Facebook picked a new CFO quietly, after its cloddish public parting with longtime top financial exec Gideon Yu earlier this year.

Facebook said in late March it was looking for a CFO with “public company experience,” and it seems to have gotten one in former Genentech CFO David Ebersman.

(He is pictured here–is it just me or does he look a lot like an older version of the man he will be reporting to, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg?)

It’s an interesting choice of a high-profile exec for the job at the headed-for-an-IPO-someday social-networking company, and one from outside the Web sector.

And, indeed, with the addition of Ebersman, Facebook inches ever closer to a public offering.

It is also a good move for Ebersman, who has been at the biotech firm for almost 15 years. But the South San Francisco-based Genentech was acquired in March by Hoffman-La Roche, which already has a CFO.

Ebersman, who will formally start in September, will oversee Facebook’s finance, accounting, investor relations and real estate functions and will also be part of the Palo Alto, Calif., company’s executive management team.

Former Netscape exec and VC Peter Currie has served as a stand-in for Yu since he left, although has not been an active financial exec.

Here is the full press release from Facebook:

PALO ALTO, Calif.–June 29, 2009–Facebook today announced that David Ebersman, the former executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Genentech, the pioneering biotechnology firm recently acquired by Roche, will become the company’s chief financial officer.

Ebersman will report to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. He will oversee Facebook’s finance, accounting, investor relations, and real estate functions. He also becomes a part of the company’s executive management team, which directs all aspects of company strategy, planning and operations. Ebersman will formally start in September 2009.

“We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates,” said Mark Zuckerberg. “We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook.”

“After meeting with Mark and the rest of the team, I was thoroughly impressed with everyone’s drive and sense of purpose to help people connect and share,“ noted Ebersman. “Mark is constantly pushing the company forward and he’s assembled a world-class team that is achieving remarkable results both for its users and as a business. I’m excited to join this effort and this new industry.”

Ebersman worked at Genentech for nearly 15 years. He served as the firm’s executive vice president and CFO from 2006 through April 2009, when Roche Group acquired the company. Prior to joining the company’s finance organization, he was senior vice president of Product Operations. He joined Genentech as a business development analyst. Previously, he was a research analyst at Oppenheimer & Company Inc.

Even in the midst of a tough investing environment, Silicon Valley legend and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen (pictured here) and his longtime investing partner, Ben Horowitz, have completed the raising of a new venture fund, according to numerous sources close to the situation, and it is oversubscribed.

Sources said the fund–which was nicknamed “Project A” but is actually called Andreessen Horowitz–will be $300 million. It is $50 million over the $250 million he and Horowitz had planned.

Several major institutional investors–from universities, for example–have invested large chunks of up to $20 million or more, while a spate of Silicon Valley luminaries has put in amounts of $1 million or less.

The quick completion of the fund raising, in the midst of a national econalypse, is a good sign perhaps for the forward-leaning culture of tech, which has seen some pullback by VCs over the last six months.

Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape–the iconic browser company that was key to introducing the modern Internet to consumers–and a lot of other start-ups, announced on the “Charlie Rose” television show in February that he was creating the new fund.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen at the time (see the video below).

Although he gave few specific details about the fund in that interview, Andreessen essentially said he was simply putting a structure around his own active angel investing, which has included start-ups like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn and many more.

Andreessen, who is on the board of Facebook and an adviser to Twitter, has turned into one the the digital sector’s most influential mandarins for innovative start-ups.

His new effort will focus on early-stage investments, he said in the interview with Rose, noting that “our claim to fame is, we’ve actually, you know, by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, we’ve done it, we’ve been on that side of the table for a long time; we know what it’s like.”

Andreessen said then that he and Horowitz had made 36 investments over the last three years of up to $200,000, but that his new firm will make up to $1 million bets on companies they decide to invest in.

Plus, he said then he would be patient: “Like with our new fund, if we fund a company today, we’re thinking about a return in seven to 10 years, so we can go through three or four or even five years of economic downturn, as long as, at some point, we come out the other end.”

Here is the video of Andreessen on the Rose show (he starts to talk about the new fund in the interview at around 18:33 minutes, again at 46:55 minutes and at the very end):

Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

So, since you know I love to do translations, let me try to take apart your entire piece paragraph by paragraph:

What Scooby-Don’t wrote: Can we just head this trend off at the pass? It seems that Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, at their “All Things D” conference announced the beginning of the Web 3.0 era.

And I’m not the only one to think so.

BoomTown response: Walt and I simply wrote an essay in which we said we thought mobile and smart phones were super important as the next platform and represented what we thought Web 3.0 innovations, such as social networking (which we also think is important, by the way) would pivot around.

We didn’t “announce” anything, although that does sound awfully grand.

But so what if we did, because it happens quite a lot?

Dan Gillmor, for goodness sake, declared it Web 3.0 in 2005. His take was different:

“The emerging web is one in which the machines talk as much to each other as humans talk to machines or other humans. As the net is the rough equivalent of a computer operating system, we’re learning how to program the web itself.”

And in 2007, Tim O’Reilly weighed in on it, responding to Web 3.0 theses by Jason Calacanis and Nova Spivack, and also noting Stowe Boyd’s thoughts on the subject.

You get my point, Bobby? Lots of folks have opinions about what is Web 3.0, much as they will when we start arguing over what Web 4.0 is.

At Web 5.0, of course, a self-aware Google (GOOG) will have begun its inevitable war with the human race, sending back a cyborg to terminate you before you wrote that post, thereby making this rebuttal moot.

But, I digress!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Short aside: It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?

BoomTown response: The fact of the matter is that neither Walt nor I like to use FriendFeed as much as you do. I daresay that no one likes to use FriendFeed as much as you do.

Thus, hinging a larger point to this, just because we don’t play in a particular sandbox you like to play in, feels a little too much in the digital weeds to me.

Just because you have chosen to be the unofficial spokesmodel for the very laudable service–about which I have done a very lovely reported post on complete with video–I am not clear why you need to accuse Walt Mossberg and I of not being social because we don’t use it as much.

We both just happen to prefer Twitter and blogging as our social outlets.

I have done 3,255 updates on Twitter since I started last year, for example, which is certainly not as much as your 21,224. But–and I think we can all agree–as blabby as I am, I am simply not as blabby as you.

So, let’s try to make this as clear as possible.

We. Don’t. Use. FriendFeed. Regularly.

As I said, we use Twitter, we use Facebook, we use SMS, we use blogging and we use a whole lot more. In fact, between us, we try out pretty much everything.

While I appreciate that FriendFeed seems to be your home planet of the moment, it is not the only place to realize your term, 2010 Web, and it feels very Web 1.0 to say so.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: The Web does NOT have version numbers. Naming what was going on in the last eight years “Web 2.0″ did us all a large disservice (Tim O’Reilly did that, mostly to get people to see that there was something different about the Web that was being built in 2000-2003 than what had come before).

But by naming it a number, I believe it caused a lot of people and businesses to avoid what was going on and “poo poo” it as the rantings of the new MySpace generation (which was just getting hot back then).

BoomTown response: Let me see if I can get this straight. You can call it 2010 Web, but we cannot use version numbers, such as Web 3.0?

Hey, we’ll call it Britney Spears if we want!

Actually, I like naming the next era of the Web after the always volatile entertainer. She’s mobile, ever-changing, ubiquitous and always entertaining! Also, there are several eras of Britney: Sweet, Timberlake Lady, Federline Lady, Young Mom, Nuts, Nuttier, Nuttiest, Hospitalized, Medicated.

My main point remains: Who died and made you Boss of Pointless Internet Catchphrases?

Scooby-Don’t wrote: See, the Web changes EVERY DAY and a version number just doesn’t do it justice. Think about today, we saw Microsoft (MSFT) announce a major new update to its search engine, named “Bing,” that turns on next week and is already getting TONS of kudos. Seriously, in the rental car shuttle today a guy I met said the demo he saw at Kara and Walt’s conference was “awesome.”

Also today was Google’s Wave, which caught everyone by surprise and which sucked the oxygen out of Microsoft’s search announcements. Check out all the reports that I liked from around the world this morning.

BoomTown response: The Web changes EVERY DAY? You’re kidding! We had no idea! Thanks for that critical morsel of info!

Earth to Robert: Walt has spent a large part of his life writing about the panoply of new devices that have come out in an unceasing flow and I have written at least 10,000 news stories and two books about the Web since the early 1990s.

Pretty much all we write about is how the Web changes every day. Actually, every second.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: But, back to the theme of this post. There IS something going on here. I covered it a few weeks ago.

7. Hybrid infrastructure. At the Twitter Conference this week lots of people were talking about how they were using both traditional servers along with cloud-based approaches from Amazon (AMZN) and Rackspace (RAX) to store, study, and process the sizeable datasets that are coming through Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed.

BoomTown Response: We had folks on stage at our D7 conference discussing all this last week. In fact, we covered a whole lot more than that, which you can read about if you click on through.

While I think all yours are also interesting ideas, I am still not clear why you need to get your knickers in a knot, since we happened to think mobile platforms and smart phones are more important trends at this juncture.

Also, could please explain how Google “caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.” Google is innovative because they give free swag to folks?

We gave free swag to folks this week at D7, so I guess that makes Walt and I 2010-Web-worthy!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: So, why doesn’t a version number work for these changes? Because they don’t come at us all at once. A lot of these things have been cooking for years. The Internet makes iteration possible. Tomorrow will be better on the Internet than today. In the old world of software you’d have to wait for the compilers, then you’d need to distribute tons of CDs or disks. That no longer needs to be done.

Same with the Web. Calling it the “2010 Web” puts an urgency into what’s happening. If your business isn’t considering the latest stuff it risks looking lame or, worse, leaving money on the table. Just like driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often than a newer car.

BoomTown response: Actually, I would have to say that your year numbering system is deeply confusing and I am not sure we can treat Internet development like some auto or, even, say, fine wine.

Ah, that 1995 Web was saucy with a smooth Netscape IPO finish, while 2001 had a disappointing popped-bubble tone, due to the excessive tannins of Pets.com. Now, the 2009 is still very young, but it has a frothy Twittery taste, which goes surprisingly well with brie.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Is the year metaphor perfect? No, I’m sure there are a few things wrong with it. For one, if you want to host a conference based on the “trend” you’ll have to change your conference name every year. That costs money, which is why conference companies like to have more stable trends that they can exploit for a few years, at least.

BoomTown response: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7. So far, changing the number has worked out well for us that we’re going to go for D8!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Also, there are some clear “eras” in the Web, so I could see wanting to suggest that we’re in the third era of the Web, but I’ve been studying this for the past eight years and calling the second era “Web 2′ actually held us back because mainstream users didn’t think anything was happening in the past few years and Web 2.0 became a useless phrase anyway.

BoomTown response: You must know that mainstream users don’t pay one bit of attention to any and all of the dumb terms Silicon Valley comes up with.

And, with all the obviously massive change that has happened in the past few years in tech and the Internet (iPhone, Kindle, Facebook, Twitter to name a few), it seems odd to say that anything has been held back.

Frankly, it would be nice if tech innovation took a breather once in a while.

Scooby Don’t wrote: Anyway, can we use year numbers to describe the Web now? It’ll make it easier to evangelize the modern world to businesses. We’re entering the 2010 Web, that’s what I’m exploring. Calling the Web a version number is for people who don’t really understand, or participate in, what’s going on here. Kara and Walt, you gotta do better here.

BoomTown wrote: What’s in a name?

Well, it’s dang easy to attack, of course, instead of actually discussing the actual premise that we were outlining in our essay, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0.”

As we wrote:

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”

So, if you want to just focus on the name, then you gotta do better here.

Until then, you say 2010 Web, we say Web 3.0 and let’s call the whole thing off.

After running one of the more successful Silicon Valley acquisitions by Microsoft for several years, Tellme Networks founder and GM Mike McCue (pictured here) will be leaving the company at the end of June.

As part of the transition, Zig Serafin, who has been running a lot of the speech technology efforts for the software giant at its Redmond, Wash., HQ, is taking over the voice services subsidiary and all the other related units.

They will be made into a single, yet-unnamed, team with about 400 employees in total.

McCue and Serafin are now meeting with Tellme staff at its Mountain View, Calif., HQ about the changeover.

“It was time to move on, after a long and really successful time at a big company,” said McCue, in an interview with BoomTown two weeks ago. “Voice technology is an area that I think Microsoft is committed to excelling in and the new configuration will help ensure that.”

Serafin (pictured here), a 10-year Microsoft veteran, said as much in another interview yesterday. “This is an opportunity to bring together the group to allow it to innovate across Microsoft,” he said. “We really want to advance this user interface for computing.”

Serafin said he would be spending four days a week in Silicon Valley, as part of that effort, using Tellme as the center of a “whole new speech center of excellence.”

Microsoft (MSFT) has long been aiming at differentiating itself from the popular iPhone from Apple (AAPL), which has revolutionized the mobile market via its innovative touch and movement technology, by drilling down on making speech recognition technology a popular consumer application.

It bought Tellme in 2007 for $800 million as part of that effort. Competitors in the space include Google (GOOG) and Nuance.

For example, Tellme recently announced “one-button” voice access for Windows-enabled mobile phones, as well as some new technologies to improve call automation for customer service centers.

McCue has been a pioneer in the use of speech in the mobile arena, founding Tellme in 1999. Previous to Tellme, he was VP of technology at Netscape, the once-dominant browser company.

McCue said he will be taking some time off after he leaves Tellme and then plans on working on another start-up and advising companies.

Below is a picture from a 1999 board meeting at Tellme, when it was private. It includes McCue, as well as former Netscape execs Peter Currie and Mike Homer (click on image to make it larger).

And, below that, are two video interviews I did with McCue in March of last year.

One is a tour of the Tellme HQ and another is a longer chat with McCue–whom I once called the “Patty Hearst of Silicon Valley” for being so dang sunny in an Associated Press story about what life was like after a takeover by the software giant, in the midst of Microsoft’s failed attempt to buy Yahoo (YHOO).

In it, I noted that he displayed “the cheeriness of someone with acute Stockholm syndrome and $800 million in Microsoft money.”

Tellme HQ Tour:

McCue Talks About Mobile Devices:

BoomTown is not going to go all servers and Solaris on you, as I am leaving the complicated details of the collapsed IBM (IBM) bid for Sun Microsystems (JAVA) to Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski to sort out.

But perhaps the best headline and first sentence of the plethora of stories about the $7 billion buyout debacle, which seems sure to get horribly messy now, is from Andy Greenberg of Forbes.com:

The headline: “Sun May Be Pulling A Yahoo!”

And lede: “Sun Microsystems is facing its Jerry Yang moment.”

I wonder if every failed tech merger with a squabblefest and a board in chaos will now be accused of blowing it, as most think the Yahoo (YHOO) co-founder and former CEO Yang did in rejecting the $41 billion offer from Microsoft (MSFT).

In an interesting aside, speaking of the chaotic Sun board, one of its members is none other than Peter Currie.

Currie (pictured here) just inherited another potential mess over at Facebook, when he agreed to step in to take over as a financial adviser to the social-networking site, which abruptly replaced CFO Gideon Yu last week.

Sounds like Currie, the former Netscape CFO and investor–who knows from unnatural disaster from his long years in Silicon Valley–has his hands full now.

Dear Elliot Schrage:

BoomTown wins.

As Sheryl knows from experience, don’t mess with the Swish. Or Texas. Or Zohan.

Just don’t mess.

For everyone else, here is the entire memo that Facebook sent out this week from CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to its 800-person staff about the departure of CFO Gideon Yu and the financial status of the Silicon Valley social-networking start-up, which some had been questioning.

According to the memo, there is a company Q&A tomorrow about it all too! What should I wear?

UPDATE:In a version of the memo I first posted, there was a repeated paragraph, with slight differences. This might have been a software error–several versions I got of this entire memo had different punctuation in various places.

In any case, I eliminated the extra repeated graph and I changed one part below of “we are” to “Facebook is” in brackets.

COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL–DO NOT FORWARD

Hey Everyone–

Today ends the first quarter of 2009, so I wanted to send out an update on our growth and financial progress, as well as a couple of changes we are making.

Our user growth has been extraordinary over the past year and has continued to be strong throughout Q1. We are getting very close to reaching our 200 millionth active user. This is pretty remarkable considering we just reached 100 million actives a little more than seven months ago. We have become the top site for sharing information on the web, and this gives us a good strategic position to help people share even more.

I am also pleased that our financial progress has been very strong as well. While we came into this year wondering how the recession might affect us, our financial performance in the first quarter surpassed our expectations. As other businesses around us are slowing down and cutting back, we continue to grow around the world. Our advertising products are becoming more attractive for advertisers and we have seen strong growth in both our domestic and international direct sales and online sales channels.

Even in the current economic environment, we are confident that this success will continue. Based on our first quarter results, we now believe we are on track to see our revenue grow by at least 70% this year. We just completed our fifth straight quarter of EBITDA profitability. And most importantly, we expect to achieve free cash flow profitability next year. That’s an important measure of financial success and sustainability because it means we’d be able to fund all of our operations and server purchases from the cash we generate while increasing our cash reserves in the bank. Hitting these numbers will require continued hard work, discipline and execution by everyone here at Facebook, but we are on the path to achieve these goals.

As we ramp up to take on these challenges, I want to let you know that Gideon Yu will be leaving the company. Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company. I will always be grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish. As those of you who know him know, Gideon’s family is his highest priority and it’s certainly not the usual cliché to say that he plans to take some time off to be with his wife and son. Gideon and I have often discussed that the next stage of his career will likely be as an investor, and I fully support him in this regard.

We have retained Spencer Stuart to search for a new CFO and we will be looking for someone with public company experience who can help take us to the next stage in our growth.

In the interim, the finance team will report to Cipora Herman in her capacity as Treasurer and Ted Ullyot as mteam lead. In addition, [Facebook is] fortunate that Peter Currie, the former CFO for Netscape, has agreed to serve as the advisor to Facebook until a new CFO comes on board.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me or to others on mteam if you have any questions about our finance plans or organization. I’ll discuss this more at the Q&A on Friday and I will be happy to take questions then too.

Congratulations to everyone on a great start to the year and on all the momentum you have all helped build for the rest of 2009.

Mark

Here’s two about big changes in AOL’s international–such that it is–unit, as the head of it–Maneesh Dhir (pictured here)–moves on.

A longtime staffer at the Time Warner (TWX) unit will “return to his entrepreneurial roots,” according to a memo from AOL CEO Randy Falco below.

Dhir has been based in India since his appointment several years ago. He came to AOL from its acquisition of Netscape in 1999.

And, in another memo from AOL President Ron Grant (also below), it looks like MediaGlow President Bill Wilson will get most of the goodies from Dhir, with all of international publishing reporting to him now, such as AOL Europe’s Dana Dunne.

(I could tell you endless stories about when AOL first entered the European market–former head Steve Case tried and failed to get to get the Europe Online moniker–but that would make you realize just what a digital antique I am.)

Here are the Falco and Grant memos:

From: Randy Falco
To: ADTECH Global; Platform-A Europe; Intl Employees; US Employees
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 9:01:13 PM
Subject: Organizational Announcement

Dear AOL colleague,

I’m writing to tell you that Maneesh Dhir, head of our international efforts, has decided that after 10 long and fruitful years with AOL, it’s time to start the next chapter in his career.

Since coming to the company in 1999 as part of AOL’s Netscape acquisition, Maneesh has made many important contributions to AOL. Most recently, of course, he was instrumental in the growth of AOL’s presence worldwide. Under his leadership, AOL went from a company with a consumer presence in just four countries outside the U.S. to one that is now in 38 countries–including India–in less than two years. Maneesh was also a key advocate for the rebuilding of our product development efforts so we could more effectively and efficiently launch products worldwide.

Just as important, Maneesh helped us learn the benefits of tapping into a worldwide pool of talent. It was his idea to open an AOL call center in Bangalore in 2002, which quickly became our largest. Two years later, he pushed for the creation of the Bangalore Development Center and the Bangalore Knowledge Center–important centers for technology, finance, analytics and shared services that are now part of the AOL India operations.

Thanks to these and many other accomplishments, we are now well positioned for global growth in all three of our key businesses–MediaGlow, Platform-A and People Networks–as well as our Products & Technologies division.

Having done all this, Maneesh told me he’s ready to return to his entrepreneurial roots. He’ll be staying on for a couple of months to help ensure a smooth transition. There will be subsequent information outlining organizational changes coming shortly.

Please join me in thanking Maneesh for all he’s done for AOL and wishing him the very best on his future endeavors.

Randy

From: Ron Grant
To: ADTECH Global; Platform-A Europe; Intl Employees; US Employees
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 9:05:37 PM
Subject: Organization Update

Dear AOL colleague,

I want to join Randy in thanking Maneesh Dhir for his outstanding contributions to AOL. I’ve known Maneesh for years, and he’s always been a tireless champion of AOL and of our global ambitions. I’m proud of all that he and his team have accomplished.

With Maneesh’s decision to return to his entrepreneurial roots, we’re taking the opportunity to make organizational changes that will build on the progress he and our international team have achieved.

Our next step is to more closely align and centralize our global publishing efforts under the newly formed MediaGlow business unit, headed by Bill Wilson. Over the last year, we have grown the MediaGlow audience dramatically through our highly efficient content development model. We believe that a more centralized infrastructure will enable us to accelerate MediaGlow’s global growth.

As a result, Dana Dunne, who oversees our European publishing business, will now report directly to Bill. In addition, our publishing businesses in India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada will all report in to MediaGlow.

We are also aligning our global technologies and search organizations under Ted Cahall. With this move, our AOL India operations led by Philip Nelson will now report in to Ted, as will Bill McGrath, who heads our ASA team and also oversees the International development team in Bangalore. Ponnapa PG will now report to Phil, who will be working with his team to finalize the India realignment over the next few weeks. Lastly, Joe Arcuri is leaving AOL Canada and his direct reports will be aligned with their counterparts in New York and Dulles.

Please join me in thanking Maneesh for his many contributions and wishing him well.

Ron

Last night, well-known Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen appeared on the “Charlie Rose” television 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 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.

Although he gave few specific details about the fund, Andreessen essentially said he was simply putting a structure around his own active angel investing, which has included start-ups like Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn and many more.

His new effort will focus on early-stage investments, he said, noting that “our claim to fame is, we’ve actually, you know, by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, we’ve done it, we’ve been on that side of the table for a long time; we know what it’s like.”

Adding that he and Horowitz had made 36 investments over the last three years of up to $200,000, Andreessen said his new firm will make up to $1 million bets on start-ups.

Of course, for most of the interview, Rose zeroed in on hot topics like Facebook, the social-networking site on whose board Andreessen serves.

The voluble tech star did his job, talking about how Facebook could turn on the spigot and make all sorts of money anytime it wants and about the recent controversy around its Terms of Service kerfuffle.

He also talked about the Andreessen-backed Ning social network service, the Apple (AAPL) iPhone, Twitter, why the New York Times irks him, Google (GOOG), the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle e-book reader and gaming.

Ironically, the Netscape co-founder and his Xbox from Microsoft (MSFT)–eek–“have a very close personal relationship.”

But Andreessen also told Rose a little bit about the new fund he is raising money for, for example, while discussing the economic meltdown.

Talking about the fact that innovation will survive, Andreessen said: “Like with our new fund, if we fund a company today, we’re thinking about a return in seven to 10 years, so we can go through three or four or even five years of economic downturn, as long as, at some point, we come out the other end.”

Here is the video of Andreessen on the show (he starts to talk about the new fund in the interview at around 18:33 minutes, again at 46:55 minutes and at the very end):

We all liked Mike. In fact, we all loved the pugnacious, energetic and restlessly entrepreneurial Silicon Valley exec.

Sadly for those who knew him, Mike Homer died today at his home surrounded by family and friends, after a long battle with a severe illness. He was 50.

Homer is survived by his wife, Kristina, and three young children: James, Jack and Lucy.

His funeral is at Saint Raymond’s Catholic Church in Menlo Park on Thursday.

In 2007, Homer was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

A rare, neurodegenerative “prion” disease, which in Homer’s case has occurred sporadically rather than via infection (the well-known variant that occurs in animals is called mad cow disease), CJD’s incidence is one case in a million annually, and few survive beyond a year after exhibiting symptoms.

His illness inspired his family and many friends to find treatments and a cure for the cruel disease, and include the man–Dr. Stanley Prusiner–who won the Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering prions, infectious agents that are at the heart of CJD.

In late 2006, Homer began suffering from memory problems. Another close friend, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, aided Homer in getting to the right doctors at Stanford University Hospital, where he was diagnosed.

Quickly, via angel investor and close Homer friend Ron Conway, who serves on the board of the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Foundation, Homer’s case was moved to UCSF. The hospital there is the only place in this country that has a major laboratory doing both research and clinical trials on CJD.

Still, there is no known cure for CJD, and treatments have been few. That might change, given the push that Homer, his family and friends had been making to accelerate the pace of discovery for treatments and a cure by raising many millions of dollars for the cause and pushing for even more aggressive development.

At an event in Palo Alto in 2007 for those interested in helping beat CJD–organized by Conway and well-known Silicon Valley exec and Homer mentor Bill Campbell, with Homer in attendance–he was in fine form, greeting well-wishers with a laugh and sassy attitude, especially given the dire situation and obvious difficulties with speech and movement.

As I wrote then:

Such fighting spirit was typical of Homer, whom I met when I was doing my first book on the rise of America Online more than a decade ago, when he was an executive at the then-high-flying Netscape.

He had also, like many, put in time at Apple and was known throughout the industry for his hard-charging and straightforward style. He needed it in the later days of Netscape, when he arduously tried to shift the company’s focus from a browser-software business besieged by Microsoft to a portal business.

Despite his sometimes tough demeanor, Homer was always willing–unlike so many others–to debate his business in an all-out-on-the-table manner I found refreshing compared to the sometimes earnest and smooth spin of most dot-com entrepreneurs.

Most of all, even when you disagreed over an issue, he always left such arguments at work and was ready with his quick laugh or a razor-sharp quip no matter what.

Recently, before his illness, Homer had been investing in and mentoring a series of start-ups. But he had also been focusing a lot on philanthropy and, most of all, his family and, especially, his three small children.”

My deep condolences go out to them and, really, everyone who had the privilege of knowing Mike.

More about his career and memories of Mike to come. But until then, here’s the video that was shot at the 2007 Palo Alto event called “The Fight for Mike,” which is introduced by Campbell:

And then the New York Times’s Joe Nocera called for it in an eviscerating column this past weekend that articulated what an increasing number of people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street and, more importantly, within Yahoo have been thinking of late.

And that it is: Whether Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang (pictured here at D6) should step down in favor of another top executive to lead the troubled Internet company into the next era.

It’s the obvious question, of course, to ask whether the co-founder of Yahoo has what it takes to manage the company through what will doubtlessly be a very difficult year.

(Speaking of that, see this disturbing hiring freeze post by Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider, which might spell trouble ahead at Yahoo.)

BoomTown asked Yang specifically why he was the right leader for Yahoo going forward at our sixth D: All Things Digital conference recently and–guess what?–he did not really have an answer to the question.

Let me for him, then: The main reason he is the right leader is due to his history, his obvious love for Yahoo and its employees and that his heart, as Yang said in his one and only passionate moment onstage, does bleed Yahoo purple.

Unfortunately, as important and touching as those things are, it’s probably not enough for the rough road ahead for Yahoo.

As Yahoo continues to be in limbo, pressure is sure to mount heavily on Yang, and it is not a stretch to imagine he will not remain in the top job at the troubled company for the long term.

So who would be good to replace him?

The list is a long one and could include execs like Tim Armstrong of Google, Kevin Johnson of Microsoft and any number of media and advertising execs.

But I have six candidates I like, so here’s my short list, in no particular order (and remember, the last time I made one for the job of the No. 2 leader for Facebook, its current COO Sheryl Sandberg was high on my list).

Sue Decker

Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here) is the obvious choice for Yang to hand over the reins to.

But should he?

Here are the positives: Decker is smart, articulate, financially savvy and a well-known quantity within Yahoo.

And, like Yang, she has worked her heart out there for many years.

But there are some significant negatives, starting with the tarnish of the whole Microsoft takeover saga, which most think both she and Yang have handled badly.

After so much confusion and missed opportunities, it is not clear if the troops at Yahoo or, perhaps more importantly, Wall Street and the company’s shareholders will give Decker the kind of running room she needs.

In addition, again and again, many within Yahoo talk about Decker’s lack of product feel and overall vision that will be required to truly give Yahoo the kick in the pants it so sorely needs.

Plus, Decker has been around Yahoo a long time and is clearly part of the leadership group that has allowed the company to languish for so long.

Nonetheless, Decker clearly remains the front-runner and might blossom if she had full control over Yahoo, as Bob Iger of Disney (DIS) did there, for example.

Meg Whitman

While many do not know it, Meg Whitman (pictured here) was almost the CEO of Yahoo once, but lost the chance due to a botched merger attempt between Yahoo and eBay (EBAY) back in Web 1.0.

Think of the might-have-beens of that union.

There is no doubt Whitman is an Internet exec star, despite the fact that she herself admits having done as much as she could at eBay after a decade when she recently stepped down as CEO there.

But that kind of candor is exactly what is most impressive about Whitman, who is straight-talking, and very, very tough, despite a sunny-seeming exterior.

She has certainly impressed Yahoos already, having appeared in the not-too-distant past at a sales conference, where she blew away the crowd with her grasp of Yahoo’s business.

Here’s the problem: Most expect the Republican Whitman to make her next move in the California political arena. Can you say Governor Whitman? Senator Whitman?

And also, she’s about as rich as you can be and any monetary attraction to reviving Yahoo would probably be negligible.

Peter Chernin

Let’s be clear–we’re not putting Peter Chernin (pictured here and BoomTown’s kind-of boss) in this list to kiss up to him.

While News Corp. (NWS), where Chernin is No. 2, is the owner of this site, I and many others consider him (along with Disney’s Iger) to be one of the sharpest and most versatile “old” media execs to get the Web.

At the very least, he does not seem scared senseless by it. (Which is a very big deal.)

And while he probably presides over one of the choicest media conglomerates out there, CEO Rupert Murdoch shows no signs of retiring, and his son, James Murdoch, is clearly training in the wings.

A move to Yahoo would be a bold one for someone like Chernin, who clearly has the tough management chops to run the place and give it direction to become a true partner to Hollywood in the way the Spock clones of Google never ever will be able to.

Actually, given he has a foot in both old and new media (Hulu.com, MySpace), he is BoomTown’s No. 1 pick.

Marc Andreessen

I had included Marc Andreessen (pictured here) in my list as a possible No. 2 exec at Facebook as a bit of a lark, just to remind folks that vision matters.

For his excellent blog alone, Andreeseen deserves a lot of attention for its bracing insight about the Internet business and its future.

And Andreessen has plenty of real-life chops too, from his founding Netscape right up until today, creating a series of new Web companies (he is currently chairman of a social-networking company called Ning) and investing in a lot of others that have given him a lot of gravitas and financial windfalls over the years.

Let me clearly state, I was not sure Andreessen could ever grow out of his enfant-terrible mode when I covered him several years ago, but that has clearly happened.

He knows how to build exciting companies, he is well-liked in Silicon Valley, he knows about scale, he knows about social networking and he is a respected technologist.

Most of all, Andreessen would be a leader who would add a lot of excitement to Yahoo. And, believe me, Yahoo needs a lot of that.

Dan Rosensweig

I know, I know. But why not?

Some might question my choice of Dan Rosensweig (pictured here), mostly because he departed from Yahoo in a previous crisis, but was still part of the management group that got Yahoo into this mess in the first place.

But, think hard. Rosensweig was not in charge then–in fact, leadership failures fell to former CEO Terry Semel and also Yang.

In addition, many at Yahoo–though not all–thought Rosensweig did a decent job of running the place.

He also wanted Yahoo to take a lot more chances than it did and is well liked in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

In leaving and then returning, Rosensweig might represent a choice that allows Yahoo employees to feel confident that some of its past soul remains.

Mark Cuban

I am not kidding. Not even one little bit.

I know Mark Cuban (pictured here hoofing with gusto) is disliked by Yang and others at Yahoo for selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo back in the last bubble and then clearing out and making bank.

And I know they were furious that Cuban popped up on Icahn’s alternative board to replace Yahoo’s current board.

So what! Big whoop! Blah, blah, blah.

Because Yahoo needs a major restart and Cuban would easily be able to push that button.

Cuban is unorthodox, has clear business acumen and success, knows how to invest and he is loaded for bear with vision.

He is also dabbling in some very interesting arena of HDTV, as well as being involved in some other interesting investments.

Cuban is willing to be controversial and often takes aim at Google, with some good results, in his blog.

His current post: “Hulu Is Kicking YouTube’s Ass.” (Ahahahahahaha. Dang, I wish I had written it.)

It’s that kind of moxie that means he is probably the only one with the guts to really get down in the weeds of Yahoo and start hacking away at the tangle that needs hacking.

Also, Cuban can sure dance.

And, most of all, the next CEO of Yahoo is going to need to know how to do some very complex two-stepping–with Wall Street, with shareholders and with employees.

And he or she is going to have to look good doing it.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Last year, BoomTown wrote about the struggle of Homer, the longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur (pictured here; I met him in the mid-1990s, when he was an exec at Netscape).

Unfortunately, Homer continues to suffer from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), for which he is under treatment at the University of California at San Francisco.

“The Fight for Mike” has raised $7 million for CJD at UCSF, where Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner–who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering the prion protein that causes CJD–is working on a major project aimed at defeating neurodegenerative diseases.

Now comes a unique collaboration between YouTube and the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, organized by two well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Ron Conway and Bill Campbell, with the help of YouTube Co-Founder Chad Hurley.

Conway and Campbell, along with the Homer family, have led the efforts to help find a cure for Homer.

Naturally, given Homer’s background, a digital initiative was inevitable.

Thus, the new project is the kick-off of the Memory and Aging Center’s “Defeat Dementia” campaign at UCSF, which is trying to use the Web and other digital technologies to help find new ways to get information out about public health issues.

Along with CJD, the YouTube effort will also focus on Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Parkinson’s, ALS and Alzheimer’s and try to engage the public and the medical community in a search for the causes and cures of these debilitating neurodegenerative conditions.

On the channel: videos of clinical-researchers and physicians discussing characteristics of the diseases; personal stories of patients and family members; and videos featuring advice and coping strategies from health-care professionals.

There is also now a Defeat Dementia Facebook group on the topic, and UCSF also has a partnership with Veodia.

Here is a video I did with Conway this week about the effort: