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Posts Tagged ‘sequoia-capital’

SV Angel, the angel fund founded by super-angel Ron Conway, is losing one of its general partners to a portfolio company. Brian Pokorny is now the CEO of fast-growing Silicon Valley-based Dailybooth.

Dailybooth, the runner up in the “best social app” and winner of the “time sink” categories at this year’s Crunchies Awards, is “your life in pictures.” Some 6 million monthly visitors share pictures and status updates with eachother. “It’s a community for self expression,” says Pokorny.

A typical interaction: a users posts a photo, taken with their webcam, showing what they’re eating, what they’re feeling, or perhaps with friends in the background. Other user then respond via text or photos. Some strings go on for hundreds of responses. Here’s an example.

The company, originally incubated by Y Combinator, has raised just under $1 million from notable investosr such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Betaworks, Kevin Rose, Caterina Fake, Chris Sacca, Joshua Schachter, Gary Vaynerchuk and Aydin Senkut.

Founders Jon Wheatley and Ryan Amos will remain in their current roles at Dailybooth.

Pokorny has worked with Conway on his various investments since 2006, and has racked up quite an angel portfolio of his own. He owns stakes in Twitter, Square, Milo, Blippy, Bump, Tweetdeck, OMGPOP and others.

He’s staying close to SV Angel, too. In addition to his new role as CEO of Dailybooth, Pokorny will remain as a Strategic Partner with SV Angel where he will continue to provide key insights into sourcing and evaluating investment opportunities in social media and other sectors.

“I’m excited to have Brian join one of our hottest portfolio startups and lead it to the next level,” said Ron Conway via email. “He will remain part of the core team at SV Angel as a strategic partner, and I look forward to working with him in this new role.”

SV Angel has also been in the new recently – they are reportedly closing a new $10 million fund, the first time the fund will take outside investors to participate in their startup investments.

File sharing and syncing service Dropbox is close to expanding its line of mobile products, which includes a mobile phone friendly website and an iPhone app, with custom apps for Android and Blackberry devices.

In an e-mail update sent out to its user base – over four million strong these days – the startup reminds people about the existence of its mobile website but ends the message with a couple of sentences that leave little to one’s imagination:

“Do you own a Blackberry or Android phone? Don’t worry! We’ve got plenty more mobile magic coming soon!”

Furthermore, in the latest post published on Dropbox’ company blog, engineer Will Stockwell notes his resolution for 2010 is “to release some crazy new features for the iPhone app” and to begin poking his head around “some other undisclosed projects.. coughANDROIDAPPcough”. The company seems pretty serious about its plans for servicing Google’s open mobile OS platform, as it’s also looking for an extra Android Developer according to its jobs page.

In case you’re not familiar with the service – unlikely given the fact that the startup has won a Crunchie for Best Internet Application at the most recent awards ceremony – Dropbox enables people to sync files and media across platforms and devices, in order to have them available from any location. Dropbox provides users with 2 GB of space for free (twice the storage Google offers), with add-on plans offering more storage and functionality for a fee.

Dropbox was founded by CEO Drew Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, and received seed funding from Y Combinator soon after. The company went on to raise $7.2 million from Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Amidzad Partners.

(Thanks to Erin Blaskie for the tip and the TwitPic image)

Epix, the movie and entertainment streaming network that works across your TV, computer, and mobile phone, has landed its fourth cable deal: Charter Communications. In the past few weeks, the network also landed a deal with Cox Communications and Mediacom Communications. We wrote about the service here and here. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Jointly backed by Viacom, Lionsgate, Paramount, and MGM, EPIX provides access to over 15,000 movie titles. The company originally signed a deal with Verizon FIOS, which was somewhat limiting considering only some 2 million people use Verizon’s cable service. Cox brings more clients to EPIX with its base of 6.2 million customers, which including 2.7 million digital cable subscribers. Mediacom, the 7th largest cable provider in the U.S., will bring with it a base of 1.3 million subscribers in 22 states. And Carter, which is the fourth largest cable provider in the U.S. will bring EPIX to 5.7 million homes by May 2010.

One of our main issues with EPIX was that it was tied to Verizon FIOS but it appears that the company is steadily adding more cable providers to distribute its service. Epix was also said to be close to an agreement with the Dish Network, which would bring a large list of 14 million subscribers. Unfortunately, the platform offers a sliver of available movies out there, since it only includes the movies available through the studios that are backing the company. But EPIX is useful because it transcends the TV and your computer and it’s fairly easy to use. Now that EPIX has scored deals with Cox and Charter, I’m sure the company is looking to cross Time Warner and Comcast off the list.

Some VCs are getting an early Valentine’s Day gift fromTheFunded, the site where CEOs rate venture capitalists and their firms. Below you will find the top-ranked individual VCs, as determined by their ratings in 2009. What makes this ranking particularly useful to entrepreneurs is that it is ratings by other CEOs, often CEOs who have had direct dealings with the VCs they are rating.

While this is still a popularity contest of sorts (for instance, the rankings are not based on individual investment returns), presumably CEOs are smart enough to take investment performance into account. But they also take into account their own personal experiences with the individual VCs.  These are the VCs who CEOs love the most, and not just because they are nice but because they help CEOs do their jobs, which is to build great businesses.  Topping the list is Terry McGuire, co-Founder of Polaris Ventures and a big life sciences investor. Mark Suster of GRP Partners is No. 2.  David Sze of Greylock comes in at No. 7.  Brook H. Byers of  Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers is No. 10.  Kleiner’s star investor John Doerr is No.11  Michael Moritz from Sequoia is No. 32..

Anyone who is on this list is well-liked and respected by CEOs.   A total of 84 individual VCs (and some angel investors) made the cut out of 17,834 investment pros listed in TheFunded’s directory. To get on the list, each VC had to have at least an average rating of 4 out of 5 and have at least five separate reviews from CEO members of the Funded. (There are 13,480 CEO members). No more than one of the five ratings can be negative (a score of 3 or less).  Other VC that made the list include Howard Morgan (No. 28) and Josh Kopelman (No. 39) of First Round Capital, Bill Tai (No. 29) and George Zachary (no. 64) of Charles River Ventures, Roelof Botha of Sequoia (No. 50), Fred Wilson (No. 60) of Union Square Ventures, and angels Mike Maples, Jr. (No. 43)  and Ron Conway (No. 61).

You can compare this list to the most active VC firms of 2009 to get a sense of the overlap between these rankings and which firms are doing the most deals.  Some other insights that TheFunded shared with us: there was a lot of turnover in VC firms in 2009.  When TheFunded sent emails to all the investment pros in its directory, 38 percent either bounced back or replied with an automated message saying they’ve left their firms.  None of those people are on this list.  And about one or two firms a week became inactive, or 9 percent of the 4,005 firms listed in its directory.

TheFunded.com is offering two free tickets to the Future of Funding event on February 18th in San Mateo, where many of the top-ranked venture capitalists will be attending an awards ceremony. The tickets will go to the two best comments about the state of venture capital (as determined by us or TheFunded’s Adeo Ressi).

Top-Ranked VCs by TheFunded

1. Terrance G. McGuire, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 5 by 5 CEOs
2. Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners, rated 4.8571 by 7 CEOs
3. Andy Fillat, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.8333 by 6 CEOs
4. Dan Rua, Managing Partner at Inflexion Partners, rated 4.8 by 5 CEOs
5. Paul H. Klingenstein, Managing Partner at Aberdare Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 9 CEOs
6. Stuart Ellman, Managing Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 6 CEOs
7. David Sze, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.6429 by 14 CEOs
8. Ross A. Jaffe, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.6364 by 11 CEOs
9. Steven D. Arnold, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 4.625 by 8 CEOs
10. Brook H. Byers, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.6 by 10 CEOs
11. John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.5714 by 14 CEOs
12. Philip Gianos, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.5714 by 7 CEOs
13. James D. Robinson III, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.5556 by 9 CEOs
14. Richard W. Levandov, General Partner at Masthead Venture Partners, rated 4.5455 by 11 CEOs
15. Phil Black, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.5 by 12 CEOs
16. Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4.5 by 6 CEOs
17. Jed Katz, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners, rated 4.4737 by 19 CEOs
18. William J. Link, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.4444 by 9 CEOs
19. Jon Callaghan, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.4167 by 12 CEOs
20. Joerg Ueberla, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
21. Tom Bogan, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
22. Maria Cirino, Managing Director at 406 Ventures, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
23. Mark S. Menell, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 12 CEOs
24. Doug Pepper, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
25. Michael T. Fitzgerald, General Partner at Commonwealth Capital Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
26. Bijan Salehizadeh, M.D., General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
27. Nicolas El Baze, Partner at Partech International, rated 4.3333 by 6 CEOs
28. Howard Morgan, Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.3077 by 13 CEOs
29. Bill Tai, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4.2857 by 14 CEOs
30. David Ladd, Managing Director at Mayfield Fund, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs
31. Frank Boehnke, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs
32. Michael Moritz, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.2778 by 18 CEOs
33. Peter Sinclair, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.2727 by 11 CEOs
34. Donald B. Milder, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
35. John Burke, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
36. Bill Kaiser, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
37. Bill Elmore, General Partner at Foundation Capital, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
38. Mark Hatfield, Partner at Fairhaven Capital, rated 4.2222 by 9 CEOs
39. Joshua Kopelman, Managing Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.2 by 30 CEOs
40. Lon H.H. Chow, General Partner at Apex Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
41. Dave Fachetti, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
42. Edward L. Cahill, Partner at HLM Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
43. Mike Maples Jr., General Partner at Maples Investments, rated 4.1818 by 22 CEOs
44. David Stern, Venture Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners, rated 4.1818 by 11 CEOs
45. Curtis Feeny, Managing Director at Voyager Capital, rated 4.1667 by 12 CEOs
46. John W. Jarve, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
47. Shawn T. Carolan, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
48. Bob Spinner, Managing Director at Sigma Partners, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
49. Stuart MacFarlane, Managing Director at Momentum Venture Management, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
50. Roelof Botha, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.1538 by 26 CEOs
51. Anthony P. Lee, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
52. William D. Porteous, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
53. Michael Kim, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
54. Brent Ahrens, General Partner at Canaan Partners, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs
55. Eric Wiesen, Principal at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs
56. Alex Mendez, General Partner at Storm Ventures, Inc., rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs
57. Richard A. D’Amore, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs
58. Jonathan Ebinger, Partner at BlueRun Ventures, rated 4.1111 by 9 CEOs
59. Gus Tai, General Partner at Trinity Ventures, rated 4.1 by 10 CEOs
60. Fred Wilson, Partner at Union Square Ventures, rated 4.0952 by 21 CEOs
61. Ron Conway, General Partner at SV Angel, rated 4.0909 by 11 CEOs
62. Hodong Nam, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.0833 by 12 CEOs
63. Gilman Louie, Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, rated 4.0769 by 13 CEOs
64. George Zachary, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4 by 16 CEOs
65. Paul Maeder, General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
66. Warren J. Packard, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
67. Bryan Schreier, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
68. Brian Pokomy, Associate at SV Angel, rated 4 by 8 CEOs
69. Byron Deeter, Venture Principal at Bessemer Venture Partners, rated 4 by 8 CEOs
70. Kevin Spain, Principal at Emergence Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
71. Thatcher Bell, Principle at Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
72. Kirk Holland, General Partner at Vista Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
73. Jonathan Seelig, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
74. Andrew L. Zalasin, General Partner/CFO at RRE Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
75. Bruce K. Taragin, Partner at Blumberg Capital, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
76. Frederick J. Dotzler, Managing Director at De Novo Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
77. Max Niederhofer, Associate at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
78. Gil Dibner, Principal at Genesis Partners, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
79. Ryan Ziegler, Investment Manager at Edison Venture Fund, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
80. Bob Pavey, General Partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
81. Philippe Herbert, Partner at Banexi Ventures Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
82. Eric Hjerpe, Partner at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
83. Angelo J. Santinelli, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
84. David Min, Principal at Steamboat Ventures, rated 4 by 5 CEOs

Photo credit: Flickr/le vent le cri

People love Blippy. Well, they love to talk about Blippy. And complain about it. And argue that it’s the end of privacy as we know it. But some people do actually love Blippy, the service which lets you share you credit card transactions with the world. In fact, a number of investors do, as the service has just raised a $1.6 million round of funding.

The large angel round was led by Charles River Ventures. Also participating are Sequoia Capital, Evan Williams, Jason Calacanis, James Hong, Ariel Poler, and Ron Conway. A pretty impressive list.

Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan is also putting his money where his mouth is and investing. The fact that Charles River Ventures is leading the round should surprise no one since Kaplan left his role there as an Entrepreneur In Residence to help launch Blippy. CRV’s Saar Gur is also taking a seat on Blippy’s board.

Alongside the funding news, Blippy has another big announcement: They’re opening up to everyone today. You’ll no longer need an invite; simply visit the site and sign up.

So why did Blippy feel the need to raise $1.6 million? “There was a lot of interest,” Kaplan says. “We trust this gets us through at least the next 12 to 18 months. Enough time to prove the model,” he continues.

And that model is key. While the site may be controversial right now, the possibilities are interesting. If Blippy is able to prove that people don’t mind sharing their purchase data, a number of potential business plans could spring up. Affiliate fees are an obvious one, but think about featured vendors, and maybe even Blippy credit cards eventually too.

For now, Blippy is happy with the way things are going. Already, the service has some 5,000 members from its closed-beta. Those users have shared over $4.5 million in purchase — and over 100,000 different purchases, Kaplan says. Just a few weeks ago they were only at $1 million in purchases.

The service recently added a bunch of new online stores and services such as Threadless, Netflix, and GroupOn. These services can not only show how much you spent, but also what you specifically bought. For example, on Threadless you can see individual shirts you’ve bought.

Going forward, Blippy has some bigger goals. One of those is working with credit card companies to show all individual purchases. Right now, this is hard to do because a lot of vendors don’t provide that information. But plenty are wiling to for an idea like this, where everyone can see what others are actually buying, Kaplan says.

Kaplan also notes that a number of startups are already using protected accounts on Blippy to share their expenses with others in the company.

And yes, Blippy is working on an iPhone app. And while there is no open API yet, they’re considering that too.

With the opening up to everyone, Blippy will allow you to find your friends on Facebook and Twitter that are also using the service. But for now, none of your Blippy data with flow back to either of those services. That will eventually come, but they’re working on keeping it simple for now, Kaplan says. You can probably imagine the uproar when this purchase data starts flowing into your Facebook stream.

Kaplan also shared a humorous unofficial competition going on throughout the site. Apparently, a number of users are trying to make the smallest purchase possible (above free). Right now, the winner was able to buy one Tootsie Roll with a credit card, for $0.03.

What about the biggest purchase? $15,789 on a industrial freezer. The average purchase price for things on Blippy is $42, apparently. With it now open to everyone, it will be interesting to see how that changes.

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GrandCentral, which Google acquired in 2007, relaunched as Google Voice way back in March. It’s still technically in private beta, but invitations aren’t all that hard to find.

From what we’ve heard, Google is very seriously planning to add a version of the Google Voice product to its Apps/Office suite of applications for businesses. Currently, businesses are offered enterprise versions of Google Docs (online Office), Gmail, calendar and other applications. More than 2 million businesses and 20 million people use Google Apps.

Google Voice gives users a phone number that they can then redirect to any phone – mobile, landline, VoIP, etc. My Google Voice number rings my home Vonage line and multiple mobile phones simultaneously. And the Android Google Voice application effectively takes over the phone for all outbound calls and text messages, too.

The consumer service will supposedly launch publicly sometime early next year. But an enterprise version, which will act as a virtual phone system for small businesses, may come soon after.

Small businesses currently have a variety of choices for their phone system. Regular phone service is just one of those options. Services like Ring Central, which is funded by Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital and DAG Ventures, offers a robust virtual phone system for businesses. Pricing ranges from $50/month. Vonage and others also offer business-focused products.

There’s no reason for Google not to enter the enterprise phone business. There’s lots of potential revenue there from tens of millions of small businesses. And they are already selling Google Apps into those businesses.

A simple version of the service would give a company a single phone number. An automated operator would then direct calls via an extension to employee phones (home business lines, mobile phones, whatever).

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Startup CloudShare, formerly known as IT Structures, has raised $10 million in series B financing from Sequoia Capital, Gemini Capital, and Charles River Ventures. This brings CloudShare’s total funding up to $16 million.

That amount of funding isn’t shabby for a company that has been in stealth for nearly two years. Cloudshare, which launched to the public, last week, has produced a service for demoing software in the cloud. Organizations can instantly deploy multiple, independent copies of their existing demos or training environments from CloudShare’s platform.

The platform is also integrated with Salesforce.com’s CRM so sales teams can pull in information from an account on CloudShare back to Salesforce. Many large-scale companies have internal demo centers in the cloud to allow prospective sales clients to demo software, but most small to mid-size companies don’t have this functionality, which can be used to show how a product works.

CloudShare charges per user, and will adjust the cost of the demo or the proof of concept is complicated. The startup already has signed on VMware, Cisco, SAP and other big-name clients and has already delivered over one million demos, proofs of concepts and software training hours to date. The company plans to use this round of funding to accelerate product development.

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Thursday afternoon we filed a lawsuit in against Fusion Garage in the Northern District of California Federal court. The causes of action include Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competitition and Violatioins of the Lanham Act. The complaint is embedded below, or you can view it here.

This was the first time I’ve ever filed a lawsuit, and it was certainly not the way I thought the whole CrunchPad project would end when I first wrote about the idea in July 2008.

I believe the lawsuit (and attached exhibits) speaks for itself. A timeline is provided as well as supporting evidence from the Fusion Garage blog (now deleted) and emails between our companies. But I do have a few additional thoughts:

1. We’ve shown through our posts (see The End Of The CrunchPad and CrunchPad Litigation Imminent) and that we’ve got nothing to hide. Our statements are backed up with emails and other evidence. Fusion Garage also makes a lot of statements about us, none of which are backed up by evidence.
2. Fusion Garage deleted their blog shortly after the dispute erupted. A lot of statements on that blog directly contradict statements made by Fusion Garage this week (these are included in the lawsuit). That deletion, combined with the fact that they very clearly mislead us over the last month into believing everything was on track, while they simultaneously registered a new domain name and rebuilt the case of the device to include the new brand, shows a pattern of lies. The press has mostly given them a pass on this.
3. Fusion Garage is, and always has been, a company on the edge of going out of business. Their main shareholder, the guy who wrote the now infamous email telling us that we were no longer part of the project, is a chiropractor named Bruce Lee. The company was constantly raising debt from unsavory investors, borderline loansharks, to make payroll. We paid a lot of expenses directly, and we agreed with Fusion Garage that they had to clean up their cap table before we could acquire them. Fusion Garage agreed and attempted to do this but was never successful. All of this is shown in the exhibits to the lawsuit.
4. We have had financing from top tier investors lined up for the CrunchPad. Those investors didn’t love the way Fusion Garage and its founder checked out on background checks, but they were willing to support the project. That financing was on hold until we launched the device. At any time we could have pulled the trigger on it, and we have statements and evidence to support it (these investors are also talking to press directly). We also had partnerships lined up for retail distribution at unheard of terms, as well as soft revenue to drive the retail price down on the device. All of this has evidence to support it. All of these partners will support these statements on record.
5. Fusion Garage’s financial situation is a mess, and it is inappropriate for press to recommend to people to pre-buy a CrunchPad. The company has not yet hired an attorney to respond to our lawsuit. We believe they do not have the cash flow to do so. When the device goes on pre sales today, linked to from scores of gadget and press sites, they will suddenly have cash flow to defend themselves. What they won’t have is cash flow to build the devices. We believe it is irresponsible for press to link to the pre-sale site without disclosing this to readers.
6. Much of the key intellectual property, including the board and much of the mechanicals, is owned by Pegatron, the manufacturing arm of Asus. Pegatron was licensing this IP back to the project exclusively. Fusion Garage is no longer working with Pegatron, they’ve hired a new ODM. They have likely given Pegatron’s IP to the new ODM to speed development. Pegatron has expressed concern to us about this, and I would not be surprised if they sued Fusion Garage separately over this issue.
7. A few people have suggested that we can’t own any IP in the CrunchPad because we are just a blog. That’s not correct. The entire blueprint of the device was created by me. And we also have hired direct resources, including the former head of hardware at Vudu, as well as very high level software engineers, who have worked directly on the project here and in Singapore with the Fusion Garage team. Their direct work on the project was crucial to its success, and the device would not be finished without their work. The fact that Fusion Garage had nearly its entire team here in California for the last few months working with us illustrates this. Why would they have brought them all here at great expense (and we organized visas and housing) unless this was a joint project? The answer is they wouldn’t have.
8. The founder of Fusion Garage, Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, isn’t a good guy. He has been caught plagiarizing articles. His previous company Radixs disintegrated in shareholder disputes and angry employees. We didn’t learn about this until last Summer because Singapore media, including blogs, are largely controlled by the government. Embarrassing stuff just isn’t reported. But we’ve spoken to plenty of people associated with the company, and their statements will be included in the lawsuit. Chandra and Fusion Garage have shown a long term pattern of deceit in their business dealings. There is no reason to think that anything will change now.

The lawsuit is below:

SF-38-303-C2_20091210160410_00000001 –

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Venture capitalists like to hire well known entrepreneurs and executives as “entrepreneurs in residence.” These are short term jobs, a place for someone to park themselves for up to a year or so after they’ve sold their company or otherwise have moved on. They sit in on pitch meetings, advise partners and portfolio companies, and plan their next move. And the VC generally, but not contractually, gets first dibs to invest in their next gig.

Sometimes people get creative with their titles - Jason Calacanis was called an Entrepreneur In Action during his stay at Sequoia Capital in 2006-2007, but his job was essentially the same.

Bessemer Venture Partners is expanding the idea further, and are adding what they’re calling a Designer In Residence. Jason Putorti, former lead designer at Mint (now a subsidiary of Intuit), is the guy they hired for the job.

Jason will work with Bessemer’s portfolio companies to help them build “simple, intuitive and engaging web sites,” said Bessemer partner David Cowan.

Some of the Bessemer startups that will now have access to Jason include Yelp, Hunch, Yodle, LinkedIn, Smule and Wix. For some startups, this may be a reason to go with Bessmer in a competitive funding round.

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San Francisco based Eventbrite went prime time earlier this month when they raised $6.5 million from Sequoia Capital, and added partner Roelof Botha to their board of directors. We had a chance to sit down with Botha as well as founders Kevin Hartz and Julia Hartz and talk to them about their business and the fundraising.

We were supposed to talk for just ten minutes, but the interview went on for a solid 25 minutes before we were done. Julia and Kevin talked about Eventbrite’s growth to ten million registered users based only on word of mouth advertising. The company lets people sell (or give away) tickets to events – something only the big venues could do previously through companies like TicketMaster.

The service is free for people who give away tickets, and they charge a small percentage on non-free sales. The free tickets spread the word to new users, who often come back to sell tickets to their own events. This year, Eventbrite will rack up $100 million in gross ticket sales, says the company. The average ticket price, not factoring in the free tickets, is $60.

Why did Sequoia invest? Botha talks at length about the business model and explosive growth, and the fact that Eventbrite invented the market. The potential market for small-scale event tickets, says the company, may be as high as $36 billion in the U.S.

If you’re trying to raise money, listen closely to what Botha says. This is the guy who first invested in YouTube, and he’s one of the young guns at Sequoia. You’ll also want to read Good Question! The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital, where Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman – he gives more details on the types of companies that Botha looks for when investing.

Botha also shows off his MBT shoes at the end of the video, which apparently make him a happier and healthier venture capitalist. I know what I want for Christmas.

And for everyone that couldn’t care less about this stuff, just skip to the outtakes at the end. Just skip to 24:40.

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