flickr.com/scobleizer

It seems no opportunity for romance is outside the purview of dating site HowAboutWe. Hence this recap of the pickins for participants at Davos, the Model U.N. for wealthy grown-ups. Apparently, "the dynamics at Davos are basically the same as the dynamics of any other group of human beings." We're as shocked as you are!

The primary source for the post was a nameless tech CEO, who swore the younger attendees, at least, kept it pretty chaste:

“There’s a bizarrely non-sexual attitude in Davos,” the tech CEO said. “You can dance around with men or women with abandon…but it’s only the older delegates who seem to push to take someone up to a hotel room.”

Who knew Nobel laureates and their jet-setting ilk were so handsy?

The after-dark scene was reportedly even a bit quieter this year, despite party boy Sean Parker's best efforts. "This year the mood seemed less revelrous, particularly after two of the most exclusive gatherings—Accel Partners and the Google Party—were cancelled," says HowAboutWe.

But it seems at least a couple of techies found the opportunity to get their freak on. And so there appears this intriguing little blind item:

Despite the real estate hurdles, some managed just fine—one global shaper was overheard bragging to her friends that she’d gone home the previous night with the CEO of one of the world’s most prominent web startups.

Disclaimers! First off, anyone seriously identified as a "global shaper" is, more likely than not, embroidering on the details of her conquest. We'd also wager there's a bit of telephone at work here. (There's a reason hearsay isn't admissible in a court of law.)

Nonetheless, to the nameless CEO, we say: You saucy devil. Also, maybe screen for discretion in your paramours.

Mr. Kortina (Photo: Twitter)

A source familiar the deal told Betabeat yesterday that Venmo, a New York City-based mobile app that lets you split bills with friends, is in the process of being acquired by Braintree, a Chicago-based online payments company and PayPal competitor. The New York Times broke the news this afternoon, reporting a $26.2 million acquisition price. On the company blog, Venmo said the deal closed in mid-June and that its payment-sharing service "will remain unaffected" and continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Venmo and Braintree share an investor, Palo Alto powerhouse Accel Partners, which also invested in Facebook.

The two startups do seem to be in the midst of a mutual appreciation society. Last week, Braintree's community manager Kristi Lynch tweeted, "I know it sounds weird, but the @Venmo app makes me wish I owed more people money." Two Venmo employees favorited the tweet.

Venmo was founded in Philadelphia in 2009 by two former college roommates, Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismai. The duo eventually moved the company to New York City, where Venmo become one of the early stars in the city's growing tech orbit, embraced by early adopters for making it easier to split the cost of dinner, drinks, monthly cable bills--or any of the innumerable costs of urban life--over their phones. There were even cutesy, customizable receipts, eagerly tweeted out by the Alley in-crowd.

However, Venmo took awhile to introduce itself to the public and didn't emerge from private beta until this March, when it made the service available on iOS, Android and online. By that time, other players like PayPal and Square were aggressively angling for dominance in mobile payments, although not in the bill-splitting niche. Venmo raised a comparatively modest $1.2 million over the last three years, but from a number of notable investors. According to Crunchbase, Betaworks, Lerer Ventures and RRE Ventures all participated in its 2010 seed round, along with Facebook mafiosos Dave Morin and Dustin Moskovitz. Last year, Venmo raised a Series A from existing investors Lerer and RRE, along with Greycroft Partners and Accel Partners.

The Times reports that Venmo's 23-person team will not relocate from New York City to Chicago, but will continue to operate out of the East Coast.

Braintree, which was founded in 2007, got a huge influx of cash last June when Accel Partners, which backs a number of mobile payments startups, plowed $34 million into the company. The Chicago startup powers online payments for businesses, providing a merchant account, payment gateway and credit card storage, all in compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. Accel partner Ryan Sweeney, who joined the startup's board, described the payments company as providing a core foundation for Braintree clients, a list that includes high-profile, fast-growth businesses like Airbnb, LivingSocial, OpenTable, Shopify, GitHub, 37Signals and more.

In a TechCrunch post about Accel's investment, Mr. Sweeney predicted that the online payments industry would "consolidate dramatically" as payments became bundled into other services. In the past few months, however, the industry seems to be marked by increased fragmentation, with everyone from Verizon to Walmart to AT&T rushing to offer their own app, grasping for a chance to lead the payments evolution.

Braintree signaled its interest in mobile--Venmo's playground from the start--back in February, when it released tools for mobile app developers that would let merchants accept payments within a smartphone or tablet app. TechCrunch reported that the new tools help developers "avoid PCI compliance issues by encrypting sensitive credit card data when it is entered by the user on their mobile device." When merchants pass encrypted data from their server to Braintree for processing, Braintree uses a private key to decrypt the information, thus keeping credit card data out of merchants' hands.

A number of mobile payments companies, including Venmo, which uses a 256-bit encryption, have run into compliance issues with an obscure, broadly written law called the the California Money Transmission Act. As BusinessInsider reported, even PayPal had trouble with the law before it was acquired by eBay. As of last month, Venmo, Square and Amazon all had applications pending with California's Department of Financial Institutions. (It's worth noting that Robert Oswald, a Braintree ecommerce consultant, is one of the 16 people who follow the question, "How concerned are Venmo investors that it is not registered as a money transmitter in every US state?" on Quora.)

As Venmo co-founder Andrew Kortina told Betabeat in March, unlike other payments startups that try to get vendors to sign up in order to increase distribution, Venmo has taken a different approach, relying on friends to encourage friends (the few you'd normally split a bill with) to sign up. PayPal is great for strangers, he argued, but Venmo is optimized for people you know and trust. Initially the startup, which was merely SMS-based--leveraging a user's phone contacts--covered credit card fees for its users as it slogged through the arduous process of interfacing directly with banks.

When it emerged from private beta, however, Venmo required new customers to make payments from their bank accounts (or their Venmo balance) if they wanted to use the service for free, otherwise users had pay Venmo a 3 percent fee for using a credit card after the first $500. In March, Venmo told us it was processing $10 million in transactions a month and growing 30 percent month-over-month. Mr. Kortina predicted Venmo would do $250 million in transaction volume this year. Not long after  the app was released to the public, Venmo stopped losing money on credit card transactions. As we wrote back then, "By Silicon Alley standards, that’s killing it."

This is a breaking story, we will update the post when we know more. 

Previously:

What’s a Little App Between Friends? Venmo Only Cares About You and the People You Split Lunch With

Hello Venmo! Peer-to-Peer Payments Startup Picks Up Steam

Cutesy Venmo Receipts Are Now a Thing

Mr. Breyer.

IT'S FINALLY HEEEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Here's what we learned:

Voting rights:

Mark Zuckerberg has 28.2 percent voting power, pre-IPO based on personal shares: 28.4 percent of class B shares. But that's not all. "As a result of voting agreements with certain stockholders, together with the shares he holds, Mark Zuckerberg, our founder, Chairman, and CEO, will be able to exercise voting rights with respect to an aggregate of shares of common stock, representing a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock following our initial public offering." Altogether, that gives him majority control with 57 percent voting rights.

The next closest is Accel Partners' James W. Breyer with 11.4 percent voting power, based on 11.4 percent of class B shares. According to the footnote, "Mr. Breyer is one of the managing members of A9A, AGFA, Accel 2005, and Accel Growth 2009, and, therefore, may be deemed to share voting and investment power over the securities held by these entities." He personally owns  11,703,132 shares of Class B common stock (that's more than Marc Andreessen and Sheryl Sandberg), but just a portion of Accel Partners' 201,378,349 shares overall.

Dustin Moskovitz, the only other original Facebook co-founder listed, has a 7.6 percent voting power based on 7.6 percent of class B shares. After that, there is “Entities affiliated with DST Global” with 5.5 percent voting power, based on 5.4 percent of Class B shares and 31.4 percent of class A shares. Peter Thiel holds 2.5 percent of voting power based on 2.5 percent of class B shares. “Entities affiliated with Goldman Sachs” have less than 1 percent voting power based on 56.3 percent class A shares.

Dustin Moskovitz, members of Mr. Moskovitz’s family, Sean Parker, Matt Cohler and “certain affiliated entitties” all granted their voting rights to Mr. Zuckerberg by proxy. (So did ARPI 2, LLC; Gregory Druckman; Michael Druckman; Richard Druckman; Steven Druckman; The Founders Fund, LP; Glynn Partners; Hommels Holding GmbH; Cara & Robert Scudder; Silicon Valley Community Foundation; certain entities affiliated with Technology Crossover Ventures; Valiant Capital Opportunities, LLC; and VHPI 2, LLC.)

Liabilities:

Facebook is involved in multiple lawsuits including patent infringement as well as class action lawsuits brought by users and advertisers. The only specific lawsuit referred to is the case for 50 percent ownership brought by New Yorker Paul Ceglia. “We continue to believe that Mr. Ceglia is attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the court and we intend to continue to defend the case vigorously,” Facebook says.

Revenue:

Annual revenue of $3.7 billion; $1.8 billion in annual operating income and $1 billion net income in 2011.

Advertising accounts for $3.15 billion, or about 84 percent of overall revenue. Payments and other fees account for the remaining $557 million.

Facebook’s overall revenue grew 154 percent from 2009 to 2010 and 88 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Revenue from advertising grew 144 percent from 2009 to 2010, but only 69 percent from 2010 to 2011. Revenue from payments grew 715 percent from 2009 to 2010 (starting low at just $13 million up to $106 million), but slowed to 425 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Other numbers and statistics:

As Alex Gaynor notes on Quora, Facebook's 2011 revenue/profit "is almost exactly one-tenth of Google's: 3.7 vs 37 billion in revenue, and 1 billion vs 9.7 billion [in profit]."

Executive compensation:

Mark Zuckerberg's salary is reduced to $1 starting January 1 of 2013.

In 2011, the highest compensated executives at Facebook were: Mark Zuckerberg (CEO) $500,000; Sheryl K. Sandberg (COO), $300,000; David A. Ebersman (CFO), $300,000; Mike Schroepfer (VP of engineering); 275,000; Theodore W. Ullyot (general counsel), $275,000.

Fun facts:

Facebook's "Hacker Way" makes it into the SEC filing.

The names of all the underwriting banks leaked, except for the notoriously secretive boutique firm Allen & Company.

The average age of Facebook’s executives and directors is 45; Mr. Zuckerberg, 27, is the youngest; the next youngest is VP of engineering Mike Schroepfer, 36.

845 million monthly active users; 483 million daily users.

Zynga said its business could be damaged by fallout with Facebook in its S-1 filing; Facebook said the same thing of Zynga, which accounted for 12 percent of total revenue in 2011.

We'll keep updating this post as we go.

Mr. Eisenberg.

Accel Partners, which is invested in all the companies you've heard of from BitTorrent to Facebook, as well as all the ones you haven't, from Chakpak to YuMe, announced a year ago it had picked up a New York office in the Google building at 111 Eighth Ave. But apparently the venture capital firm was holding back.  "The early plan was to use a rotating case of Accel investors from other offices— including Jim Breyer and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta. A sort of professional flophouse, if you will," reports Dan Primack at Fortune.

But it's now public that Accel has hired David Eisenberg, employee no. 1 at Accel portfolio company Bonobos (he's @davebonobos) and Upper West Side newbie, as entrepreneur-in-residence.

Accel's New York investments include but are not limited to Birchbox, Bonobos, Etsy, Lot18,  Salescrunch, Loosecubes, Learnvest and BaubleBar (plus whatever fantasy football startups Mr. Eisenberg is sourcing right now). Betabeat called Accel's office to find out how many staff are in New York—"I can't tell you, because I don't actually know"—and got transferred to Palo Alto. Sounds like Accel is yet to get rooted. S'okay, guys—we all know how tough it is to move to the city.

I eat IPOs like yours for breakfast.

Betabeat has already noted the prevailing winds of venture capital class warfare--with equity in hot start-ups, access to dealflow, and ability to raise capital separates "the haves from the have nots." But as the IPO wave has started to crest, even fewer names have risen to the top. And if the Wall Street Journal's numbers are any indicator, it's given some VCs cause for a little reverse schadenfreude.

"Top venture-capital firms Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures have the biggest volume of initial public offerings and sales of start-ups so far this year, according to an analysis by VentureSource, with all three firms each notching at least nine such 'exits' in the first half of 2011. In contrast, more than 200 venture firms have had only one exit each so far this year, with scores of others having none."

What's more, returns at the very top have likewise "widened" over other reputable performers "by two to three times" this year, Mel Williams from TrueBridge Capital Partners, a firm that invests in VC funds, tells the Journal. "A handful of managers are clearly distancing themselves from the pack."

Impending IPOs from Kayak (backed by Sequoia and Accel), Zillow (backed by Benchmark), and Groupon (backed by Accel, among many others) all stand to make them even richer. Maybe they can use it to buy some stock in Zynga, the one company the top six VCs in terms of IPOs and M&As, missed out on, while Fred Wilson chuckles to himself.

Gilt Groupe founders Alexis and Alexandra

Surprise! The most lucrative neighborhood for getting venture capital deals done is not the tech corridor from DogPatch Labs to the top of Madison Square Park that seems to emanate from Fred Wilson's office in Union Square. In fact, according to data from the research firm CB Insights, the epicenter is northeast of that, closer to Gilt Groupe's Park Avenue offices, between 32nd and 33rd Streets. Their zipcode, 10016, happens to be the hottest in the city for securing venture capital.

Maybe it's a lucky office? Gilt co-founders Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Alexis Maybank, along with angel investor Doubleclick co-founder Kevin Ryan—and their $270 million in funding—work out of the space formerly home to Right Media, which was successfully sold to Yahoo in 2007.

While SoHo, Union Square and Chelsea are still start-up hubs, CB Insights data shows that a particular stretch from the mid-20s to the 40s on the East Side—covering Kips Bay, Turtle Bay, and Murray Hill—saw 40 VC deals worth a combined $351.8 million since 2009. If you stretch it out to the mid-50s on the East Side, that's 76 deals amounting to more than $840 million. The numbers were enough to make the New York Post declare that the area they'd like to call Silicon Park (meh?) is giving Silicon Alley a run for its VC money. But is it really?

Like Betabeat, local entrepreneurs were skeptical. General Assembly's Brad Hargreaves conducted his own unscientific study to see whether it was just a function of Gilt Groupe's $270 million finger on the scales. But the numbers seemed to pan out. Mr. Hargreaves told the Post:

"What really surprised me was the Murray Hill area. I found that fascinating, so many deals being done on East Side on Park Avenue in the 30s."

Whether it's the commercial class A building space that lures them, or the proximity to Grand Central, start-ups like Adkeeper, Xgraph, and Offerpop have found the funding flows more freely further northeast. But don't pack up your foosball table just yet. Silicon Valley VC Accel Partners, for example, recently opened up an outpost in Chelsea, not far from other notable West side holdouts: NYU and Googleplex East.

New York is the new VC battleground.

There were a few stories this morning about the news that Accel Partners, one of the top three venture capital firms in the nation, is opening an outpost in New York.

But by and large there wasn't much comment from local VCs on the issue, until Lerer Ventures' Jordan Cooper raised the issue on Twitter:

How is my feed not blowing up with news of Accel opening NYC office? Top 3 firm in the country planting a flag here.

"Seems to me forgone conclusion all the top VCs will have offices in NYC in next 12 months," replied Founder Collective's Chris Dixon.

"True & awesome," chimed in Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder of Yipit.

Cooper elaborated on his thoughts in an email to The Observer. "I think they will be the #2 choice of every NYC entrepreneur raising a VC round after USV...they're top 3 in the world...it's a big deal. Hurts the Boston guys who are trying to plant flags here big time...out of towners are going to have a hard time competing on brand alone against the likes of Accel."

As Fred Wilson wrote this morning, finding money is no longer the challenge for talented New York start-ups. The tough part is taking the right money and finding the rare talent.

Check Out Accel Partner's Ten Greatest Hits >>

bpopper at observer dot com - @benpopper