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

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While the topic of career counseling is not the focus of this blog, I get enough requests from people who want to break into the VC industry, I thought it was worthwhile to write a blog entry about it so I can refer people to my viewpoint. Just a note – this is specific for early stage tech VC which is my experience (not as relevant for later stage VC/private equity or healthcare VC). There are plenty of articles (Seth Levine has two posts on this topic that are relatively popular – first , second ) on the web you can find through a quick search on tips and advice on this subject but I’ll add in my two cents.

has performed very well," Suster told socalTECH, saying that the round was a seed round. comes as the firm begins talking to VC investors about Series A round. venture capital twitte Los Angeles-based Ad.ly , which is developing an in-stream, advertising platform for Twitter, has raised $500,000 in a funding round. The round came from GRP Partners.

A quick analysis by socalTECH of our tracking of venture capital deals in Southern California finds that there was around $879M in venture funding activity here in Q3. The information--gleaned from funding announcements, regulatory filings, and other sources--are not far off from socalTECH's totals from last quarter, which totaled up around $932M in investment activity. The biggest are for venture activity in the quarter was Biopharmaceuticals, which was $299.13M of the quarterly total. San San Diego led investment activity in Q3, with a large number

Frank recently talked with Clearstone’s Jim Armstrong about Jim’s views on how the economy is affecting both startups and the venture capital business, and it’s well worth a listen to get an idea of the issues facing both startups and venture capitalists in the new year.  (btw, btw, we’re now cross-posting relevant interviews from Frank’s podcast on socalTECH). ...Tags: Frank Peters, podcaster at the Frank Peters Show and chairman of the Tech Coast Angels, always has informative and in-depth interviews. Tags: Venture Capital Economy

went over to SoCalTech , where Ben Kuo’s team has been tracking investments in SoCal companies for many years, and here’s what I found out. The Angel Capital numbers for 2009 are not out yet, but Price Waterhouse’s Money Tree Report is available for 1Q09. Again not record breaking, but having $852M of VC funding going into early stage companies is no small amount. I wrote this post earlier today and put it up on Startup Coast but thought I would re-blog it here. This is one question that I have gotten quite a bit by entrepreneurs who are currently

in Series A venture funding. The funding came from DFJ Frontier, Crosscut Ventures and Gideon Hixon Fund. The firm's founders declined to comment on the funding, however, the firm's venture backers told socalTECH the round closed last week. Crosscut Ventures also participated in the funding, which was not noted by PEHub. El Segundo-based Zadspace , a stealth mode firm developing advertising technology, has quietly raised $1.40 Details of the round were first disclosed in a regulatory filing, with some details reported by PEhub.com.

Los Angeles-based Rotohog , which develops fantasy sports games for sports leagues and others, has raised $2M in an inside round led by Mission Ventures and DFJ DragonFund. Rotohog's CEO, Kelly Perdew, told socalTECH that the idea behind the round is that it will take the firm to profitability. Tags: sports rotohog venture capital fantas Rotohog powers fantasy sports for the NBA, the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour, and others. Perdew said the firm is providing its fantasy sports games to sports leagues, networks like FOX, and large media companies.

in a venture round Wednesday, telling socalTECH that the Series A-1 round was led by GRP Partners , with participation by First Round Capital . Other board members at the firm are Michael Jones, COO of MySpace; Howard Morgan of First Round Capital; and Brian Garrett of Crosscut Ventures. Publishers are really hurting online, and this is a new revenue opportunity for our publishing partners," Tanz told Santa Monica-based GumGum , the online startup headed by Ophir Tanz which licenses photos on a CPM basis to online publishers, confirmed it had raised $2.6M Tanz