InsideVenture - new financial services platform for VCs

"InsideVenture, Inc. is a next generation financial services platform.

We facilitate late-stage financings, public offerings (HPPO^SM), liquidity and the critical aftermarket support needed for an orderly transition of value from private to public investors.

InsideVenture stimulates economic growth by helping to restore small cap IPOs, capital formation, and liquidity to the U.S. capital markets. We do this by filling the gap in serving long-term growth investors that was left with the departure of the “four horsemen” boutique investment banks.

InsideVenture is a nexus from which to refocus financial markets back on long-term growth investing and has the support of top U.S. venture firms, fundamental fund managers and other industry leaders (e.g., T. Rowe Price, Wasatch Advisors, SVB, NYSE, NVCA, NEA, Domain, Venrock, DCM, Clarus, Frazier, Versant, Oak Inv., Aisling, and others).

Our unique transaction-centric online platform, combined with member-only events (e.g., conferences, road shows, forums and seminars) is changing the way long-term growth focused investors and best-in-class private and small cap./growth public companies discover one another, build relationships, exchange information and transact with one another."

Forget octomom - this guy has 21 kids!

"Desmond Hatchett, 29 has children range in age from newborn to 11. There are at least 11 mothers; probably several more. Had 4 kids in 1 year, twice!!! The mothers of Hatchett's children are supposed to get anywhere from $25 to $309 a month, but when his paycheck is garnished amongst them all, some women only get a $1.98 a month.
Rumor has it that 2 minors are pregnant right now by him, and many of the mothers are high-schoolers!!!! He is also on the way to prison for probation violation."

Britain's Got Talent / Diversity: Dance Group - Britain's Got Talent 2009 - The Final

White House Plan on Cybersecurity - Near-Term Action Plan

1.
Appoint a cybersecurity policy official responsible for coordinating the Nation’s cybersecurity policies and activities; establish a strong NSC directorate, under the direction of the cybersecurity policy official dual-hatted to the NSC and the NEC, to coordinate interagency development of cybersecurity-related strategy and policy.
2.
Prepare for the President’s approval an updated national strategy to secure the information and communications infrastructure. This strategy should include continued evaluation of CNCI activities and, where appropriate, build on its successes.
3.
Designate cybersecurity as one of the President’s key management priorities and establish performance metrics.
4.
Designate a privacy and civil liberties official to the NSC cybersecurity directorate.
5.
Convene appropriate interagency mechanisms to conduct interagency-cleared legal analyses of priority cybersecurity-related issues identified during the policy-development process and formulate coherent unified policy guidance that clarifies roles, responsibilities, and the application of agency authorities for cybersecurity-related activities across the Federal government.
6.
Initiate a national public awareness and education campaign to promote cybersecurity.
7.
Develop U.S. Government positions for an international cybersecurity policy framework and strengthen our international partnerships to create initiatives that address the full range of activities, policies, and opportunities associated with cybersecurity.
8.
Prepare a cybersecurity incident response plan; initiate a dialog to enhance public-private partnerships with an eye toward streamlining, aligning, and providing resources to optimize their contribution and engagement
9.
In collaboration with other EOP entities, develop a framework for research and development strategies that focus on game-changing technologies that have the potential to enhance the security, reliability, resilience, and trustworthiness of digital infrastructure; provide the research community access to event data to facilitate developing tools, testing theories, and identifying workable solutions.
10.
Build a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the Nation.

President Obama Releases Cybersecurity Report - Stresses Importance of Cybersecurity and States There is Much Work to Be Done

President Barack Obama says the private sector must be involved in cyber security.
He stated that cybersecurity is critically important and an area that the U.S. isn’t “as prepared as we should be,” though he added that he remains committed to net neutrality and personal privacy for Americans.

The 76 page final Cyberspace Policy Review report from the Whitehouse can be found here.

Outsmart raises $2 million seed round from Bainco, Clean Energy Venture Group, and Manifold Products

Outsmart raises $2 million seed round from Bainco, Clean Energy Venture Group, and Manifold Products. OutSmart, based in Natick, Mass. is a spinoff of Manifold Products LLC, a Boston-based venture engineering firm that develops products in the sensor, consumer electronics, medical devices and consumables markets.

Funding came from Bainco International Investors of Wellesley, The Clean Energy Venture Group of Brookline and Manifold Products. Prior to this round, OutSmart had received $500,000 from its original parent company, venture engineering firm Manifold Products LLC of Natick.

"The network is literally connected to everything of value in a facility, except the people,” said OutSmart co-founder and CEO Kevin Johnson

OutSmart Power Systems turns a building’s existing wiring infrastructure into a real-time power management network. The intelligent system knows exactly where and how much electricity is being used which enables building owners and facility managers to achieve a new level of measurement, management and control of their energy costs, asset utilization and comfort.

OutSmart is a spin-off from Manifold Products - Boston’s leading venture engineering firm.

OutSmart’s technology is for converting the electric systems of campuses and other commercial facilities into communications networks – basically a local area network (LAN) – using broadband over power lines technology and running smart grid applications and other power management systems.

www.outsmartinc.com

Telesphere, ISP and phone provider, raises $15mm in funding from Rally, Hawkeye, and Greenspun

Telesphere, ISP and phone provider, raises $15mm in funding from Rally, Hawkeye, and Greenspun for market and acquisition-based expansion plans into multiple new markets by 2010.

“We are gratified by our investors’ commitment and belief in Telesphere, particularly amid a difficult private equity environment. While it may seem counterintuitive, our growth has accelerated during this challenging economic time. Customers can adopt advanced business communications and Internet services with no upfront capital costs,” said Telesphere Chief Executive Officer Clark Peterson. “We are coming off yet another record quarter in sales and revenues and will use the additional capital to expand our services into additional markets.”

“We needed a communications system and service to power our business, but we didn’t have the luxury of investing a tremendous amount of up-front money,” said Daniel Bartlett, president Wright Engineers. “With Telesphere we have been able to seamlessly and simply connect all of our business locations with four-digit dialing that one receptionist, in one location, can manage offices in Arizona, Nevada, Utah and California. And, we were shocked to learn that it didn’t require significant investment to make it all happen.”

Telesphere is a nationwide business phone and Internet services provider that delivers an innovative package of IP telephone service and internet access to businesses throughout the United States. Telesphere’s services allow businesses to enjoy all of the latest voice and data features of large businesses without the costly investment of on premise equipment. Telesphere fully manages its customers’ services over a private IP facilities-based network.

Glee - Pilot on FOX

TheOnion: Apple Introduces Notebook w/ no keyboard - "MacBook Wheel"

GreenRoad raises $15M to improve driving behavior

"GreenRoad, a global pioneer in improving driving behavior, announced that it has raised $15 million in growth funding. DAG Ventures, a venture capital investment partnership, led the round with participation from existing investors by Benchmark Capital, Virgin Green Fund, Amadeus Capital Partners and Balderton Capital. GreenRoad also announced that Nick Pianim, managing director at DAG Ventures, was appointed to the company’s board of directors.

“We are very proud to have earned the confidence of DAG Ventures, as well as our existing institutional investors,” said Dan Steere, CEO of GreenRoad. “This investment of capital will enable GreenRoad to accelerate its expansion with fleet customers and partners.”

“We were encouraged by the company’s successive quarters of revenue growth, despite the current economic climate,” said Pianim. “GreenRoad’s ability to cut crash costs up to 50 percent and generate fuel savings of up to 10 percent has broad appeal to insurers and enterprise fleets across several industries. The GreenRoad Service presents a scalable approach to improving safety and fuel economy that resonates with commercial fleets looking to mitigate risk, offset volatile insurance and fuel costs and impact their bottom line immediately.”

“GreenRoad has a track record of delivering results and we are excited to continue investing in a company that is successfully responding to the global challenge of unsafe and inefficient driving,” said Elie Wurtman, general partner at Benchmark Capital and Chairman of GreenRoad’s Board of Directors.

About GreenRoad

GreenRoad is the pioneer and world’s leading provider of a comprehensive service to improve driving behavior. GreenRoad helps commercial fleets, insurers and consumers measure, improve and sustain safe and fuel-efficient driving behavior. The service integrates real-time, in-vehicle feedback, coaching, reporting and risk analysis tools to empower drivers to improve immediately. GreenRoad’s system is cost-effective, automated and fully scalable. The company is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, with sales offices throughout the U.S. and UK and an R&D Center in Israel. For more information, visit www.greenroad.com."

Google I/O 2009: Keynote

LogLogic Secures $8.8M in Extended Series D Financing

LogLogic has secured an additional $8.8 million in equity financing in a Series D round. The total equity investment in LogLogic is $58 million, with latest round led by Focus Ventures and included Sequoia Capital, Telesoft Partners, Worldview Technology Partners, INVESCO Private Capital, SAP Ventures and former shareholders of Exaprotect, including CM-CIC Private Equity, Crédit Agricole Private Equity and ELAIA Partners.

LogLogic provides log management, compliance management and security management solutions designed to improve accountability and lower costs for organizations of all sizes. LogLogic's unique open log management platform enables customers to collect, search and store 100 percent of IT log data for a comprehensive fingerprint of past and current activity across any organization. 

“LogLogic has shown incredible traction and market penetration year-over-year while continuing to pursue an aggressive vision for leading innovation in the log management, security management and database security markets,” said Mike Goguen, Managing Partner at Sequoia Capital. “LogLogic’s tier one business partners and large Fortune 500 customer portfolio further demonstrate the company’s commitment to deliver best in class products.”

In addition to securing additional financing, LogLogic completed the acquisition of Exaprotect last week. Exaprotect’s industry-leading security event management patent-pending technologies power LogLogic Security Event Manager and LogLogic Change Manager – two critical differentiators for LogLogic’s comprehensive suite of IT management business applications. While other vendors in the security event management industry provide passive monitoring and reporting tools, LogLogic’s product suite is the only line of solutions to actively detect intrusions and prevent data breach incidents.

“As we build on top of our record growth last year, we’re rapidly expanding to provide a variety of business applications that help customers achieve their security and compliance objectives faster and at a lower cost,” said Pat Sueltz, President and CEO at LogLogic. “If you want a full record of what’s happening to your data, you go to the logs. Our investors understand the value we provide and support our acceleration into new markets this year.”

Follow LogLogic on Twitter at http://twitter.com/loglogic.

gloStream Raises $7.5 Million Series B from Beringea and management

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan based gloStream raises $7.5MM from management and Beringea, Mich-based private equity firm.

gloStream provides physicians and healthcare facilities with certified electronic medical record and practice management solutions delivered and supported through a nationwide network of local technology partners.

gloStream provides a powerful, easy-to-use integrated EHR, EMR and practice management suite tailor-made for practices.

- Single-click access to all patient information
- Microsoft Office embedded
- Voice recognition
- Electronic prescribing
- Document management system
- Nationwide local support
- Experience improved patient care, streamlined workflow and efficient office administration.

"gloStream has demonstrated that they are one of Michigan's most innovative healthcare companies and have the capability to spur job growth locally while also transforming healthcare nationally," said Beringea director Michael Gross. "gloStream offers the only integrated EMR/PM solution on the market embedded with Microsoft Office, it is easy to deploy and use, and it is already helping more than a thousand users nationwide improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery."

Interview with Evan Williams, Twitter CEO, and CNBC Julia Boorstin at All Things Digital Conference , Take 2

”There will be a moment when you can fill out a form or something and give us money,” said Evan Williams, co-founder and chief executive officer.

The co-founders said they know the hype surrounding Twitter won’t last forever.

”If you pay attention to it too much, you can run yourself off the rails,” Mr. Stone said. He added, ”Pretty soon, everybody’s going to hate us.”

Twitter's Evan Williams and Biz Stone Open D7 Conference

Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interview Twitter founders to kick-off the All Things Digital Conference. Highlights:
- Twitter is still in its infancy
- 57% of twitter folks don't use it more than 1x per month
- Move from "what is twitter" to "I'm addicted"
- Grew only after 9 months
- Real-time search (lots of hype)
- Different and better ways to discover information
- Scale (but how?)
- Discovery (not analytics)

...drum roll...and the Hottest Tech Company (according to Businessweek) in 2009 is...

AMAZON

Jeff Bezos used the web to shake up book retailing and e-commerce.

Now he's using the power of web to sell electronic books on his Kindle e-reader.

The whole premise? The notion that consumers will pay for content when the bar is set low enough. See Apple iTunes.

Congrats all Amazonians.

Mark Logic, provider of information-centric applications, raises $12.5 Million in funding from Sequoia

Mark Logic Corporation, a leading provider of infrastructure software for information-centric applications, serving industries including media, government, software, transportation, and healthcare, closed a $12.5 million round of financing led by Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital.
"Mark Logic is a strong company, poised for continued growth," said Mark Kvamme, partner at Sequoia Capital. "Mark Logic's combination of unique technology, an exceptional team, and a disciplined go-to market strategy creates the opportunity for it to be a break-out company in the information technology space."

"I am happy to have this opportunity to put additional fuel in the tank to help sustain our high rate of growth," said Dave Kellogg, chief executive officer of Mark Logic Corporation. "We're thrilled to be a leader in the unstructured data management revolution, and look forward to a bright future helping organizations unlock the value that's currently trapped in the 80 percent of enterprise information that is not well handled by traditional systems."

Host Analytics, Provider of Corporate Performance Management, secures Series B Funding from ATV and Trident Capital

Host Analytics, Provider of Corporate Performance Management, secures Series B Funding from ATV and Trident Capital.

Host Analytics is the leading provider of on-demand corporate and financial performance management solutions. Host Analytics’ solutions help financial, line of business and departmental executives improve their budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidations, dashboarding, scorecarding, reporting and analysis. Host Analytics delivers its suite of corporate performance management solutions via the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Host Analytics, a pioneer in providing comprehensive and easy to use CPM solutions, was founded in 2000 and expanded its SaaS offering in 2005to include a complete suite of CPM solutions.

“We were very excited that several potential new investors expressed interest and recognized the increased value we created with the work and success over the last year,” said Jon Kondo, CEO at Host Analytics. “ATV, Trident and StarVest are synonymous with investment success and each was very excited to join the new round. Everyone appreciates the magnitude of the opportunity before us, and is eager to accelerate the momentum we’ve gained in the last year. We are confident that this latest round will help us more rapidly grab market share and more quickly achieve our goal of attaining profitability.”

“Host Analytics introduces a simple approach for organizations to purchase and deploy performance management for business needs across finance and operations and support a broad range of consolidation, analytics, planning, budgeting, reporting and other key capabilities,” said Mark Smith, CEO & EVP Research, Ventana Research. “By providing a suite of applications on a common platform in the cloud computing environment, Host Analytics has established a new standard to help organizations manage performance, increasing effectiveness, and transform management without the IT hassle or budget battles.”

OpenX, Ad Server for Web Publishing, Raises $10 million Series C funding from DAG, Accel, Index

OpenX, Ad Server for Web Publishing, Raises $10 million Series C funding from DAG, Accel, Index. Other investors included Mangrove Capital, First Round Capital and Jonathan Miller. The Company raised $5 million in its Series A financing, which closed in May 2007 and raised $15.5 million in its Series B financing, which closed in December 2007.

OpenX is a leading ad server for web publishers offering publishers comprehensive, customizable and free to use ad serving technology.

OpenX Ad Server empowers a community of more than 150,000 websites across the Internet with the ability to take control of their ads and maximize their ad revenue and relevance.

OpenX Ad Server products are translated into 25 languages, used in more than 100 countries around the world, and serve more than 300 billion ads each month.

OpenX Market is the company's unique monetization platform and is designed to help publishers maximize the price of their inventory and to help advertisers much more effectively target where their ads are served.

The Market uses a real-time auction marketplace in which multiple classes of buyers bid for each impression provided by OpenX's vast publisher base.

"OpenX is demonstrating that combining a unique business model with a widely adopted open source product can provide the basis for a company of significant scale," said Nick Pianim, managing director, DAG Ventures. "We think that the 300 billion impressions which flow through the company's software monthly will allow the company to rapidly grow the Market, creating enormous value for everyone in the OpenX ecosystem in the process. Moreover, the broad, worldwide use of the company’s products and services demonstrates that there is a clear need for an independent alternative technology platform in the online advertising space and OpenX is poised to take full advantage of that need."

Help Eric De La Cruz - needs a heart transplant.

Welcome to WeLoveEric.com

From Veronica De La Cruz

My friends,

I am asking for your help. Please take a moment to petition Senator Harry Reid and Nevada's Congress members for my brother Eric De La Cruz who is dying. He needs a heart transplant. Unfortunately, there is a lot of red tape involved, and getting on the list is not easy.

Eric has a preexisting medical condition and we can't get him insurance. We have been fighting to get him Medicare disability.

Senator Reid needs to know that there should be a change in our flawed health care system. We are praying that in this instance Nevada and California will work together so that Eric can get on the transplant list.

We are also trying to raise money to assist in paying the massive expenses involved. Please donate anything you can! Even $1.00 would be appreciated!

Follow Eric's sister, Veronica De La Cruz on Twitter for updates -- Follow Veronica

The Obama Protectionist Effect: Infosys Technologies Starting to Reduce H1-B visas

Even as the strong antioutsourcing lobby in the US is forcing US lawmakers to take a relook at their H1-B visa strategy amid huge job losses, Infosys Technologies - holds the largest number of H1-B visas among all the Indian IT services companies - has started reducing the number as a part of the company's policy to reduce its 'overseas bench' strength.

The number of H1-B visa holders in the company, which was 8,700 as of December 31, 2008, came down to 8,200 as of March 31, 2009, according to information available with Business Standard.

This number is expected to come down further by another 500 at the end of the first quarter of FY10, as the company is further rationalising its workforce in the US by inducting more locals (Americans) in its rolls, a source close to the development said.

However, Infosys member of the Board and Head of HR, T V Mohandas Pai, insisted that the current reduction in the number of H1-B visa holders had nothing to do with the 'reduction in the overseas bench'.

"The number of people (H1-B visa holders) go up and down based on business requirements. When the business is down due to the recession, we don't need so many people (in the US)," he said.

"It has nothing to do with Obama's announcement and the US government's proposals to lower the H1-B visa limit," he added.

According to the latest update from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, as against an available upper cap of 65,000 as mandated by the US Congress, only about 45,000 H1-B visa applications were received till May 19 this year.

Other than the global recession, experts say the fact that each H1-B visa costs about $3,000-5,000 per applicant is reason enough for companies not to invest so much on obtaining such visas.

Of late, most India companies have increased their uptake of local talent in the US. Wipro has already announced its intention to hire over 750 US workers for its newly opened centre in Atlanta.

IT major TCS is also focussing on more US citizens in its workforce, according the company's COO N Chandrasekharan.

"It's important to create critical mass and have a local delivery capability to service onsite clients. If we do this from India, it will be quite costly for India technology companies" he said.

Nikkei Will Rally to 14,000 According to Market Strategist. Technology is the Catalyst

Naomi Fink, Japan strategist at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, and Marc Faber, editor & publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, expect the Nikkei to rally to 14,000 and 15,000 in 2010 respectively. They discuss their bullish outlook for Japan, with CNBC's Martin Soong. Technology Startups will be the driving catalyst because of productivity gains even with the aging population and amid slowing GDP.

Japanese Technology Companies Looking to Rebound

Japan's tech stocks look attractive to Douglas Isles, executive director of Pengana Capital. He explains why to CNBC's Chloe Cho. He also reveals his top stock picks in this space.

Equity Markets Ahead for Week of May 26th - It's all About Housing. Will This Bear Market Rally Persist?

Housing data will be in the spotlight during the week. Existing home sales, Case Shiller data and new home sales are among the highlights. There will also be results from JCrew, Dell and Costco, among others.

SUSAN BOYLE SEMI FINAL PERFORMANCE Britains Got Talent 2009 HIGH QUALITY

nyt: At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age

" The evidence suggests that people who spend long stretches of their days, three hours and more, engrossed in some mental activities like cards may be at reduced risk of developing dementia. Researchers are trying to tease apart cause from effect: Are they active because they are sharp, or sharp because they are active?

The researchers have also demonstrated that the percentage of people with dementia after 90 does not plateau or taper off, as some experts had suspected. It continues to increase, so that for the one in 600 people who make it to 95, nearly 40 percent of the men and 60 percent of the women qualify for a diagnosis of dementia.

At the same time, findings from this and other continuing studies of the very old have provided hints that some genes may help people remain lucid even with brains that show all the biological ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. In the 90+ Study here, now a joint project run by U.S.C. and the University of California, Irvine, researchers regularly run genetic tests, test residents’ memory, track their activities, take blood samples, and in some cases do postmortem analyses of their brains. Researchers at Irvine maintain a brain bank of more than 100 specimens."

Digital Chocolate CEO and Former Electronic Arts Founder Trip Hawkins Discusses Trends in iPhone Apps

William M. 'Trip' Hawkins III (born December 28, 1953) is a Silicon Valley American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company and Digital Chocolate.
Digital Chocolate is the world's most efficient producer of high quality, original games across mass-market casual platforms. With offices in San Mateo, Helsinki, Bangalore, and Barcelona, the company offers more than 60 award-winning games, including Tower Bloxx and AvaPeeps, with a focus on casual, social, and mobile play that is offered globally over both wired and wireless networks. Digital Chocolate was founded in 2003 by CEO Trip Hawkins, who was also the founder and CEO of Electronic Arts.

CEO Interview, Tech Implications: Are Off-Shore and Outsourcing Dirty Words?

I.T. companies in India still face an uncertain future with many U.S. clients cutting back on tech spending.

Wipro chairman and co-CEO Azim Premji gives his perspective in the following interview.

Are technology trade barriers and protectionism on the horizon.

2,000 Americans employed in the US by Wipro.

techcrunch (via keith rabois) - Social networks killed eBay traffic (not amazon? hmm)

So what happened?

With the fun factor driving eBay usage, what really stole eBay’s limelight was the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook and the likes of YouTube. In December 2006, almost half of the U.S. Internet population was still visiting eBay. But when you examine the total amount of time spent online, 11.9 percent was spent on MySpace versus 3.7 percent on eBay (according to Compete.com). By then, people were already devoting more of their online time to pimping out their MySpace profiles or snacking on YouTube’s videos.

---

"Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Keith Rabois, vice president of strategy and business development for Slide, the social entertainment company. Prior to Slide, Keith was a VP at LinkedIn and an EVP at PayPal in charge of among other things, competitive strategy vis-à-vis eBay. He also worked at eBay for three weeks following its acquisition of PayPal. Keith currently serves on the Board of Directors of Yelp, Vendio, Xoom and FanIQ."

Half Man Half Amazing - lebrON

McNamee Backs TheStimulist.com - Courting ‘Change Generation’

"Founded by news anchor Carlos Watson, The Stimulist is a daily brief for the (curious) optimist. We believe that snark is too easy. We’re looking for the good. Each day, the site posts a six-pack of fresh content: a wrap-up of the news, one idea worth considering, one person worth knowing, one thing worth trying, one piece of history worth remembering and a blog from Watson himself. As a multi-talented news personality, Carlos has a unique (and optimistic) perspective on what constitutes “daily news”. Like the Daily Beast, Goop, or Talking Points Memo, The Stimulist represents one media personality’s lens for viewing the (Obama Era) world.

To be clear:

The Stimulist is…

1. What Carlos Watson has always wanted from a news site: a broad range of sources, provocative articles, a place to learn about incredible people, things to try, historical context, and some sex.
2. Not all about sex. Sorry.
3. An ongoing conversation. If you’re a writer, or if you’re not, The Stimulist hereby solicits your ideas.
4. A work in progress. The Stimulist wants your feedback.
5. A place to find inspiration. Recession or no, it’s a beautiful world full of fascinating things. Find some here.

The Stimulist is not…

1. Into pessimist hysteria. We’re not delivering hyper-liberal snark, gloomy predictions about the economy, or caustic celeb gossip.
2. A porn site. But it may be the most fun you can have in front of your computer at work. (If you have work. If not, see #3.)
3. Ever mean to its interns.
4. The Daily Beast.
5. A place for you to anonymously act like an ass. That’s why we have a commenting policy."

DFJ: Steve Jurvetson: Innovation in a Disruptive Environment

"Steve Jurvetson is one of the smartest and most influential investors in Silicon Valley, but he speaks so fast that you have to listen carefully to capture his wisdom. I did just that so you don't have to at last week's Global Technology Symposium at Stanford University.

Here are 10 gold nuggets of wisdom on "Innovation in a Disruptive Environment" by Jurvetson - the highly acclaimed, fast-talking managing director of leading global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson:

• 1. For innovative cultures to thrive there must be a willingness to fail and an understanding that it's okay to be wrong most of the time. In other words, not an environment of fear.
• 2. Great companies are formed in down markets, including Adobe, Broadcom, Chevron, Digital Equipment, HP, Microsoft, Rambus, Skype, Texas Instruments, Westinghouse.
• 3. Today, many entrepreneurs and companies look at the China and India markets first, not the U.S.
• 4. These days, businesses should tilt toward risk-taking behavior.
• 5. Most great, disruptive businesses were considered dumb ideas by most VCs; expect a lot of rejection and certainly not unanimous acceptance.
• 6.According to Ray Kurzweil, "The next 20 years of technological change will be equivalent to the past 100 years." That means shorter forecast horizons and perpetual "future shock."
• 7. What DFJ looks for in investment opportunities: Passionate entrepreneurs with unique ideas that can change the world.
• 8. Startup success depends on disruption: financial turmoil, new channels, or disruptive technology.
• 9. Entrepreneurs are becoming more globally distributed all the time.
• 10. Technology adoption rates are skyrocketing: hot new services like Hotmail, Skype (DFJ invested in both) and ICQ all achieved 8 - 14 million users in their first 12 - 18 months.

Steve hasn't watched TV or read the newspaper in over 20 years. He thinks the way the media presents news is disruptive to concentration and focus. He also stayed away from politics until recently. I knew there was a reason why I liked the guy. '"

paidcontent: Sky High: Russian Investment Group Offers As Much As $350 Million To Facebook

"Rumors of Facebook taking in more money have been circulating for a while now, and now seems it may happen: Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian online investment group, has offered to invest $200 million in Facebook at a $10 billion valuation for the company’s preferred stock, reports WSJ. It has also offered another $100 million to $150 million, in return for Facebook’s common stock, at a $6.5 billion valuation, the story says. This is probably the closest Facebook will ever get to the $15 billion valuation that it got when Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) invested in it in 2007. Since then, estimates of “real” valuation have ranged much lower, to as low as $2 billion recently."

AVC - The Disruption Talk - eery future predictions and more

Disruption - Final Version

View more OpenOffice presentations from fredwilson.

Smart idea - MIT OpenCourseWare - Free course content

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
What is MIT OpenCourseWare?MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.
OCW is not an MIT education.
OCW does not grant degrees or certificates.
OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty.
Materials may not reflect entire content of the course.

Techcrunch: Move over WeFollow, TwitterGrader, Hello Chirpio!

"Perhaps the biggest problem facing Twitter these days is the influx of users who just wish to use it for spamming purposes. When someone follows you, it’s hard to know their intentions at first and you may follow them back. If they’re a spammer, your stream will be bombarded with junk. A new startup, Chirpio, wants to solve this problem and offer better user recommendations with a Twitter rating system.
While there have been plenty of other service that you can use fo find Twitter users you should follow, notably Mr. Tweet and WeFollow, Chirpio offers a very simple solution that everyone will be able to understand. When you sign in to your Twitter account on Chirpio via their OAuth support, you will see your tweet stream as you would on Twitter. But below each tweet you will see a way to rate the user up or down. More importantly, you can mark them as “Spam” and easily unfollow them. Below each user’s icon, you will see their composite rating score."

Smart and well designed UI. Hopefully when their api is ready other twitter apps will take full advantage of Chirpio's head start on user ratings. Find us at chirpio.com/techstartups

SEOchat, SEObook and SEOmoz lead companies in SEO space

The top three of the leading Search Engine Optimization sites out there are seochat.com, seobook.com and seomoz.org

Seobook.com gets more traffic than seochat.com and seomoz.org

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via search results.

The earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click.

SolarWinds Breaks Nine-Month IPO Drought

SolarWinds develops simple and powerful software for managing networks, small or large. Our company culture is defined by passion for innovation and a philosophy that network management can be simplified for every environment.

SolarWinds products are used by more than one million network engineers to manage IT environments ranging from ten to tens of thousands of network devices. Comprised of fault and performance management products, configuration and compliance products, and tools for engineers, the SolarWinds product family is trusted by organizations around the globe to design, build, maintain, and troubleshoot complex network environments.

SolarWinds is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with sales and product development offices around the world.

Shares of SolarWinds, which started trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange closed Thursday at $13.79, 10 percent above their offering price of $12.50.

Only 6 VC-backed technology start-ups went public last year; the fewest since 1977 and down from 86 in 2007, according to the National Venture Capital Association. The last such company to go public was Rackspace Hosting in August. Shares of that company are down 6 percent since then.

Interview with SAS CEO - largest private software company globally

James Goodnight, CEO of SAS, the largest privately held software company, discusses tech, politics and education

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world "THE POWER TO KNOW".

Interview with Paul Raines, Gamestop COO

Interview with Paul Raines, Gamestop COO. Where will growth come from in the video game sector if the Wii is a mature product with declining growth?

2 great quotes - Bob Metcalfe presentation

Carlos Santana - You’ve got to change your evil ways, baby.

George Santayana - Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it?

George Santayana- History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.

Twitter URL shortener Bit.ly is All about Social Web tracking

Twitter URL Shortener Bit.ly suddenly is everywhere and nowhere.

Bit.ly, recently raised $2 million in venture financing, tracks real-time statistics on how many times links are clicked and where users are coming from

Information that could be valuable to companies and brands looking to measure the impact of an e-mail message, link, tweet or mention online.

Technology startup bit.ly began as a project at Betaworks. Investors include: O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, Social Leverage, The Accelerator Group, SoftTech VC, Ron Conway, Josh Stylman, Pete Hershberg, David Shen Ventures, Jeff Clavier, Mitch Kapor, Howard Lindzon,Chris Sacca, and Founders Fund (Dave McClure).

bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs).

Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier. bit.ly can be accessed through the website, bookmarklets and a robust and open API. bit.ly is also integrated into several popular third-party tools such as Tweetdeck. A more full list of third party tools can be found on the bit.ly blog.

Unique user-level and aggregate links are created, allowing users to view complete, real-time traffic and referrer data, as well as location and metadata.

Matrix Partners and FirstMark Finance Conductor Inc., SEO measurement solutions provider with $10MM Series B

Conductor, Inc, provider of enterprise SEO measurement and optimization solutions, announced $10 million in Series B funding, led by new investor Matrix Partners. FirstMark Capital, who led Conductor's Series A financing, also participated in the round.

Conductor is a leader in developing products and solutions designed to address the largely untapped natural search market. Given the industry's lack of dependable data and intelligent tools, enterprise marketers frequently neglect the significant opportunities in natural search -- investing only 11 percent of their search marketing budget, despite the fact that nearly 85 percent of all search activity occurs in the natural space.

Conductor's technology empowers online marketing professionals to gather reliable data on their SEO efforts, make better decisions on capturing search market share, and accurately measure the ROI of these efforts.

"We see persistent demand from large organizations to invest in SEO. However, lacking the tools to manage and measure that investment, many large organizations are effectively inactive in natural search and miss out on significant opportunities to grow their businesses," said Nick Beim, a General Partner with Matrix Partners. "Conductor has demonstrated considerable success in improving the metrics and transparency of natural search."

"Matrix and FirstMark bring important industry expertise, support and extensive networks that will enable Conductor to continue giving our customers insight into their natural search efforts," said Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor. "We look forward to continuously adding significant value to our customers by closing the loop for their natural search marketing efforts."

Conductor has added experienced senior management and staff from major search engines, software as a service (SaaS) providers, and the SEO/SEM industry over the past year.

Conductor also offers a range of associated professional services to its over 200 Fortune 500 and Internet Retailer 500 clients, a majority of the leading interactive agencies, and some of the world's most prestigious publications. Based in Chelsea, Manhattan, the company was founded in 2005, and is one of the fastest growing companies in New York

Conductor's subscription-based, software as a service platform enables customers to gather competitive data, prioritize and improve their decision making, and accurately measure the ROI of their SEO efforts.

Nobel Laureate Founded Population Genetics Technologies Raises $3.2MM Series A Funding

Population Genetics technologies, based in Cambridge, UK announced that it met commercial and development milestones set by its principal investors thus securing its final £2,000,000 of Series A funding.
PGT has developed proprietary technologies that will both dramatically reduce the costs of performing large-scale population studies on Next Generation Sequencing platforms and also allow the detection and characterization of rare allelic variations in disease phenotypes. The company believes that these technologies will have a significant impact on discovery, biomarker identification, diagnostic and personalized medicine workflows.
Initial seed funding for the company, which was founded in 2005 by Drs Sydney Brenner, Sam Eletr and Philip Goelet, came from the Wellcome Trust and Series A funding has been provided by Auriga Partners, Beringea Ltd and Compass Genetics Investors LLC.
Commenting on the most recent round of funding Mel Kronick, President and CEO of PGT said, ”We are very pleased, especially in the prevailing economic climate, to have been able to confirm and extend the support from our investors. This was achieved by proving the scalability and applicability of our technologies and their ability to overcome current, real-world constraints on access to “gold standard” population studies. This latest round of investment will allow us to not only progress our development activities but also to begin pre-commercial investigations of the various markets, business models and partners where our technologies can add value.”

Bakersfield.com: Bakersfield dad accused of biting out son's eye

"A Bakersfield father is accused of biting out one of the eyes of his small child and similarly mutilating the other eye, leaving the child blind.

After attacking the child, 34-year-old Angel Vidal Mendoza Sr. quickly left his apartment in a wheelchair, entered a backyard of a nearby vacant home and attacked his own legs with an ax, severely injuring himself, Bakersfield police reported.

The child, 4-year-old Angelo Mendoza Jr., later told police, "My daddy ate my eyes."

Doctors at Mercy Hospital said it is unknown whether the child will regain vision in his right eye.

Child Protective Services cannot discuss the case, CPS program director Brian Parnell said. But in cases of serious abuse, the child is taken into protective custody, he said.

Some foster homes have specialized medical training, but more such people are needed, he said.

The boy's mother, Desirae Marie Bermudez, 23, was not present during the incident. There is a $15,000 warrant for her arrest for failing to complete a drug treatment program in late 2008, court documents say.

A search warrant report said the father "was displaying symptoms of being under the influence of PCP."

Both he and Bermudez were charged with being under the influence of PCP in a 2006 criminal case. Both pleaded no contest to child endangerment charges in that case, records say.

So why was the boy still living with the father?

CPS officials say there has to pretty much be serious physical abuse -- major bruises or broken bones -- before a child is taken away from his parents automatically.

In cases where parents are using drugs, CPS will definitely check on the child, Parnell said. But they won't necessarily remove the child. That all depends on the extent of the drug abuse or the availability of other care -- relatives or neighbors -- for the children, he said.

The incident happened in the early evening of April 28 at the apartment the father and son share at 422 Ohio Drive near Terrace Way and Madison Street in southeast Bakersfield.

Police and search warrant reports say:

On the morning of April 28, Mendoza asked neighbor Elizabeth Rodriguez, 36, for a ride to a work-related appointment later in the day.

At 6 p.m., she sent her 12-year-old son to get Mendoza. The boy said Mendoza opened his door slightly and looked nervous, but didn't let him in. Mendoza said he would be right out.

But a few minutes later, Rodriguez saw Mendoza rolling his wheelchair quickly away.

The 12-year-old boy and another neighbor went to Mendoza's apartment and discovered the child on the floor.

Meanwhile, witnesses told police a man was yelling and screaming in a wheelchair from the backyard and hitting his legs with an ax.

Mendoza, who remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail, is charged with mayhem, torture, child cruelty and inflicting an injury to a child.

He's scheduled for a May 20 hearing.

His criminal history dates back to 1998 and includes convictions for drugs, battery, check forgery and a misdemeanor child endangerment."

Lingerie football league - Interesting Startup Concept. Does sex sell?

Latest startup idea - Lingerie football league, year round 20 game season with your most competitive female athletes.

Founder Mitch Mortaza, a 10-team league this September 4, reports CNBC's Darren Rovell. Players get paid based on revenue share and whether their teams win.

Top 3 Big Tech Trends from Sungard CEO Chris Conde

Chris Conde, CEO of Sungard, tells CNBC the three technologies that are transforming the way we do business.
1) SAAS - software as a service / cloud computing
2) Risk Management and Compliance
3) Data Analytics and Storage

Comments from Twitter Founder Biz Stone Suggesting Enterprise Monetization Plans....sometime in the near future

Recent comments by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone particularly how Twitter is searching for ways to make money from its popularity.

- "Twitter is planning to introduce tools for businesses by year end and may charge fees for such services," co-founder Biz Stone said.

- "We're looking at who's using Twitter and for what"

- "Are there any commercial usages that are making a lot of sense?"

- Stone said "phase one" of that effort was spent collecting intelligence on how people use the service.

- The second phase will see Twitter launching tools and services on top of free micro-blogging, aimed at companies that wish to use Twitter to message customers.

- It will be "simple stuff" such as lightweight analytics, Stone said. He reiterated the company's commitment to keeping the service free for everyone but added:

- "If there is a way we can go above and beyond, and they (companies) can improve bottom line by offering services we can offer for a fee, (we) will do that."

Visitors to Twitter jumped 83 per cent in April from the previous month, to reach 17 million, according to comScore data.

InformationWeek: CIOs Seek Answers To Top Technology Questions At Interop

"I  could imagine a CIO framing out an Interop plan that includes these and similar questions to be pursued: --How much of cloud computing is hype, and how much is real capability? Which vendors are purely driving the hype, and which ones have real-world solutions? --We're in the middle of our developing a new data-center strategy – with so many IT vendors saying they have the best/fastest/safest/greenest and least-expensive approach, how can we be sure we're picking the right strategic partners and options? --And, how will developments in cloud computing affect that data-center strategy, and vice-versa? Do we need to get them both worked out before moving on either one? --How can I best articulate to the board the business value of these strategies? I know we have mountains of technical details to support the architectural plan, but what are the right business metrics for me to highlight so that I end up with not only funding but also their enthusiastic support for this plan to be a real business-changer? --Some of my top-50 IT partners have slipped in the past couple of years and I'd like to replace them with dynamic, hard-charging, and hungry young companies that'll crawl over broken glass to get my business, just the way some of these complacent ones used to. I need to make some of those changes so all of my top IT partners – not the commodity suppliers, but the strategic partners – will know that if they expect to keep my business, then they'd better be ready and eager to step up the value they're delivering. --Everybody on the board is talking about mobile, and the need for us to make advanced mobile capabilities one of the most-decisive criteria in evaluating those top-50 vendors. That covers everything from enterprise-software companies to networking companies to cloud services and security vendors: who's got nothing more than table stakes, and who's able to help my company become a breakthrough innovator for our customers? --SaaS possibilities seem to be getting less unusual and more mainstream – I see that Salesforce is getting more aggressive than ever as it adds new clients, Workday just landed $75 million in venture funding, and Oracle seems to be finally serious about the SaaS approach. We need to move beyond testing and take a significant project live – who's the right partner for us, and what's the right approach?"