Amit Chowdhry | December 14, 2011 | 1,056 views | 2 Comments
Categorized under Arianna Huffington, Biz Stone, Brewster Kahle, Caterina Fake, Chad Hurley, Craig Newmark, David Filo, Elon Musk, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Jerry Yang, Jimmy Wales, Lamar Smith, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Omidyar, Reid Hoffman, Sergey Brin

Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2011 by Lamar Smith (R-TX). This Act would allow the Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement that would prevent online ad networks and payment facilitators from doing business with those websites. Opponents in this bill believe that this is Internet censorship. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang oppose the bill. Their letter will appear as a paid ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.

Amit Chowdhry | December 12, 2011 | 323 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Benchmark Capital, Edmodo, Greylock Partners, Matt Cohler, Reid Hoffman

Edmodo is an education social network for teachers and students K-12. The company has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital. Reid Hoffman (Greylock) and Matt Cohler (Benchmark) will be joining Edmodo’s board of directors as a result of this funding round.

Amit Chowdhry | November 6, 2011 | 555 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under LinkedIn, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE:LNKD) founder Reid Hoffman was thoroughly profiled by The New York Times this weekend. The story really gave you an inside behind how LinkedIn grew from a small social network that nobody heard about to a public company minting hundreds of millions of dollars. As a venture capital partner at Greylock, Reid Hoffman is also a go-to guy for business advice in Silicon Valley.

Amit Chowdhry | August 3, 2011 | 356 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Allen & Company, Legg Mason, Legg Mason Inc, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lightspeed Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Ning, Reid Hoffman

Ning has recently been shopping around themselves for roughly $150 million according to sources with AllThingsD. Ning, co-founded by Marc Andreessen, gave a pitch to Google, Groupon, and several private equity companies.

Amit Chowdhry | February 11, 2011 | 1,068 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Alison Pincus, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Marissa Mayer, One Kings Lane, Reid Hoffman, TriplePoint Capital

One Kings Lane is a website that was co-founded by Alison Pincus, the wife of Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. One Kings Lane raised a $23 million second round of funding led by Greylock Partners with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Kleiner Perkins is a previous investors and so is Greylock partner Reid Hoffman. Reid Hoffman, TriplePoint Capital, and Marissa Mayer also participated in this round of funding. One Kings Lane sales were up 500% over 2009 and over 75% came from repeat customers. One Kings Lane is very similar to Groupon as it is a daily deals website. [TechCrunch]
Amit Chowdhry | January 28, 2011 | 752 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under CardMunch, Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, Sequoia Capital

Professional social network LinkedIn.com has filed to go public. LinkedIn is currently hitting about $200 million in anunal revenues. This is up 200% from about a year ago. With a 10x valuation, LinkedIn is expected to have a $2 billion market cap. This means that founder Reid Hoffman’s 21.4% stake would be worth around $430 million. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner would be worth $80 million. Sequoia Capital’s $4.7 million investment in the company would be worth $380 million. LinkedIn also recently acquired CardMunch, a business card reading application for the iPhone.

Amit Chowdhry | January 20, 2011 | 2,252 views | 1 Comment
Categorized under Contour Ventures, Doug Imbruce, Eduardo Saverin, Elad Gil, Greylock Discovery Fund, Jawed Karim, Keith Rabois, Lerer Ventures, Louis Monier, Mike Brown, Pejman Nozad, Pradeep Sindhu, Qwiki, Reid Hoffman, Shervin Pishever, Tugboat Ventures

Qwiki has raised $8 million in series A funding. The largest investor in this round is Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Saverin has been very low-key with his investments due to the tumultuous experience he had as a Facebook co-founder. Essentially Mark Zuckerberg reduced Saverin’s equity to 0.03%, but gave him proper equity back when Saverin started talking to the press about his side of the story. His side of the story was made into a movie called The Social Network.

Amit Chowdhry | August 15, 2010 | 2,290 views | 1 Comment
Categorized under Chai Labs, Facebook, Gokul Rajaram, Joe Kraus, Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman

Facebook has acquired Chai Labs, a technology platform company where publishers can easily create search-friendly websites. Chai Labs customers include NBC Local, Associated Content, and Travel Ad Network. The acquisition price is rumored to be about $10 million.
