Today’s big VC brands were built by funding start-ups from birth to acquisition, IPO, or death; whichever came first. There were no Y-Combinators and other microVCs. But it isn’t true that “lean” investing strategies didn’t then exist. Electronic Arts, whose birth I have a blood relationship with, was “seeded” by Sequoia Capital, and two other […]

Apple swapping out Google Maps for its own inferior product makes it irresistible for me to present here an arcane bit of Silicon Valley history I often recall with a certain relish when enjoying a glass of wine with my young colleagues. In the early 1980’s I had the privilege of joining a little start […]

WE HAVE ALREADY SOLD ALMOST 400 TICKETS, DON’T MISS OUT. AGENDA IS BELOW! July 19, 2012 – 4pm to 10 pm – Julia Morgan Ballroom, San Francisco 3:30 to 5:10 - Networking, open bar, snacks, and time to check out demo tables 5:10 to 5:20 - Opening remarks: Bambi Francisco from Vator and Paul Martino from BullPen 5:20 to 5:50  - Panel: Are we […]

Betable today announced its new funding round. Bullpen was part of an all-star roster that includes Greylock , True Ventures, CrunchFund, StartFund, and Venture 51 . Several prominent individual angels like Dave Morin (CEO of Path) and Auren Hoffman (CEO of Rapleaf) also participated. Betable enables real money gaming to incorporated into any application. They […]

Last year Vator and Bullpen hosted Venture Shift in both SF and NYC. Given the reception and the rapidally chaning dynamics of the venture business we have decide to do Venture Shift 2012. It’s truly amazing how much has changed during this past one year. Venture Shift Thursday, July 19, 2012 from 3:30 PM to […]

Just a few weeks back Ari, Todd, and the team at Solve Media rolled out a new product for the video space they called “pre-roll” insurance. Instead of having to sit through a pre-roll, simply type the brand message into the “type-in” window from Solve. The details of that product can be found here. http://www.solvemedia.com/advertisers/pre-roll-insurance Results […]

I was a guest on Bloomberg the day that Zynga started trading. It was Friday Dec 16th. On the show I said something approximately like Zynga’s trading today should be a big worry to Facebook shareholders. This is the first time that stock with a massive secondary selling overhang is going public. This problem will […]

I recently wrote a brief post here about the fact the Bullpen has had several exists in less than a year. PE Hub picked up on this thread and asked to do an interview, which Duncan Davidson did a great job with. The full article is here: http://www.pehub.com/146524/with-impressive-returns-bullpen-capital-looks-to-raise-up-to-50-million/ An excerpt or two: Officially launched late […]

We are very exited that Lightbank has joined in the financing of our portfolio company Life Crowd. Life Crowd is an LA based activity oriented networking site. It was founded by my high school classmate Bong Koh. Lightbank is an interesting fund based in Chicago that really likes to invest in companies with local oriented businesses or […]