's Series A round, but it was still an investor in 3PAR at the time and “we tend not to back companies that are competitive to others in our portfolio,” Jarve says.

My take on some notable PE and VC-related events and news in the past week. Questioning the Fanboy Fascination with Andreessen Horowitz In the last few weeks, I’ve friended an employee at Andreessen Horowitz, who I consider a smart guy and someone worth knowing and who always has smart tweets. By no fault of his own, he may be working at an overhyped firm. Or, at the very least, it’s a firm that has not yet generated the cash-on-cash returns that justify the amount of attention it has been getting. At least that was my takeaway from reading a story about the firm from my colleague Connie Loizos, who took a look at the media frenzy surrounding Andreessen Horowitz since it was launched in mid-2009 with a $300 million fund. Connie talked to social psychologist Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School, who recently produced research suggesting that people are likely to see someone as competent if they’ve demonstrated expertise in just one area, even if they later display incompetence elsewhere. So whereas Andreessen and Horowitz are great technologists, the jury is still out on whether they’re investment geniuses. You be the judge on whether they’re overhyped. The post drew 17 responses, most of them in agreement with Connie's assessment. Reader Eric wrote: "Nice balanced article, Connie. It’s good to have at least one rational voice out there willing to do their own thinking, rather than simply serving up the pre-packaged PR flak that we seem to be getting from others. Kudos to Andreessen Horowitz for the savvy to tap the LP’s while they are enthusiastic for the unproven product, rather than waiting for the (possibly good, possibly bad) performance to manifest itself."

More than a year after SecondMarket bought InsideVenture, Mona DeFrawi is apparently planning her return. DeFrawi, who was CEO of Menlo Park, Calif.-based InsideVenture, has started a new company called Equidity. She told me that she’s not yet ready to make an announcement at this time, but, according to the website, Equidity looks poised to […]