Last night, well-known Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen appeared on the “Charlie Rose” interview show, talking about the digital sector and unveiling the news that he is creating a new venture fund.

I had heard rumblings about Andreessen’s funding efforts earlier this week, with sources I talked to jokingly nicknaming it “Project A.”

Actually, Andreessen said the new firm is called Andreessen Horowitz (zzzz), because he is doing it with longtime investing partner Ben Horowitz.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen.

Read More »

Here’s the official press release from the popular news and blogging site, The Huffington Post, which announced $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners this morning.

Sources told BoomTown the investment gives the site, which had 4.5 million unique visitors in September, a quadrupling from a year ago, a valuation of “south of $100 million.”

Read More »

The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.

Read More »

Last night, I was the master of ceremonies, as I have been for several years, at the laudable annual Astia Awards Dinner, which celebrated venture firms that support women-led companies.

And VC Tim Draper really went above and beyond in showing–quite literally–his support.

Read More »

Yesterday, in a quarterly regulatory filing, Google stated what everyone and their mother and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts have known for about, say, years now:

That its $1 billion investment in AOL, made in 2005 at a $20 billion valuation, “may be impaired.”

While that makes it sound like AOL has had a few too many beers, actually, this is accounting- speak for: Our investment has tanked big time.

Read More »

The money continues to dribble into Facebook, it seems.
The Samwer brothers of Germany have agreed to invest $10 million to $15 million in the hot social-networking site, a development which was first reported by Reuters and TechCrunch.

It feels like an awfully small amount to garner a key Facebook relationship in the important European market, so [...]

Read More »

On our recent trip to sunny Southern California, we had a lively lunch in Brentwood with the ever-sassy Ross Levinsohn.
In the dullish panoply of Internet moguls, Levinsohn stands out as one of the more colorful characters, no small thing since he comes from a big company, News Corp. (owner of this site), where he played [...]

Read More »

Here’s an interesting idea if you don’t want to get bought and you can’t quite IPO yet and you need to have a tidy war chest for expansion or perhaps a choice acquisition or two: Bring in more investors and raise more money at a huge valuation.

That’s a concept that the top dogs at Facebook are seriously mulling over now, according to sources, after getting so many inquiries from investment funds and several bigger companies–such as its ad-serving partner, Microsoft–about grabbing a stake in the fast-growing social networking Web site.

Read More »