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How Facebook's Zucked-up IPO just killed the tech bubble

You didn't really want to start partying again like it was 1999, did you? Good thing, too. Because you aren't going to get the chance -- not just yet, at least.

Before last Friday, many thought that Facebook's much-hyped IPO might trigger a reprise of the Internet mania unleashed by Netscape's 1995 public offering, when "companies" -- some with little more than a dot-com suffix and marketing spiel -- were able to lure investors en masse.

And just as in the run-up to the great tech bust, some saw history repeating itself, what with animal spirits more

Meet the tireless entrepreneur who squatted at AOL

It was 6 a.m. when Eric Simons was jolted awake by the yelling.

After working until 4 a.m, the 19-year-old entrepreneur had finally passed out. A few hours of sleep would help with the day ahead.

But unlike most people working at AOL's Palo Alto, Calif., campus who were surely still hours from showing up at the sprawling complex, Simons was already there. He'd been living there for two months, hiding out at night on couches, eating the company's food, and exercising and showering in its gym. And now, with an angry security guard bellowing more

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After more than 30 years, Grid Beam modular construction system comes to market

This year at the San Francisco Bay Area Maker Faire, trying to juggle my own interests (talk to cool people) and my 5-year-old son's (build or break stuff), we both hit paydirt at the same time when we stumbled across the Grid Beam exhibit.

My kid spent 45 minutes in the hot sun inventing and screwing together a life-size car-like contraption, and I got to dive into the minutiae of the product with its creators, Phil and Richard Jergenson.

Grid Beam is Erector Set meets IKEA. The hardware is standard 2x2 wood beams with holes drilled through every 1 1/2 inches (which is the actual width of a 2x2 beam), and standard furniture bolts that will be familiar to anyone who's ever assembled a futon frame. more

Stealth startup Airtime raises $25M, buys Erly

Airtime, the video startup founded by Napster duo Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, announced today that it had closed a second round of funding and had purchased another startup.

The mysterious company raised $25 million, according to a TechCrunch report. The startup also announced the acquisition of Erly, a company founded in 2011 that claims to provide a "new social platform for organizing and sharing your personal content." Terms of the deal were not revealed.

Erly was founded by CEO Eric Feng, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which led Airtime's round of financing. The acquisition was more

How Zuck is boosting an executive hoodie maker

When thinking about the world of fashion, most invoke the likes of Versace, Gucci, or Calvin Klein. You certainly wouldn't expect your sense of style to be influenced by the world of tech, but that's just what has happened thanks to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

It's his style that's helped San Francisco-based BetaBrand.com explode onto the tech executive couture stage. Based on Zuckerberg's,

Internet Explorer 9

With Internet Explorer 9, you can pin websites to your Windows 7 Taskbar so they are one-click away. Just drag the tab down to the taskbar to pin

Get to your favorite sites faster

Partner sues Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination

A female junior partner has sued the venerable Silicon Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins for alleged gender discrimination, saying she suffered retaliation for rebuffing sexual advances. (See the full complaint below.)

In a complaint filed May 10 in the Superior Court of California, Ellen Pao outlined more than five years of such behavior on the part of the firm's senior partners. Pao, a San Francisco resident, is alleging the company discriminated against her and other female employees when it came to promotions and pay.

According to the complaint, Pao lists 20 other female employees, known as Jane Does throughout more

Meet Ark, the social friend-finder that should stay independent

Nobody should own Ark. TechCrunch reported today that the well-seeded people search startup rebuffed a probe from Facebook to acquire the company. Thank goodness.

Ark is yet another stab at an old unsolved need: A site that searches all the social networks to find the people you're looking for. This is most notably not something that Google can do, as Google cannot search within the structured and closed databases of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. (It should have better luck with Google+, assuming you're logged in.)

Previously I have covered companies like Spock (now iSearch), which aimed to do a similar thing. more

Facebook acquires social gifting company Karma

When I wrote in my review of Karma in February, "you'll be using this soon," perhaps I should have said, "Facebook will be buying this soon." Because that's what the company just did. As the Nadaq public market closed on Facebook's first day of public trading, the social network bought the small social gifting company.

Karma announced the acquisition in a blog post that doesn't say much other than revealing the acquisition. But we like Karma. CEO Leo Linden gave us a walk-through recently:

A gift-giving service like Karma might look like a good acquisition for more

Kleiner Perkins closes $525M early stage fund

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has closed its 15th traditional fund at $525 million, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm announced this evening.

Best known for backing companies such as Google and Amazon, Kleiner Perkins said the fund will focus on investing in digital consumer, digital enterprise, green tech, and life sciences startups. The fund, dubbed Fund XV, will be led by 10 of Kleiner Perkins' partners, the company said.

"Portfolio companies in KPCB 15 will benefit from the firm's holistic approach to company building that we pioneered more than a decade ago," Ted Schlein, a partner at KPCB, said more

After Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg's hardest test awaits

The clock is about to start ticking.

When Facebook goes public later this week -- potentially commanding a lofty valuation of more than $100 billion out of the gate -- the demands on the 28-year-old Mark Zuckerberg will far outweigh any sartorial silliness about what he should or should not wear.

Not that there is any immediate pressure to perform for Wall Street given the understandable excitement about the huge number of people using Facebook every month -- a customer base now approaching some 15 percent of the world's population. But honeymoons for newly public companies only last so more