Mr. Hippeau (Photo: Twitter)

Earlier today, Lerer Ventures revealed that the early stage investment firm--a powerful, active force in growing New York's startup ecosystem--has raised its biggest fund yet. While raw SEC filings first indicated that Lerer Ventures was raising $30 million, the deal closed at $36 million. That's more than $64 million combined in less than two years.

Partners Ken Lerer, Ben Lerer, Eric Hippeau, and Jordan Cooper have backed some of the most high-profile companies from New York's new class of tech startups, like Warby Parker, MakerBot, OnSwipe, and Birchbox. Lerer Ventures has also had a number of notable exits, like GroupMe (acquired by Skype), Mr. Cooper's startup HyperPublic (acquired by Groupon), and Venmo (acquired by Braintree). In fact, the Huffington Post mafiosos--Ken Lerer and Mr. Hippeau are both veterans--have been so busy building "the largest infrastructure in New York for entrepreneurs" that they apparently haven't had time to move Venmo into the "Exits" list on the firm's website.

Betabeat spoke to Mr. Hippeau this afternoon after his firm's new fund and why we're in "the golden age for entrepreneurs in New York."

About a year ago, when I spoke to Ben Lerer, he attributed LV’s success partly to being at the right place at the right time. How much do you think that has been a factor in your growth and your place in the ecosystem?
Our growth is a reflection of the growth of entrepreneurship and startups in New York. So in that sense, we are definitely at the right time because this is the golden age for entrepreneurs in New York. There’s a whole infrastructure to support entrepreneurs. We’re a big part of it, but by no means the only part of it.

We also have four partners who, combined, have a lot of experience on the operations side--operating media, tech, and communications companies--as well as a lot of experience in doing venture capital investments.

In May, 2011 when LV first announced an East Coast-West Coast partnership to syndicate deals with Ron Conway’s SV Angel Partners, it was a big sign of support for your firm. Now, you’re much more entrenched in the startup scene. Would the partnership be as vital to your success if it happened now?
I have personally known Ron for about 20 years. He’s a good friend of mine as well as someone with whom I’ve co-invested over the years. We’re based in New York. He and his fund are based in San Francisco, so we’re very complementary to each other. And when we make a co-investment in a company, we bring our joint network of support, so that’s very meaningful for the companies.

Now, we actually co-invest with pretty much everybody in the marketplace. We are very collaborative and an investment is always a syndicate of people who come together to help a company.

Which other New York firms are in your syndicate?
All the very active investors in New York, such as First Round, RRE, Softbank, Thrive, High Line, Betaworks--just to name a few--are all funds and people that we have repeatedly done investments with.

Recently, LV named Stephen Colvin, the former CEO of Newsweek/Daily Beast as an executive-in-residence. Between that and Ken Lerer’s NowThisNews, is this a sign of LV’s focus on content startups?
We are interested in content, but by no means do we do content mainly. When we invest in New York, we invest in sectors that New York is good at. So there’s consumer, commerce, mobile, social, ad technology, publishing technology. There’s actually a lot of B2B, software-as-a-service type businesses, marketplaces. Having Stephen join the team is more of a reflection that we want to continually add resources to support our portfolio companies.

Andreessen Horowitz, for example, says they use the old-school CAA model in terms of how they structure resource to help portfolio companies. Do you have a model for the way you try to build an infrastructure for your portfolio or do you build as the need arises?
We do have a model. Obviously we don’t have the resources that Andreessen Horowitz has. [Laughs]

Who does?!
Yeah! But we do have an extensive network of support. We have not only our own colleagues, we have a group of analysts and a principal who are helping out full-time with the companies, but we have this extended network of people who are in our ecosystem that are advisors, or people we’ve worked with in the past, or people like Stephen Colvin that we can rely on for very specific tasks. We have a very big focus on making sure that we are constantly doing things that move our companies forward.

Considering LV’s rise, is there any downside to having really good deal flow?
[Laughs] I guess the only downside is that it can be sometimes a little bit overwhelming, but we do have a good system in place to make sure that we identify companies that are really promising. I actually think it’s a real asset!

Have you noticed one area of weakness among New York companies or something LV’s portfolio companies need help with--monetization strategies or partnerships with larger companies?
The common denominator with New York companies is that they’re constantly looking for qualified new employees. I can’t tell you how many open jobs we have within our portfolio, but it’s definitely in the hundreds, if not thousands. So identifying and recruiting and bringing good employees, particularly on the technology side, is one of the biggest challenges. But the companies always find ways. Some of the employees that they hire don’t necesaarily have to be in New York, given that a lot of the companies tend to be virtual.

There's a perception that New York's startup scene is very open and accessible. But as things matures, the tendency is to get more stratified. How easy is it for a company to get a meeting with you?
We haven’t found any real difference in the past few years. New York tends to be very collaborative. Everybody is literally working together. Of course it’s competitive like any ecosystem, but it’s not, perhaps, as intensively competitive as it is on the West Coast. The players are well-identified. The players tend to be very constant and consistent. There’s really no other way of saying that this is as collaborative an ecosystem as you could possibly imagine.

In terms of where you’re allocating the fund, besides sectors like content or commerce, is there another factor you look for in potential investments?
Sure. We’re looking for teams that have big ideas whose time has come. The factors that matter to us are: Is it a big idea? Is the timing for this idea right? And is this the right team--are these the right people--to be doing this? Clearly the trends are mobile, social--on the B2B side, the use of consumer Internet technology for the workplace. We’re starting to see more and more marketplaces that are developing. All the things that you would expect New York to be good at because New York is the fashion, media, finance, commerce capital of the United States. So all of these industries--and plus whatever else you can imagine--are being transformed and disrupted by technology and this is where we want to be.

Can you give an example of a company that you’ve invested in that represents “a big idea whose time has come”?
I don’t think I would do it justice because we have 135 companies. So, I would rather not!

Jordan Cooper, left, and Ben Lerer (Photo: via The Pitch)

Roughly a year-and-a-half after closing its second $25 million seed stage fund, Lerer Ventures is in the processing of raising money for a third. An SEC filing, first noted by TechCrunch, says the size of the round is $30 million.

Although the Form D indicates that the early-stage venture capital firm has yet to sell, expect the round to close quickly.

Last May, it only took Lerer Ventures "a matter of weeks" to raise that $25 million from individuals and family offices. And that was before the highly-regarded New York City firm--launched by Huffington Post cofounder (and Betaworks and Buzzfeed chairman) Ken Lerer and his son Ben Lerer, cofounder of Thrillist--boasted a handful of exits. 

Indeed, Lerer Ventures, whose team also includes partners Jordan Cooper and Eric Hippeau as well as advisors Jonah Peretti and  Christopher Poole, aka Moot, has been humming along since last August when portfolio company GroupMe*, a group messaging service, was acquired by Skype for $41 million.

In February, Groupon purchased Mr. Cooper's startup Hyperpublic-- an open database of location-based info on people, places, and things--which was funded by Lerer Ventures. This March, AOL purchased the photo sharing app Hipster. In July, Airbnb acqui-hired DailyBooth, the startup that lets you share webcam photos. And last month, Venmo, the mobile payments startup, was acquired by Braintree for $26.2 million.

Thrive Capital*, helmed by Josh Kushner, also recently a new $150 million fund after a number of exits, including GroupMe.

SEC regulations prohibit discussing private placements while fundraising is still in progress, but we will update you when we know more. In the meantime, please enjoy the odd couple stylings of Mr. Lerer and Mr. Cooper, courtesy of Betabeat's 2011 web series, The Pitch.

The Pitch, Episode 1 from Spinks on Vimeo.

*Disclosure

Mr. Cooper. (jordancooper.wordpress.com)

Hyperpublic, the two-year-old startup helmed by Lerer Ventures partner Jordan Cooper, has been acquired by Groupon for an undisclosed price.

On Friday, Mr. Cooper teased the news with a few ellipses on Twitter before linking to the announcement. "Today is an INSANE day! We are so proud to announce that Hyperpublic has been acquired by the rocket ship that is Groupon," Hyperpublic wrote. "This is a huge win for our team, our investors, and everyone who contributed to our company over the past two years." Then there was a party at The Standard, natch.

Hyperpublic collects data about locations in an open database. Its primary products are APIs. "Anyone can add objects to the database and developers will be able to build applications on top of the data," the company says.

Some of the 10 members of the Hyperpublic team will ship out to work at Groupon, while others will pursue their own projects. Mr. Cooper will have an official title at Groupon, although specifics have not been disclosed (or maybe, have not been decided).

Mr. Cooper declined to talk about the negotiations. "Groupon of course has an interest in better understanding the places that their users interact with everyday," he wrote in an email over the weekend. "We've been focused on that problem for a long time."

However, Mr. Cooper has emphasized to press that Groupon bought Hyperpublic for its technology and database, and although some employees would be going to Groupon, this was not a talent acquisition.

Groupon did not immediately respond to a request for comment about why it wanted to buy Hyperpublic.

Hyperpublic raised just $1.5 $1.15 million in seed funding mostly locally from Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, RRE Ventures, NextView Ventures, Thrive Capital, SoftBank Capital and Hudson River Angels.

Disclosure.

Learning a user's preferences in order to recommend him or her better products is a space that has seen a lot of activity in New York recently. Hunch was acquired by eBay to power just that sort of highly-personalized experience. Meanwhile, The Fancy just nabbed a $10 million investment from the biggest fashion brands on the planet to connect users's taste in web surfing with luxury e-commerce.

Dibsie wants to play with both those models. Like eBay, it will be in part a self-serve platform, where small businesses can go to upload their products alongside more established brands. The company launched at the New York Tech Meetup in August and since then have added hundreds of small businesses that use Dibsie as a platform for their offers.

Ben and Jordan are impressed with the presentation and think Garren seems intelligent. They agree it's a valuable space, but they're worried that this is a very crowded market. Did Garren's pitch convince them Dibsie can emerge from the pack?

Click through here to learn more about Lerer Ventures.

Want to know more about all the companies involved? Check out our founder’s guide here.

And if you need to catch up, here’s the premier episode of The Pitch.

Ms. Falter grew up in a entrepreneurial household watching her mother run a small business. Now she is working on Markover, a service that allows users to comment anywhere on a page, creating a layer of live conversation around online media.

Imagine a  breaking news story about a daring hot air balloon rescue. With Markover users could begin having a live conversation around photos or video that they found especially compelling. And advertisers could target a publisher's audience where they are most engaged.

Our venture capitalists, Ben and Jordan, dig the team and the tech, but aren't so sure the product can scale. Watch to see what happens.

Click through here to learn more about Lerer Ventures.

Want to know more about all the companies involved? Check out our founder's guide here.

And if you need to catch up, here's the premier episode of The Pitch.

Never met a data set he didn't like

Hyperpublic is a relatively new startup with a very ambitious agenda, to organize the world's geodata and in effect index online what exists where in the physical world. To get there, the company will have to pair a huge machine learning and big data effort with a killer consumer product that layers on great metadata.

In many ways this project resembles the work being done by Joe Einhorn at thingd. Mr. Einhorn is trying to be the "thing" layer on the web, tagging every object in every image, whether it's part of a Conde Nast photo spread or a personal blog about toy cars. Except Hyperpublic is going after the people, places and things in the real world.

To make this all happen, Hyperpublic has hired Jeff Weinstein as their President. Mr Weinstein was head of R&D at Comscore and was reportedly being recruited by Google before Hyperpublic snapped him up.

"At Comscore we were pulling usage data on 2 million machines and combining that with feedback from the web's biggest publishers, folks like Gawker, AOL and Yahoo," said Mr. Weinstein, who stopped by Betabeat's offices for a chat after his first day. "So I am used to dealing with big data problems and figuring out ways to surface what interests people across different industries."

Mr. Weinstein says his role is to build out the data team and devise ways to make their content compelling to businesses who might pay for API access at scale. "The other half will be coming up with something that people want to use on a daily basis, so we can begin to generate a robust set of user data as well."

The choice to work at a startup over a major corporation was one Mr. Weinstein had been longing to make for a while. "I just want to get my hands dirty. I want to write code, tweak marketing copy and get to know the New York developer community."

It seems Hyperpublic founder Jordan Cooper is making good on his promise to import the top tech talent from around the country to Silicon Alley. Next up, building, "the first multi-billion dollar public true technology company to be built in New York City."

The wizard Martocci casts a spell over Twitter (via Steve Spillman)

When the news broke yesterday evening that Skype acquired hometown start-up GroupMe, New York's digerati took the party to Twitter. Indeed the acquisition and its hefty price tag, which Betabeat's sources pegged between $50 million and $100 million, caused such a stir among a certain swath of tech circles that "GroupMe" even made into a New York City Twitter trending topic last night--albeit below penetrating questions plaguing tweeters such as, "Chris Brown OR Justin Bieber."

The deal was the first major exit for Lerer Ventures, Thrive Capital and BoxGroup's David Tisch, so much of the tweeting action consisted of ebullient pats on the back. But a few notes of skepticism arose from the din. In case you were too busy watching Libyan rebels end a 40-year dictatorship, here's what you missed.

Betaworks co-founder Andy Weissman couldn't help getting a little nostalgic, tweeting out:

"Fact: @jaredhecht and @smart named the original @GroupMe entity after a Disco Biscuits song, which I spelled wrong in our term sheet w/ them"

Followed by the even more humble:

"Other fact: I wouldnt originally take a meeting with @jaredhecht and @smart because, I wrote them, I wasn't "feeling" the product yet."

Lerer Ventures Jordan Cooper decided success was no time for humility, asking:

"@aweissman what Made you change your mind ?? ;)"

To which Mr. Weissman dutifully replied, albeit sans emoticon:

"@jordancooper a little birdy named Jordan"

Bnter's Lauren Leto pulled a pattern out of the M&A landscape, noting:

"the tradition of "any company @mattlanger is part of gets bought" continues."

Brew PR's Brooke Hammerling also noticed a pattern: the companies she represents have been pretty much killing it:

"Amazing to see the inner operations of such amazing teams. 1st, PayPal buys @Zong, now Skype buys @GroupMe. #humbled cc @BrewPR"

Silicon Valley Bank's Shai Goldman saw the deal as a boost for the city's new tech economy:

"GroupMe acq is great for NYC tech scene 1) Founders are now experienced successful entrepreneurs 2) Founders will likely be angel investors"

Although he agonized over how the valuation might sway other starry-eyed local start-ups:

"Groupme $85M acquisition is going to provide a false sense of value to other startups "I'm a 1 year old mobile startup, so I'm worth x"

Poornima Vijayashanker, who left Mint after the company was acquired to launch BizeeBee, concurred:

"@shaig yeah that's very true! hype is an interesting phenomenon. being a startup u have to know what ur worth, when to sell & whom to sell 2"

Lean Start-up Machine founder Trevor Owens wondered whether the acquisition changed venture capitalist Mark Suster's mind about GroupMe's business proposition:

"@msuster what do you think of groupme now?"

Mr. Suster tweeted out that it hadn't:

"@to2 same as I always did. Great product. Well marketed. Group texting on its own not a company"

Mr. Owens wanted to know more:

"@msuster would love to know your thoughts on how/when features can become a business"

But while Mr. Suster promised a blog post on the subject, ff ventures' John Frankel jumped into the fray:

"@to2 Features become a product when they generate revenues. They then become a business when revenues exceed costs. cc @msuster"

Brooklyn techie Jonathan Wegener thoughtfully contemplated his own role in closing the deal:

"I like to think the acquisition happened because I decided to wear my @groupme shirt today."

GroupMe community manager (and friend of Betabeat) Steve Spilllman couldn't help but see the romance:

"What a big day- first the Kardashian wedding and now comes news that groupme is marrying skype."

Meanwhile, David Tisch was more preoccupied with how GroupMe's Pat Nakajima figured into the $50 million plus figure:

"Wondering what the price for @nakajima was in the @groupme deal…"

According to Mr. Nakajima some imposter tweeting under the totally fake Twitter account @PatNakajima, he may have made a killing:

"I got a sweet deal. 47 signed Taylor Swift CDs!"

Entrepreneur and former VC Steve Cheney was already thinking about the road ahead, tweeting just the word "Skype!" followed by:

"Next stop: monetization."

But the GroupMe team were too busy belting their hearts out at karaoke to hear him, at least according to Ms. Hammerling's tweet:

"This is happening. Cc @GroupMe@BrewPR@nakajima@PatNakajima"

Hopefully somebody snuck in Steve Martocci's bottle of Johnnie Walker blue.

Disclosure.

Keith Rabois, Silicon Valley super-angel and COO of Square. Photo: TechCrunch.

The idea that blogging is bad is borderline sacrilege in New York, where Fred Wilson, Charlie O'Donnell, Chris Dixon, Nate Westheimer, numerous founders and every biz dev hustler in town post regularly--on Tumblr, at the very least--and hold up the blog as the paragon of self-promotion.

Boo, luminary Keith Rabois says.

"I have invested in nearly 75 companies, no more than 2 of the founders have an active blog, maybe less," Mr. Rabois tweeted on Wednesday. He thinks blogging has a low return and entrepreneurs and investors should spend their time on more productive things, he told founder, venture capitalist and blogger Jordan Cooper during a conversation at TechCrunch Disrupt. Mr. Cooper, of course, blogged about it.

"I could not understand how someone so talented and accomplished in our space could be missing the boat on what seems to be such an obvious and valuable tool for young entrepreneurs," he wrote. "And then it hit me. 'Keith Rabois doesn’t see the value of the blog as a platform because Keith Rabois is Keith Rabois.'

"It is a tool for those who are making their mark in the present (I would put the Fred’s and Dixon’s of the world into that category). I now see why Keith pointed out the lack of blogging by market leaders on the West Coast… it is because on the West Coast, the market leaders are leaders who have earned that title for work they have done over the past 25 years. They are entrenched, their personal platforms built before blogging existed, and now they rest on those platforms, not needing to amplify their voice of prove that they are equal to or better than those that call themselves leaders," he wrote.

(Mr. Rabois conceded that Chris Dixon is an exception to his rule.)

Mr. Cooper cited one of his posts which got 10,000 views, resulting in 30 user sign-ups and two emails, one from a database engineer and "some random kid in Nairobi."

The debate continued on Twitter, where Mr. Cooper linked to Groupon founder Andrew Mason's blog. "Debate over. read Andrew Mason's early posts on http://blog.thepoint.com/. @rabois 9,999 - @jordancooper 1," he tweeted.

But the most recent post was two years ago, Mr. Rabois countered.

Groupme's business development lead Steve Cheney picked up the charge, submitting Chris Dixon as an example of an active founder+blogger. "QED," Mr. Rabois conceded. The parties agreed to disagree. "I'll entertain an argument of 'blog has declining value as you ascend to $25B', but let's do offline when we're next in same city," Mr. Cooper tweeted.

Self described "media addict" Rachel Sklar Storified the conversation. (Does that count as blogging?)

The vision: A strictly private network, similar to Path or the Fridge, where posts expire in 24 hours, and that syncs with dating sites across the web. "I want to let my friends who are now married live single life vicariously through me, and at the same time, perhaps provide a forum for them to share matters of the married heart," he said. He imagines posting a photo of a girl he just went on a date with, along with comments, and links, and maybe a story about her, or a plea for advice.

"'Look at this kindergarten teacher I’m about to meet' and the follow-up with 'He was really sensitive, but his breath was fucking terrible.  No go.'  These are the conversations that we have every day, I want to enhance them with richer forms of media and concepts of following/updates/and mobility that the web and mobile web can deliver," Mr. Cooper wrote.

Local Googler David Kay responded in the comments that he was working on something in "an adjacent space," a little black book-esque app that came in third at the Lean Startup Machine competition. We asked if he thought people would want to use Mr. Cooper's theoretical app, which another commenter suggested be called Pursuit?

"I think that there's indeed an opening in the market," Mr. Kay told Betabeat. "Online dating has exploded in recent years but it's only been addressing the issue of the introduction. I think that there's a lot more to be done in terms of dating tools/apps to fill in the gaps."

Mr. Cooper, who blogged that he has "some desks and some money" for the project, has not contacted Mr. Kay yet.

"I'm not that sure I want to share my love life with any of my friends," tweeted local developer Pierre Valade after reading the post, titled "Whitespace For The Taking."

Mr. Cooper was surprised; Mr. Valade posited that perhaps his love life was too complicated. "Complicated is better than non-existent," Mr. Cooper tweeted back. "See, we're talking about it right now. Look how fun this is."

"We just felt like there is so much noise out there," founder Jordan Cooper told The Observer. "Tons of companies with no real engineering culture begging for engineers to come work with them."

The challenge consists of two questions: one easy, one hard, and can be completed using any language.

The first problem is to create a way to rank user influence. Despite entering several random numbers,The Observer couldn't nail that.

"We wanted to give the hacker community something fun to work on for a day, and also to communicate our own technical DNA," said Cooper.

The second problem reveals a few interesting details about Hyperpublic's strategy.

The company has an internal karma system to determine which users are the most involved in the ecosystem. Users earn points for tasks like adding places, things or tagging photos. The second challenge asks programmers to determine the minimum number of tasks the Hyperpublic team has completed to hit their current scores.

Prizes include a one year subscription to Dropbox or Github and a free desk for one month at Hyperpublic HQ, located a floor above betaworks and Cooper's office at Lerer Ventures. Sounds cozy.

At this moment there are more than 400 folks hacking on the problems at the same time, and 28 have gotten the right answers. That makes The Observer feel a little better about our lack of coding skills.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper