An A-round investment in the late 90's, or even in 2005/2006, or 2007, was a $5-8M check. I'll point to Southern California, and there are lots of firms here--for example, Appfolio in Santa Barbara, which has Klaus Schauzer of GoToMeeting there, there's Mindbody Software in San Luis Obispo doing phenomenally well; you've got some great promising open source startups, like Eucalyptus in Santa Barbara, there's a phenomenal company called Magento Commerce being run by a Roy Rubin her ein Los Angeles. This morning's interview is with Mark Suster , a venture capitalist at GRP Partners (www.grpvc.com).

A new report released this morning find that retail e-commerce sales dropped in Q4 by 3 percent, as the dismal economy began to affect the online retail sector. According to comScore, which tracks e-commerce spending, Q4 of 2008 was the first quarter of negative growth since it started tracking spending in 2001. The drop follows double digit gains throughout 2007 and the first half of 2008 in year-to-year ecommerce Among the winners in e-commerce for 2007: video games, consoles, and accessories, which saw increases of 29% year to year in sales; homes, garden, and furniture, with 25%; and sports and fitness also at 25%.

Holiday shopping on e-commerce sites declined by 3 percent, according to the latest numbers released by comScore, which tracking online spending and internet traffic. billion, down 3 percent versus 2007. The results were the first decrease for holiday seasons since 2001, when comScore began gathering e-commerce statistics. comScore reported Tuesday that spending for the holiday season, beginning November 1st and ending December 23rd, totaled $25.5 comScore also reported the top e-commerce sites for the month, showing that sites with the most Internet traffic increases were HP, with