Briac

A former editor used to refer to what follows as “inside baseball” — and suggested that most readers could care less. So feel free to move on, and assume there is nothing to see here. But for the more voyeuristic… Yesterday I reported that a company called KickApps had raised $20 million in Series B […]

Last week I asked a pair of quiz questions. Here are the answers: Q: Can you name the West Coast buyout firm that just raised its fundraising target to $5 billion? Hint: It doesn’t do cleantech, but you would be forgiven for thinking that it did. A: Golden Gate Capital, which previously had been considering a […]

The CVCA and Thomson Financial have just released Q1 2007 data on venture capital and buyouts investing in Canada. Here you go: Venture capital: CanadianVenture.pdf Buyouts: CanadianBuyouts.pdf Supplemental materials: CanadaCharts.pdf

*** Last week we reported that Tim Draper was among the angels who invested $1.1 million in sex toy company Jimmy Jane. But Tim wasn’t alone. It turns out that another three or four of DFJ’s eight other managing directors also chipped into what they view as a steady, niche retail opportunity. But before prudish […]

Cortina Systems yesterday announced that it had raised $132 million in fourth-round venture funding, in order to help finance its $115 million acquisition of Intel Corp.’s optical network components business. Since this is the third-largest VC deal of the year — following ClearWire and Cilion — a few notes are in order:  I initially assumed that […]

It’s an age-old story: Entrepreneurs meet VCs. VCs fund entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs’ get washed out. VCs get sued by entrepreneurs.  The latest chapter is being written by two co-founders of Rapt Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of price optimization and profitability management solutions. They are suing Rapt backers Accel Partners and Levensohn Venture Partners – plus […]