You know Zag, herein town, and more recently our new car investment, TrueCar. An A-round investment in the late 90's, or even in 2005/2006, or 2007, was a $5-8M check. This morning's interview is with Mark Suster , a venture capitalist at GRP Partners (www.grpvc.com). GRP has just recently closed on a new $200M fund, and Mark has been one of the more active venture capitalists in the Los Angeles area in recent months.

Greg Brogger: I founded BrightHouse in the middle of 2007, along with Scott Painter. We co-founded Zag together, and I was the COO of CarsDirect. Towards early 2007, Scott and I had taken Zag to a level of some measure of stability, and we were thinking about the next thing. Yesterday, Santa Monica-based SharesPost (www.sharespost.com) launched a new service of particular interest to the venture capital and high tech startup market, a new, online service which facilitates the buying and selling of private company stock. We caught up with Greg Brogger , the firm's

Los Angeles-based Zag , the online car buying software firm headed by former CarsDirect CEO Scott Painter, has scored an investment from financial services firm USAA , USAA disclosed Thursday. According to USAA, it is taking an equity position in Zag, which is also providing the firm with its car buying services. Zag develops technology which allows members of groups like USAA to USAA did not provide financial details behind the investment. USAA has been offering Zag's services to its members since 2007.