Dan Primack

Just cleaning off the desktop… It seems that Sean Parker has made his first (known) investment on behalf of The Founders Fund. It’s Berkeley, Calif.-based Philotic Inc., and seems to be an evolution of a politically-focused social networking site launched last fall called Predict06.com (site has since been disabled). The founder is a fellow ex-Facebooker […]

Garnett & Helfrich Capital is an apt name for the San Mateo-based venture buyout firm, because Garnett & Helfrich are about all that’s left. You might remember that the G&H recently lost director Mike Guthrie to Symphony Technology Group, which helped prompt co-founder Terry Garnett to cancel a planned move to London. The next to go […]

The sun is shining, the State of our Union depends on who you ask and KKR was apparently jealous of Blackstone doing that Deutsche Telekom PIPE last year. In other words, it’s time for some Wednesday Warblings… First up are some responses to yesterday’s column, which suggested that the private equity party might be approaching […]

Garnett & Helfrich Capital has lost its second private equiteer in as many months, and has at least temporarily removed the “Team” option from its website header. The latest departure is Betty Hung, who joined the firm just last July as vice president of portfolio operations. She’s now taken a similar gig with Vista Equity […]

peHUB recently reported that .406 Ventures had settled into the former Boston offices of Arcadia Partners, a dissolving firm that had focused on the education space. The piece mentioned that two of Arcadia’s three general partners were accounted for – Liam Donohue as a co-founder of .406 Ventures and Andrew Hallowell as CEO of Arcadia portfolio […]

Private equity is not, nor has it been, in the midst of a bubble. Its recent boom-times have been driven by legitimate market factors, and risk has been so mitigated – via debt securitization, among other techniques – that today’s private equiteers are unlikely to suffer the same fate as venture capitalists circa 2001. But, […]

I’ve been to lots of private equity conferences, but have never experienced quite so bizarre a scene as Tim Draper singing, rapping and playing air guitar at the end of his keynote presentation. It seems that the ubiquitous VC had won a charity auction item to write song lyrics to a tune that would then be […]

James Joaquin and Matthew Cowan first met in 1999, when Joaquin was with When.com and Cowan was looking to invest on behalf of Bowman Capital. The deal fell apart when Joaquin and his team opted for an acquisition offer from AOL, but the two again crossed paths last year when Joaquin was CEO of Xoom […]

Blackstone Group honcho Steve Schwarzman just finished up a keynote here in Philly. Nothing too surprising, with the regular litany of driving forces behind the trend of multi-billion dollar companies being taken private: Lower cost of capital, Sarbanes-Oxley, junk bond market health, debt securitizations, etc. But one brief anecdote of interest: First, a public company […]

Tim Draper delivered the opening keynote at today’s Wharton Private Equity Conference, and spent a lot of time discussing the transformative power of new technology. One comment that stood out was about writing, and the idea that it could become antiquated within just another generation or two. What would replace it? Video. Draper argued that the act/art […]