This Week in Venture Capital #11 with Mike Hirshland

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This Week in Venture Capital #11 with Mike Hirshland

Wednesday's at 2pm (PST).

Mark Suster hosts This Week in Venture Capital, with his guest Mike Hirshland, General Partner at Polaris Ventures. Read Mark Suster’s notes on Both Sides of the Table.

Lijit

-Provides publishers innovative site-search tools that enhance user engagement (avc.com uses it)

Total raised: $18.3M

Read more: TechCrunch

SGN

-Developer and publisher of social mobile games

Current round: $2M Series B from Tomorrow Ventures and Lars Hinrichs (Xing founder)

Total raised: $17M

Read more: TechCrunch

Apptera

-Operates a ‘Voice and Visual Mobile Advertising Network’ called MobileAd Xchange that delivers in-call voice advertisements and follow-up visual engagements (SMS, MMS)

Current round: $10M in Series E from Alloy Ventures, Lightspeed, and Walden International

Total raised: $30M

Read more: TechCrunch

SafetyWeb

-Web service that allows parents to monitor children’s activity on social networks in realtime for about $10/child/month

Current round: $8M led by Battery Ventures with First Round participating

Read more: TechCrunch

Bill.com

-Formerly CashView, bill.com helps businesses streamline bill payments

Current round: $8.5mm Series-C led by Jafco Ventures with DCM , Emergence Capital, and August Capital participating

Total raised: $19mm

Read more: TechCrunch

M&A

Bebo (acquired by Criterion Capital from AOL)

Read more: TechCrunch

Other
Barnes & Nobles and Amazon drop prices of e-readers. BN Nook 3G to $199 from $259 ($149 for wifi), and Kindle to $189 from $259

Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital raises a $8.5MM Angel fund. Read more: TechCrunch

MySpace Co-president Jason Hirschhorn out. Read more: TechCrunch

alexanderjarvis

Great session. Some frank dialogue about the value of tenacity.
The points about getting into VC are equally applicable to other fields of life; if you want it you will make it happen.
Read about suncatalytix, a portfolio company, yesterday- such an exciting startup!
Ric Lukasiewicz

I like other Twist channels and am sampling this one. The audio is terrible. So much that I had to stop listening.
http://twitter.com/saadshamim saadshamim

Good Show, bad audio
Can you spend more time and deals of the week and discuss them rather then doing a massive interview (50/50 seems like a good ratio) you first few episodes had it spot on.

Thanks
Julian hearn

I agree with Ric, the audio was so bad that I had to stop listening after about 20 mins. Real shame I normally love the show. Really not good when a radio station cant record audio.

Also the blip advert as the start was cheesy, really made me think I never want to use that service.
Anonymous

thank you for your feedback, Alexanderjarvis
Anonymous

Ric:

thanks for the Feedback. This episode was not in our studio but if another
episode of This Week in Venture Capital airs from that studio we’ll make
sure to work with the Audio Team.
Anonymous

Sadadshamim:

thanks for the Feedback. This episode was not in our studio but if another
episode of This Week in Venture Capital airs from that studio we’ll make
sure to work with the Audio Team.
syde

hi mark, i'm a big fan of the show and of your insights. here's my feedback concerning this episode :

- the sound was really bad (echos) but i still managed it through the end ;)
- it's true that the advertising at the start was a bit too long and could make potential new listeners drop the podcast.
- it the video podcast really crucial? I personally never watch in on video. Key for me is to have a solid audio format and than the video is a “nice to have”
- i liked the interview portion which gave me lots of hint on how to become a VC.

to resume, it's a great show and one of the most interesting so far in the thisweekin network. please continue making it better every week!
thisweek

Julian:

This episode was not in our studio but if another episode of This Week in
Venture Capital airs from that studio we'll make sure to work with the Audio
Team.
thisweek

Thank you for the Feedback
Sam

It's just a small thought but your personal reviews of services (in this instance blip) are actually the things that really make me want to check them out. In this video (which I do always watch, rather than listen to), for my experience maybe it would have been more suitable to have heard your personal review….then, play the blip video.

Other than that, great show as always – it makes me feel like I'm in the know!

Keep it up Mark!