Fragmentation isn’t just a problem reserved for mobile operating systems, it’s inherent to our online identities as well. Our digital identities exist in a loose and fragmented consortium of usernames, email addresses, scree names, social media accounts, passwords, and sitekeys. Many have tried to capture the single sign-on holy grail, and most have failed, because as much as we are inconvenienced by fragmentation, no one wants to hand over their personal information to one entity.
OneID, a San Jose-based startup founded by a Silicon Valley veteran, believes it can pick up where others have left off. Although it already has some serious tech working in its favor, to help get it over the hump and get the traction it needs, the startup is today announcing that it has closed a $7 million series A round led by Khosla Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners. Plus, they’re adding a new CEO. → Read More
Is there a future for social browser startup RockMelt? Despite attracting only a few hundred thousand active users since its much-hyped launch, the company filled with ex-Netscape rockstars and backed by former Netscape founder Marc Andreessen just managed to raise another $30 million in a B round led by Accel Partners and Khosla Ventures, with Andreessen Horowitz, Ron Conway, Bill Campbell and Josh Kopelman also participating. Jim Breyer of Accel and Vinod Khosla will be joining the board as observers. That’s some pretty serious money. → Read More
Venture capital firm Khosla Ventures is raising $1 billion for its new fund, Khosla Ventures IV, an SEC filing reveals. From the looks of it, the new fund will be roughly the same size as the previous one (raised in September 2009).
The news comes a few weeks after former YouTube and Facebook CFO Gideon Yu left the firm after joining them less than two years earlier, to go work for the San Francisco 49ers. → Read More
Gideon Yu, the former CFO of Facebook who left two years ago to become a partner at Khosla Ventures, is leaving venture capital to become the chief strategy officer of the San Francisco 49ers. “The drama of being a venture capitalist isn’t really for me,” he tells me. But he insists, “I am absolutely not leaving tech.”
Yu will remain on the boards of Square and Meebo, and says he works one day a week at Square. He wants to remain active investing and helping startups, but not as a full-time venture capitalist. One option was to become an affiliate partner, but that didn’t work out. Instead, he plans to keep investing his own money as an angel investor. The rumor in Silicon Valley is that he left Facebook with stock worth $500 million. He won’t comment on his net worth other than to say that he made more than he ever thought he would. → Read More
Khosla Ventures likes social advertising startup MyLikes. The VC firm is leading the startup’s $5.6 million Series A financing. Lightspeed Partners also invested and Metamorphic Ventures, which participated in the all-Googler $600,000 seed round, ponied up again.
Additionally, seed investor Paul Buchheit is joining MyLike’s board of directors. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail and founder of FriendFeed, recently left Facebook to become a partner at Y Combinator (although MyLikes is one of his private investments). → Read More
Ciris Energy, Inc., a Centennial, Colorado energy startup, raised a series B investment of $23.9 million a recent SEC-filing revealed. Khosla Ventures led the round with earlier Ciris backers Braemar Energy Ventures, Rho Ventures and GE Energy Financial Services, the companies announced Monday.
Ciris Energy aims to produce natural gas from coal in a way that is more environmentally responsible and economically efficient than other methods of producing natural gas. It also aims to turn coal into a far less dangerous and polluting energy resource than it is today. → Read More
While much of Silicon Valley spent the last two weeks skiing or otherwise reveling in all that money made this year from acquisitions, partial liquidations and secondary deals, Square founder Jack Dorsey was apparently hard at work. TechCrunch has learned that Square is in the process of closing a large round of funding. The company is being valued, we hear from multiple sources, at somewhere close to $200 million.
We don’t have confirmation on who did it, but we hear that Sequoia Capital was in the mix to lead this round, along with previous investor Khosla Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Kleiner Perkins. Our sources say Sequoia ended up on top and will lead the round.
A strategic investor is also likely to invest, sources say. Someone like Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. → Read More
A new SEC filing revealed that LS9 — a biotechnology startup turning plant-based materials into fuel and chemicals for use within traditional petroleum-based systems — has raised a series D investment of $30 million.
The round was led by BlackRock and joined by all of LS9′s previous investors: Flagship Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and CTTV Investments LLC, the venture capital arm of Chevron Technology Ventures LLC, according to a company spokesperson. → Read More
Soladigm raised a $30 million series C investment the company announced this morning. Founded in 2007, the company makes smart glass for green buildings that can change from clear to tinted automatically, in response to changes in light or temperature. Windows using this “electro-chromic” technology help building owners and operators reduce their heat, cooling and lighting costs, and energy consumption. → Read More
“Meebo did widgets super early. Guess what we learned? Don’t build stuff that sits in a box.”
Better than a box? A bar. No, not one with hotties and booze– a toolbar.
In part two of our interview with Meebo’s co-founder and CEO Seth Sternberg, we talk about the value of reach online– given the gargantuan reach companies can get on platforms like Facebook in no time. Like a diamond, if everyone can get it, it’s no longer as valuable. Sternberg pokes a big hole into one of the hottest storylines of the early Web 2.0 days– that you could build a big business off of widgets. → Read More
Pivot. It is the new buzzword seemingly taking on a life of its own ala “SUPER ANGEL” after this iconic, viral talk by Mike Maples. Ngmoco did it and cashed in big time. Instagram did it and became an app sensation. Twitter did it, and became, well, Twitter. And now Meebo has done it and raised another $25 million from Khosla Ventures to continue building its business.
Seth Sternberg, Meebo co-founder and CEO, stopped by our studio after Web 2.0 to tell us about how the site became so much more than Web-based IM and how he says the company is nailing the discovery problem in a new, more powerful way than Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and everyone that came before.
They reach 180 million uniques world-wide every month. How’d they get there? Moving from a product the founders wanted to build to a product other sites and users wanted them to build, and an emphasis on “building a product for normal people, not Silicon Valley.”
Sternberg explains what he means in the video below. Tomorrow, we’ll be posting part two of our interview with Sternberg where we talk about the value (declining value) of “reach” in an age of huge platforms with instant distribution. I also pry a few revenue details out of Sternberg. You won’t want to miss it. → Read More
According to an SEC filing, cloud-based phone systems provider RingCentral has raised $10 million in its third institutional financing round (with another $851,240 remaining to be sold).
The filing lists previous investors Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital – it’s unclear whether the company’s third backer, DAG Ventures, also participated. → Read More
Not one to shy away from bold and at times controversial statements, heavyweight investor Vinod Khosla took the stage at Disrupt this week and compared green tech innovation in Silicon Valley to Microsoft’s IE9 browser launch.
No offense to Microsoft, but in this analogy Khosla was criticizing the Valley for its deficiency in game-changing technologies and its focus on incremental advances. We got the founder of Khosla Ventures and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, to defend his statements on TechCrunch TV. Video ahead. → Read More
In venture capital, there are three people who rule Silicon Valley: John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures. All three will be speaking at Disrupt. (There are still a few tickets left). We’ve already mentioned Doerr and Moritz, and now we are pleased to announce that Khosla will be completing the triumvirate.
Khosla, of course, was the first CEO of Sun Microsystems back in the 1980s before he joined John Doerr to embark on a storied career as a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins. At Kleiner, he had a string of huge wins, including Nexgen (which was acquired by AMD and formed the core of its ability to take on Intel), Juniper Networks, and Cerent (which was sold to Cisco for $7 billion). In 2004, he created Khosla Ventures to invest his own money and began to dive deep into greentech, while still keeping his hand in infotech. Always known for being a risk junkie and identifying big opportunities early, he started to build one of the deepest portfolios of greentech investments in the Valley. Last year, he finally took outside money, raising $1.1 billion for two new funds, including a seed fund. → Read More
Smart window startup Soladigm announced today its plans to build a factory in Olive Branch, Mississippi. The Khosla Ventures and Sigma Partners backed company makes dynamic glass windows that can be tinted on demand to block excess light and heat.
Founded in 2007, Soladigm has been operating in stealth until now. The company employs about 50 people in its Milpitas, California headquarters, and plans to hire about 300 employees over the next few years for the Mississippi plant. → Read More
EcoMotors announced today a $23.5 million series B funding round from Khosla Ventures and Bill Gates that the company will use to build and test its eco-friendly engine, known as an Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder (OPOC) engine.
EcoMotors makes engines that run on diesel or gasoline but have greater power density, weigh less and produce lower carbon emissions than conventional engines. OPOC engines are being developed for passenger vehicles, as well as for commercial vehicles, aerospace and power generators. → Read More
Seattle-based online advertising startup AdReady has raised $5.3 million in funding.
Xconomy had the scoop last week based on an SEC filing, but now we also know the names of the investors, all of which have invested in the company in the past. → Read More
MokaFive this morning announced that it has raised a $21 million Series C round led by NGEN Partners, with existing investors Khosla Ventures and Highland Capital Partners participating.
This round totals more than the two previous rounds combined – the total of capital raised by the company is now $41 million. → Read More
In venture capital, Vinod Khosla likes to go his own way, which is why he’s been so successful. He was the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and then moved to venture capital and became a star partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he backed Juniper Networks, Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7 billion) and NexGen (sold to AMD and formed the basis for its challenge to Intel). About five years ago, after becoming a billionaire, he left Kleiner and started Khosla Ventures to invest his own money. He was mostly drawn to clean tech at a time before it was popular, but still kept his hand in Web and other tech startups (Aliph|Jawbone, iSkoot, RingCentral, Tapulous, iLike, Slide, Xobni). Khosla Ventures already has more than 50 companies in its portfolio (see slides below).
Earlier this month, Khosla raised $1.1 billion for two new funds, taking money from outside investors for the first time. I spoke with Khosla on the phone about his new fund, his approach to investing, clean tech and more. He compares Web startups to water startups, dismisses entrepreneurs who think about exits before building value, and contends that cleantech companies can command as high margins as hardware or software companies. “It’s a business strategy decision,” he explains.”
In the interview, Khosla talks about his investments in Aliph, RingCentral, eASIC, iSkoot, and Xobni. In terms of what he’s looking for, he declares “we love material science.” And in his seed fund, in particular, he says, “We’re not looking for completeness in things. We’re not looking for business plans. We are not looking for meeting every fiduciary requirement of an investor. We are looking for great technical ideas and great technologists.”
The 25-minute interview and full transcript are after the jump. I’ve bolded parts for emphasis. → Read More
Either Vinod Khosla has the magic or institutional investors are easing back into venture capital, or both. His Khosla Ventures raised $1.1 billion for two new funds, with about $800 million going to Khosla Ventures III and $275 million for a new seed fund.
Taken together, the $1.1 billion is the biggest capital raise for a venture firm in two years, and if you count it as a first-time fund, it is the biggest capital raise in ten years. While these are technically the third and fourth funds managed by the firm, it is the first time Khosla Ventures is taking outside money. (CALPERS, the retirement fund for California state employees, is the biggest new limited partner). Up until now, the capital primarily came from Khosla himself, who is a billionaire, a former star partner at Kleiner Perkins, and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
He founded Khosla Ventures in 2004, and now the firm has eight partners. The firm also confirmed today that former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu is now a partner (you read it here first), as is new hire James Kim from CMEA Capital. → Read More
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