Joanna Glasner

I had an interesting conversation this week with Peter Relan, the founder of YouWeb, the shoestring-budget Silicon Valley incubator that spawned social gaming hitmaker CrowdStar. Relan, YouWeb and CrowdStar are interesting for a number of reasons. One is that Crowdstar, a social gaming startup that launched by an Armenian physics major named Suren Markosian, has gained phenomenal traction in the last couple of months. The 17-person company’s biggest hit, Happy Aquarium, a virtual fish-raising game, now has 27.5 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AllFacebook.com. Across all games, CrowdStar has just shy of 40 million monthly Facebook users.

Pain and suffering are in the business headlines a lot lately. However, it’s not usually in the context of sought-after investments. But, looking at venture investments over the past two months, it’s clear that pain – or, the least, the treatment of it – is very much in vogue. Since late October, VCs have backed […]

In this tough fund-raising climate, venture capital, venture debt and private equity firms are increasingly turning to the federal government’s Small Business Investment Co. (SBIC) program as a source of capital. In fact, this may be one of the best times to apply for SBIC funding, since the economic stimulus bill increased the maximum amount of SBIC leverage to $225 million for affiliated funds, up from $137 million previously. As such, next week, Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB.com) are hosting a webinar to help guide prospective applicants through the SBIC process. More information about the webinar can be accessed here. For a little more background, here’s a Q&A with Alan Roth, a partner at Wildman Harrold and one of the four panelists.

Gold prices are on a record run. And infomercials for venture-backed precious metal jewelry mail-in service Cash4Gold have reached a saturation point in the public consciousness. Those twin trends seem to add up to a compelling combo for criminals. At least, that is, for the sort too dim to consider that Cash4Gold pays for the […]

Is it time yet to snap up a bargain stake in a venture fund on the secondary market? Apparently not, according to new research from secondary market maker NYPPEX. The firm estimates that venture funds with 2005-2007 vintages worldwide may have overstated net asset values by approximately 40.1% on average as of the end of […]

Lately, it seems like being a currency trader should be the easiest job in the world. Just bet long against the U.S. dollar, and collect a tidy profit versus virtually any other currency around. Of course, all trading decisions look easy in hindsight. In reality, retail foreign exchange (forex) traders stand a pretty high chance […]

The market’s positive reception to last month's IPO of battery maker A123 Systems has venture capitalists abuzz with optimism about doing more cleantech IPOs. Jim Watson, managing general partner of CMEA Capital, is part of that group. The firm, which was a later-stage investor in A123, has about 15 active cleantech investments in its portfolio. Watson says a couple of those are looking at filing to go public in the “in the next couple months.” Which ones? Watson didn’t say. One obvious candidate, based on others’ IPO predictions, is solar panel maker Solyndra, which has raised a whopping $512 million in venture funding to date. The firm also fits the criteria that Watson says a cleantech firm needs to go public in the current environment: a proven technology, a product that’s attracted customers and long term contracts, as well “considerable government funding.”

Partners at Chicago-based 2X Consumer Products concluded a tour of four trade shows in the past month to scope out compelling consumer products startups. And they found that –despite the recession and it’s-chic-to-be-cheap mentality of American consumers – we’re still willing to spend more on certain products. In particular, while adults may be spending less […]

Grant Thornton put out a white paper today about why the IPO crisis is in fact structural, not cyclical. Much of it is familiar territory for those who’ve followed the what’s-wrong-with-the-IPO-market debate over the past year. Key culprits: A lack of research and marketing of research for small-caps, momentum-trading hedge funds squeezing out long term investors, cumbersome regulation, and even technology, for pushing out the profitable retail broker model. (Full report here) So what to do? I spoke to David Weild, co-author of the report, a senior advisor at Grant Thornton and former NASDAQ vice-chairman. He suggests turning the clock back, at least in some ways, to the idyllic IPO market days of the mid-1990s.

It’s hard enough sounding upbeat about traditional VC lately, what with exits scarce and would-be startup customers broker than they’ve been in years. That’s why this week’s Social Capital Markets (SoCap) conference stood out as a particularly remarkable testament to entrepreneurial optimism. More than 800 people attended the event, which wraps up tomorrow in San […]