Bootstrap

Jack Dorsey, the 35-year-old tech star who runs mobile payment company Square, today announced what he called an "epic" deal with Starbucks that could bring the "Pay with Square" app into the mainstream.

How big? It's too soon to say for sure, of course. But a firm that researches private companies, PrivCo, calculates that Square's deal with Starbucks will add $120 million in annual revenue for Square next year and, even more impressive, boost its valuation by $2.2 billion by the end of 2013. That would give Square -- already one of the most highly valued private tech companies … Read more

Nobody wants to admit it, but building a personal brand is essential if you want to thrive in a business world dominated by social media. This is especially true for entrepreneurs and even venture capitalists who have only recently stepped out from the shadows and into the spotlight.

I became intrigued by the rising role of personal branding in the VC world by a New York Times article last week that discussed how more VC firms are hiring PR specialists to help brand their firms.

Here's a quick excerpt from that article:

"Now, Sand Hill Road in Silicon … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Ashton Newhall's bio below.

Let's begin with our conclusion: Venture capital is not broken. It is thriving -- albeit in a smaller, more concentrated ecosystem of fund managers who are largely closed off to new investors.

In May, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation - the world's largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship - published a report entitled We Have Met the Enemy ... and He Is Us. It stated that the Foundation had a less than a positive experience investing in the asset class over the past twenty years. The report'… Read more

Wave at your new computer. Technology from PointGrab might soon be there to watch you. The Israeli company, which builds gesture-recognition technology, says it's in talks with many vendors bringing out Windows 8 laptops this year.

Currently, PointGrab technology is deeply embedded in a few TV sets from one manufacturer. PointGrab executives begged me not to name the vendor, but there's only one company shipping gesture-controlled TVs so it's not hard to figure it out.

In the living room environment, the technology makes a lot of sense. Instead of having to poke at buttons to control your … Read more

New Enterprise Associates, one of the world's largest venture capital firms, has raised $2.6 billion for NEA 14, its 14th venture capital fund, TechCrunch reported this evening.

TechCrunch figures the new fund may be the largest in venture capital history, beating out a $2.56 billion fund that Oak Investment Partners raised in 2006.

The new fund will have a pretty broad deployment target, New Enterprise Associates partner Tony Florence told TechCrunch.

"From a sector perspective we will continue to be very enterprise-focused, but also very, very active in the consumer Internet space, where there are certainly … Read more

Never mind the slew of economic concerns -- hell, make that catastrophic concerns -- hanging over the world. Silicon Valley is riding high. And no venture firm is leading the charge harder than Andreessen Horowitz.

The company started three years ago this month by longtime business partners Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (first Netscape, then LoudCloud and Opsware). They've since raised $2.7 billion and have backed 150 companies, including newly-public Facebook, Zynga and Groupon, as well as hot private companies such as Pinterest and AirBnb. Earlier this month, Andreessen Horowitz made a $100 million bet on GitHub, a … Read more

Google has acquired e-mail software startup Sparrow in a move that brings its team to work on Google's Gmail product.

Sparrow's chief executive Dom Leca announced the news on the company's site and Twitter account this morning, as well as in an e-mail to existing Sparrow users.

Leca says that the company will continue to make Sparrow available, and keep it up and running with support, however the two versions of the product will not gain any new features.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Citing sources, The Verge suggests the deal came in at &… Read more

Zite, the app designed to get you reading more of what you like, has moved to the Windows Phone 7 platform.

Yeah, you read that right.

While it may seem strange to expand the popular CNN-owned news app to a platform branded with the stigma of being the uncool kid at the mobile handset party, Zite CEO Mark Johnson sees it as a way to move into a market that Microsoft -- and Nokia -- are working hard to build.

"I think there's some real merit to what Microsoft is doing in the marketplace right now. Microsoft isn'… Read more

Groupiter is perhaps the simplest workflow product I have ever seen. It's brilliant, instantly understandable, and looks (based on the demo I saw at a 500 Startups event) highly usable.

I am not yet convinced it is a long-term business, but the product concept is spot-on.

Here's what it does: When you save a file in Dropbox, Groupiter pops up and asks you to enter a comment about the file. Other people you're sharing with can see the comments attached to versions of the files. That's it.

Groupiter CEO Chris Dyball says that since we now … Read more