VentureBeat yesterday reported on the new social network of John Doerr’s daughter Mary. Another Kleiner Perkins’ offspring has even bigger ambitions. Frank Caufield Jr., son of KPCB cofounder Frank Caufield Sr., is raising $100 million for the second venture capital fund-of-funds of his six-year-old firm, Darwin Ventures. The San Francisco-based [...]

Bloomberg and New York magazine report on instances of financial types being denied access to exclusive clubs and restaurants, with one going so far as to screen "203″ area code calls. Call it financial profiling? Slate might not think so. ***Dirt—or rather, making dirt capable of growing things—is a growing [...]

Longtime readers of the daily email may remember Michael Bleyzer, CEO of Ukraine-based private equity firm SigmaBleyzer. Back in 2004, Michael provided a moving eyewitness account of the Orange Revolution in Kyiv, which generated more feedback than almost any other issue we’ve ever produced. Earlier today I spoke briefly with [...]

Yesterday I outlined how to properly characterize trendy aka "sexy" companies. But how does one actually invest in them? I have long operated under the mindset that Heelys and Segway—companies whose popular products save us from the dreaded act of walking—were both doomed. Heelys has had a somewhat rocky journey, [...]

Uh oh. Fenwick & West just released its second-quarter data on trends and terms on VC financings, and the whole thing looks like a collision course: More money in, less money out. Valuations continue to soar. For the 18th consecutive quarter in a row, companies enjoyed up rounds, and the [...]

Battery Ventures once again wants to become a billionaire, by raising a $250 million “overage fund” to supplement the $750 million eighth fund it closed last summer. I’ve got a bunch of related items, and since bullet points are so much simpler than prose… * Battery last raised $1 billion [...]

Could it be that the Segway X2 model for golf nuts - replete with golf bag carrier - is becoming a hit? Something has given the folks at the “personal transportation device” company, reason to begin raising a Series D, just months after closing their last tranche of a $35 [...]

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for the San Jose Mercury News about some venture capitalists becoming startup entrepreneurs. One of my subjects was Vikram Kashyap, who had joined the West Coast office of Battery Ventures after graduating Harvard, but decided that he'd need some operating experience [...]

Michigan-based venture capital firm EDF Ventures earlier this week had a subpoena served on Adeo Ressi, founder and chief poobah of TheFunded.com. They’d actually been trying to do so for weeks, but Ressi was in New York instead of Silicon Valley. The purpose was to learn the identity of an [...]

We’ve been reporting on Sequoia Capital’s new outsourced CIO platform for the past several months, but there is still no mention of it – or its team members like Eric Upin and Dan Feder - on the firm’s website. Kind of odd, given that Sequoia has added bios for it’s [...]

This article first appeared in the August 11 issue of Buyouts. Catterton Partners has sold Wellness Pet Food, a provider of natural pet food products, to a strategic buyer, earning 7x its investment and a 60 percent gross internal rate of return, sources close the transaction told Buyouts. The buyout [...]

Apollo and KKR each filed amended S-1 docs this week, and revealed how the economic downturn has been affecting internal rates of return (IRRs). It ain’t pretty. First take Apollo, which plans to go public via a traditional IPO. It previously reported that its sixth private equity fund had a [...]

As many already know, Jesse Draper, the telegenic daughter of telegenic venture capitalist Tim Draper, has begun starring in an online series of her own creation called "Valley Girl." In this newly released episode, Draper interviews Sun Microsystems chairman Scott McNealy, asking him questions including, "Do you recycle?," "Do you [...]

Infrastructure investor Alinda Capital Partners is back in fundraising mode, just one year after closing its debut vehicle with $3 billion. “It’s quick, but not as quick as it sounds,” says a source close to the firm. “The first fund was nearly 75% committed when it closed, so they’re mostly [...]

A123 Systems, a Watertown, Mass.-based maker of lithium-ion batteries, has just filed for a $175 million IPO. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are co-managing the offering. This is perhaps the single hottest VC-backed company in New England, having raised over $132 million in total funding. Backers include General Electric, Procter [...]

Are we about to see a repeat of the bad old days of the seventies – high inflation combined with low economic growth? If so it could have some unpleasant consequences for stock markets and M&A activity. The signs are not encouraging. The UK’s official inflation figures hit 3% in [...]

The CalPERS board on Monday will take up discussion of AB 1967, a bill that would prohibit the pension system from investing in private equity funds whose management companies are partially owned by sovereign wealth funds of governments with poor human rights records. It already has received a staff recommendation [...]

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Akimbo, a San Mateo, Calif.-based online video technology company, has raised $8 million in fourth-round funding. Return backers include AT&T, Blueprint Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Zone Ventures. The company has now raised around $56 million in total VC funding since 1999. www.akimbo.com[...]

George Bischof has joined Meritech Capital Partners as a managing director. He had spent the past eight years as a general partner with Focus Ventures, where he focused on enterprise infrastructure, digital media and technology enabled services companies. Among his portfolio companies were Isilon Systems, EqualLogic, G-Log and Wily Technology. [...]

Vestar Capital Partners has promoted Peter Calamari to principal and Brendan Spillane to executive vice president. Calamari joined Vestar in 1999, and previously was a vice president in the firm's consumer group. Spillane joined as a vice president in 2006, and will continue to serve as corporate CFO. PRESS [...]

Purfresh, a Livermore, Calif.-based provider of clean solutions for food and water, announced that its $25 million Series C round (announced last December) included a $5 million investment from Perella Weinberg Partners. It had not previously disclosed Perella Weinberg's participation. The round was led by Chilton Investment Co., with other [...]

Treadstone Capital Management and Drum Capital Management have acquired a controlling interest in the assets of Nichols Brothers Boat Builders, a Freeland, Wash.-based manufacturer of steel and aluminum boats. Nichols had filed for bankruptcy protection last November, and the buyers have committed to invest up to $15 million in new [...]

SafeNet Inc., an information security company owned by Vector Capital, has agreed to acquire Ingrian Networks Inc., a Redwood City, Calif.–based provider of enterprise data protection and privacy solutions. No financial terms are being disclosed for the deal, which is expected to close within the next month. Ingrian has raised [...]

The U.S. Department of Energy has chosen three venture capital firms to participate in the Department's new entrepreneur-in-residence pilot program, which aims to accelerate deployment and commercialization of advanced clean energy technologies from three DOE National Laboratories into the global marketplace. The three firms are: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, [...]