Have you noticed how some entrepreneurs look at getting funding as the ultimate sign of success? Not only is funding not the finish line, but the mistakes you make when you get investors can cost you when you finally do get to the finish line and are ready to sell your company. Brandon has done stints as an operator at all stages of the funding cycle, and at Soros Private Equity, investing over $70M in technology deals. Brandon Watson came to Mixergy to talk about how he raised money for his startup, how he grew it, and why he had to sell it. The two most powerful points

The moment someone takes that and puts it on a blog or mentions it on Twitter or puts it on their MySpace page, that’s when it’s got a potential to hurt us. Funding-Forum Interview Reputation Management podcas When you meet someone, don’t you Google them to see what the Internet has to say? Doesn’t everyone do that to you too?

Los Angeles-based MySpace confirmed Wednesday that it has purchased Seattle-basd iLike , a venture funded firm providing a way for users to share playlists and information on music. Tags: ilike myspace merger acquisition musi No additional information about the buy was announced by the company, nor was any further detail on a rumored $20M price tag provided by the company. iLike will remain headquartered in Seattle. READ MORE>> ...Tags:

2.     Timothy Sykes - Author of An American Hedge Fund Why Why listen: Dan walks you, step-by-step, through the process of getting your startup funded. 21.     Julia Angwin - Author, Stealing MySpace Why Why listen: Julia shows you how thinking like marketers helped the founders of MySpace build one of the most successful web businesses 1.     Rosalind Resnick - Founder of NetCreations Why Why listen: Rosalind bootstrapped a company that she eventually took public.

The Scott Sanfilippo Interview Media Optimization Firms Are Red Hot In Southern California in 2009 Proliferate - Aggregate - Integrate Startups Uncensored #4 - “Finding and Working with Partners” SoCal VC’s absent from Forbes Midas List Top Five Best Uses of an Entrepreneur's Legal Dollars What Data Crunchers Did for Obama An Evaluation of Web Strategy in the Musical Instrument Business Keywords Layoffs Fund Venture Capital Events Technology Angel Mahalo Zag MySpace Geni

Million in funding led by GRP Partners. Congrats to the entire team which includes MySpace savior (and my former boss) Mike Jones . ...Tags: Tags: News funding gumgum mike jones santa monic Image licensing startup  GumGum has secured an additional 2.6 The service, which offers high quality images for publishers, stands to reinvent the image license model with an innovative offering.

MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe, Colin Digiaro, and Aber Whitcomb are taking the reins at a casual and social gaming venture called MindJolt, which announced its funding Wednesday. The new firm, based out of San Francisco, is being funded by Austin Ventures. The new firm will be headed by former MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe. The three said they acquired MindJolt, a developer of games for Facebook and other social networking sites, as part of the effort, but did not disclose financial terms of the deal. Digiaro was former Head of Monetization and a co-founder at SlingShot

Rubicon, which provides online advertising optimization for web publishers, said that Stevens joins form MySpace, where he was SVP of Audience and also VP of MySpace's European operations. Rubicon is venture backed by Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, and IDG Ventures. Tags: rubicon project international executive myspac Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project announced today that the firm has expanded into the UK, and hired on Jay Stevens as Vice President and General Manager, International. As part of the hire, Rubicon said it has opened up a new office in London.

Stealing MySpace What it’s about: How MySpace was created and turned into a top social networking site. Why you should read it: Flynt talks about the part of business that more respectable people would hide — like how he funded Hustler by cheating on his taxes. Mixergy readers Yaw Owusu and @candymath asked me to recommend some business biographies, so I put this list together for them. I

Los Angeles-based Goodreads , an online social networking site focused on book readers, said today that it has raised its Series A funding to $2M. Goodreads was founded by Otis Chandler, and counts MySpace COO Mike Jones as an advisor, along with Ooga Labs' James Currier and Stan Chudnovsky, as well as Bebo's Michael Birch. The firm said the new funding will go to expand the services and features of its social networking site. The firm said the round was led by True Ventures. As part of the funding, Goodreads revealed it now has more than 2.8