(Via http://castielmalotovedlucifer.tumblr.com/, God knows the original source)

Order us up a dish of crow, because we might get a few more angels out of this Tumblr deal than we initially suspected. Crain's has analysis of the deal from PrivCo, and if these numbers are right, the company's investors, at least, made out none too shabby.

According to PrivCo's analysis, Union Square Ventures will get $253 million--"mostly from a $400,000 seed investment it made in Tumblr in 2007." PrivCo believes USV invested less than $5 million and ballparks the firm's return at 5,000 percent. Early birds, worms, etc. Spark Capital will get $154 million, and partner Bijan Sabet takes home $77 million. Sequoia gets $176 million.

PrivCo says employees fared well, too: The report says the first 10 average around $6.2 million, the first 30 $3.3 million, and everyone else gets something like $371,000.

But before you start petitioning your Tumblr pals for personal loans--it's worth treating these numbers with substantial skepticism.

A Tumblr spokesperson told us they weren't going to comment or confirm anything besides what was in the initial release, and USV and Sequoia are keeping quiet. But a Spark Capital spokesperson "disputed the accuracy of the report" to Crain's. Also, PrivCo recently bungled a story about LivingSocial, and there were lots of questions about that Foursquare report, too.

As for employees, there are any number of factors that could render those numbers inaccurate, from vesting schedules to earn outs to handcuffs. The presentation also suggests employees get comparable amounts of stock options, which seems unlikely. Update, 8:07 p.m.: Investor Bijan Sabet, whom PrivCo has making $77 million, is also on a Twitter tear trashing the report. "That article and the corresponding privco report is complete garbage and incorrect," he just tweeted. Come on, Bijan, throw us a couple more numbers.

Fred Wilson, meanwhile, has chimed in on Hacker News:

Total garbage. There is not one fact in this privco thing that is close to right. The numbers are good but nowhere close to that good. This is the same firm that predicted Foursquare would be out of business this year which will also prove to be nonsense.

Anyway, keep a close eye on the city's artisanal coffee suppliers and twee Brooklyn furniture makers. If everything at the Flea gets bought up halfway through the day on Saturday, we'll have our answer.

Update: PrivCo says they've talked with a Tumblr VC and they've updated their numbers accordingly. The new numbers look more like what Dan Primack already reported:

https://twitter.com/PrivCo/status/337247627890548736

https://twitter.com/PrivCo/status/337248012453675008

https://twitter.com/PrivCo/status/337249341913853952

https://twitter.com/PrivCo/status/337249763688861697

Would've loved to be a fly on the wall for that little chat, all things considered.

Pieratt. (Photo: Brooklyn Beta)

eBay announced on its blog today that it has acquired Svpply, the NYC-based social shopping site that curates personalized collections of clothing and products. Located on Broome Street in Soho, Svpply raised $550,000 in seed funding back in 2010 from investors like Founders Collective, Spark Capital, SV Angel, Dennis Crowley and Jason Hirschhorn. Since then, Svpply has been bootstrapping itself to 620,000 product views per week and 140,000 registered members (as of May).

Last May, founder Ben Pieratt offered a candid perspective on first-time entrepreneurship, admitting his vulnerability. "I have zero experience or expertise in building a company," he wrote in a 2011 blog post. "So I'm learning on the fly."

Mr. Pierrat summed up a list of things he'd need to learn how to do, or Svpply would fail. Hey, in startup parlance, we'd say an acqui-hire counts as quite a success.

At least Svpply's other cofounder, parallel entrepreneur extraordinaire Zach Klein, brought some experience to the team. Mr. Klein is a partner at Founders Collective, and has had a hand in a plethora of successful startups. He cofounded Vimeo and BustedTees, helped launch CollegeHumor, worked as chief product officer at Boxee and serves as a director for both Skillshare and Svpply. According to AllThingsD, Mr. Klein linked up with Svpply in the spring of 2010 when he "connected with Ben Pieratt, a Boston-based designer who started Svpply in late 2009."

eBay's blog post suggests that the move to purchase Svpply is largely an acqui-hire:

With Svpply.com, eBay gains access to technology talent to further improve the shopping and selling experience for its customers. Svpply.com assets – including a talented team of six designers and developers – are well-suited to help eBay advance more personalized experiences and merchandising options on eBay.com.

Based in New York (see the office, above), the Svpply.com employees will work on merchandising, non-search discovery and browsing.

eBay has been aggressively ramping up its presence in New York as of late. Back in November, the online auction platform acquired NYC-based Hunch, a personalized recommendation engine. Then in April, eBay snapped up a massive 350,000 square foot office in the Flatiron. Guess they needed a few more devs to fill up those desks.

Svpply insists in a blog post that the site's not going anywhere anytime soon. "Svpply is not going away," it reads. "We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day—allowing our loyal fans to explore beautiful products and stores, all of them hand selected by the community."

Greg Leppert, Svpply's third cofounder, said the Svpply team would work on both eBay and the Svpply site. "We'll continue to build Svpply and our community and apply what we learn to eBay," he told Betabeat by email. Mr. Leppert also said that Svpply will not be rolled into eBay, but that both sites will remain distinct from each other.

"We’re excited to join the eBay and Hunch teams in the new state-of-the-art technology development center in New York City!" Svpply added in a blog post. Shake them pom-poms, y'all.

Additional reporting contributed by Nitasha Tiku.

Mr. Wall via Twitter

Say you're a small business trying to figure out whether a deal with Groupon or ad on Yelp will bring customers to your door. That already-tricky marketing decision gets more complicated when you factor in fragmentation among daily deals sites and all the other publishers that could potentially host your ad. If you wanted, however, you could pay a New York-based startup called Signpost $99 a month to make the decision between a Google Offer, Living Social, or ad on Yelp for you based on the type of traffic you're trying to drive to your business. "Our quick pitch is we want to be a one stop marketing platform for local business," Signpost CEO and cofounder Stuart Wall told Betabeat.

Since late last year, Signpost has already signed up 3,500 small businesses, 93 percent of which renew with the service each month, said Mr. Wall. That might explain why Spark Capital just signed on to lead the startup's $3.75 million Series A round. Signpost had already raised $1.25 million in seed financing from Spark and Google Ventures back in 2010.

According to Mr. Wall, Signpost is also leaving the option of a $1 million follow-on round on the table from existing investors who have expressed interest, although no decision has yet been made. Mr. Wall said he's in a good position because Signpost works off the revenue it generates rather than investment, which will be used, in part, to boost its sales team. "The cost for us to acquire a customer, versus expected value is over 5.5 multiple from sales people," he said. "But you need a little bit of capital to fund that growth."

As part of the announcement, Signpost revealed that it will be bringing on Christopher DePatria, former head of sales at AOL’s Patch, to lead its sales force.

Of course, Signpost isn't the only New York startup going after online marketing for small businesses. Yext and Yodle, where Mr. DePatricia once worked, also help businesses show up in local search results and enhance their listings. But Mr. Wall says Signpost's special sauce is its focus on driving purchases over brand awareness. "Our view is brand advertising might make sense for Pepsi," said Mr. Wall. But for small businesses, they focus on offering deals to drive sales in the acquisition campaigns for volume, like a 50 percent off coupon on Google Offers, one of Signpost's 1,200 publishing partners, as well as utilization campaigns for filling slow periods or filling in a certain time of day. In the case of one Lasik eye surgeon, Mr. Wall says Signpost was able to generate $20,000 in sales in a week.

"There are so many platforms out there that to be on to be effective, it’s nearly impossible to do it by yourself," said Mr. Wall, who added that Signpost "white labels" content to make the experience seamless.

As for all those open sales positions, Mr. Wall said Signpost aggressively goes after hiring "passive candidates" among New York's young and hungry. So, in other words, poaching? "We tend not to do it with other startups as a rule," said Mr. Wall. Instead Signpost goes after, "Other companies where we don’t think it will hurt too much." Like AOL? "I don’t know if I feel like mentioning specific companies," he demurred.

Mo' Koyfman, mo' investments. (sparkcapital.com)

Spark Capital just announced the promotion of principal Mo Koyfman, the golden-haired Wharton alum who joined the firm in the summer of 2008 after more than six years sourcing deals and incubating startups at IAC.

It won't be much of a change, as far as the young investor's duties go. "I've already been functioning in the capacity as a general partner so to speak," he told Betabeat this afternoon, noting that he sits on six or seven boards now including Skillshare, Workmarket, Svpply, gdgt and Aviary. "It's a bit of a rubber stamp and certainly an acknowledgment of the efforts I've made to date, which I appreciate tremendously."

The title gives him "another tool in my arsenal" on the VC battleground. Mr. Koyfman is Spark's official partner in New York, with junior Sparkie David Haber. Although he travels a lot, the firm has "at least two Sparkies in New York a couple days a week," Mr. Koyfman said. Spark is putting the finishing touches on an office now, he said.

Mr. Koyfman is one of the younger investors on the core team at Spark, which he says has a range of personalities and backgrounds. "We have at least two nerds, maybe three, but I'm not going to say who they are," he said.

We asked about his role in the intra-Spark dynamic. "I'm definitely one of the yonger guys, and I've been living in New York for years... I'm a pretty straightforward and honest person," he said, mulling his place in the Spark family. "I do speak my mind. And also I consider myself, and I just was raised to be, a person of high integrity, so that's something thats very important to me.... I bring my sense of humor and I think we all do," he said.

So which of Mr. Koyfman's companies should we most be afraid of?

This was a tough question for Mr. Koyfman.

"I think what the Aviary team has been able to accomplish in the last six months is nothing short of remarkable, and I would say watch out for those guys in the coming quarters," he said carefully. The company that has "the most potential yet to be realized" is Svpply, he added, before rounding out the trio with Matt Brezina of Sincerely. "I think we have a ton of great companies in the portfolio but just sharing a few that may not be on people's radar," he amended.

He's bullish on New York's venture scene—go figure—and hopeful that the current crop of Foursquares and Tumblrs will produce mentors for the next generation. "What I think we definitely have in the long term in New York is, that entrepreneurs and startups are cool," he said. "That wasn't the case when I was in school. Graduating and going to work on Wall Street or at an investment bank or consulting firm was cool." Now, of course, everyone wants to do a startup.

How about investments that got away? "Warby Parker is a company that I would have loved to have been invested with early on," he said. "Kickstarter is certainly another one that I would have loved to get the chance to be invested with as well."

The gang as it once was (via Technology Review)

Venture capitalists have come down with a bout of  seriously itchy feet. Just this week, we heard Union Square Ventures was raising a new fund, we broke the news that Andy Weissman was leaving betaworks for UVS,  Polaris Venture Partners' Mike Hirshland announced he was leaving the Boston fund to launch a new seed firm, and today AllThingsD's Peter Kafka reports that Twitter will lose Fred Wilson (one of its earliest backers) and Bijan Sabet from its board by the end of the month.

According to Mr. Kafka's sources, "there's no bad blood behind the move." Over time, the board had swelled to include Flipboard’s Mike McCue, former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt and ubiquitous Valley Peter Currie along with Benchmark’s Peter Fenton and CEO Dick Costolo. In fact, the company will not be filling Mr. Wilson's and Mr. Sabet's soon-to-be empty seats. That leaves Twitter, which has seen a number of executive unrest over the years, a "little less unwieldy."

Both Mr. Wilson's fund, Union Square Ventures, and Mr. Sabet's fund, Spark Capital, have sold some of their holdings in Twitter, which is now valued at $8.4 billion, via the secondary market, but "continue to hold a majority of their stakes," reports Mr. Kafka.

Via Twitter, Fortune's Dan Primack proffered an explanation for their departure, tweeting, "twitter board shakeup reflected in who was offered cash-out on last VC round." According to Mr. Primack, while "no one cashed out entirely," only some investors, including USV and Spark were given the "option of cashing out," while others like Benchmark and Insight weren't. He says "the option was just to sell up to (approx.) 20% of stakes," although what percentage they exercised is still unknown.

Now offering classes in business ethics

In the same way that Kickstarter connects users with backers for their projects, SkillShare connects experts with students for their classes. The start-up just raised a $3.1 million in a Series A round of venture financing, led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, to extend its offerings. Previously the company raised a $550,000 round of seed funding from Founder Collective and SV Angel, among others.

Betabeat has been reporting on this funding for some time, but was too gun shy to publish without confirmation from the founders. Lesson learned.

The start-up is expanding quickly, opening offices in offices in San Francisco and Philadelphia, with hopes to expand to Boston, New Orleans, Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles by the end of the year.

The money comes at a time when many start-ups are rushing to close their financing or struggling to secure an A round. It's a nice chunk of change SkillShare can use to get to the next level.

To promote the service, investor Zach Klein is offering $1000 in free classes. Anyone can sign up and invoice him through Venmo (another service he invests in). It's a double plug, but a nice promotion.

In recent months Betabeat has covered the explosion of crowd funded platforms coming out of New York. Kickstarter has seen its the amount of money coming though its service accelerate rapidly. Quirky raised a big round and grew its user base significantly. SkillShare, who has some of the same investors, seems poised to ride the same wave.

Betabeat's feature this week on the cultish popularity of the 4 Hour Body diet among local technophiles name-checked a number of fitness products -- Fitbit, Withings Wi-Fi scales, and Daytum --that scratch the itch to both get healthier and quantify those efforts.

Mr. Huang things these things should have happened a long time ago:

"Healthcare from an innovation and VC perspective has always gotten short shrift compared to tech from both those in the know and the general public (for a myriad of reasons) despite healthcare/life sciences more than holding it’s own compared to tech venture investing in the past decade.  Regardless, no one can doubt that there is now a flurry of activity at this convergence of health and technology, from both start-ups and investors alike, as my partner and mentor at Spark Todd Dagres had correctly anticipated.  There are now healthcare specific incubators popping up (and rightly so) such as Rock Health in San Francisco and Blueprint Health in New York with the mission to help health & tech entrepreneurs grow their ideas into hopefully meaningful companies that will help transform healthcare. "

According to Mr. Huang, the recent increase in interest  is nothing compared to what we'll be seeing over the next five to ten years. That might be in part because of who's starting the companies

"Historically we’ve seen more healthcare natives (doctors, hospitals, etc.) doing the majority of innovating in this sector.  Now there is an influx of traditional tech or entertainment/design entrepreneurs tackling healthcare problems and launching start-ups."

Maybe one way to give healthcare IT more love would be finding the niche a better name. We could get pretty pumped up about fit-tech.

Mr. Haber.

DAVID HABER JOINS SPARK CAPITAL. "David has a interesting background, which included graduating from Harvard with a BioChem degree. Not a typical degree for a VC firm but we appreciated a different perspective and background than others at Spark," the firm says on its blog. Mr. Haber previously was a founding associate at Locus Analytics, which he started before he graduated. His new title is VC n00b.

IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE WE HAD A HACKATHON! Er, not really. But Game Hack Day is this weekend at General Assembly, sponsored by NYhacker, the "hacker union." "We've got a bunch of Arduinos, AR Drone-copters, great API demos (including open source game frameworks) and more," says co-organizer John Britton. It's expected to be as big as Music Hack Day, which produced no fewer than 72 demos.

Related, General Assembly co-founder and serious strategy gamer Brad Hargreaves is hosting a class Thursday on The Business of Gaming--check it out before you hack and you could have a start-up. Or, you can skip the entrepreneurship and get a job at OMGPOP, currently hiring for a game designer with "mad vision." Okay!

WHUFFIE HIRING; POSITION NOT COMPENSATED IN WHUFFIE. "In the novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom [by Cory Doctorow], usual economic incentives have disappeared: Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things." The non-profit start-up is based in Argentina and London, but apparently advertising a position in New York. "We are a team of 5 really talented folks (3 full-time and 2 contract), in the middle of Alpha, barreling towards Beta--and we need to build the team fast. Angel-backed." Interesante! Wonder if investor and Whuffie fan Vamsi Sistla is the angel? (Oops, that was rumor-y. We'll save it.)

IDEELI launched a travel vertical; WANDERFLY launched "a new business platform for our company through branded pages of curated content, called Wanderlists... [to] become the first travel website to offer curated suggestions from top lifestyle brands," and MEEBLEMAIL launched stationary for email, with a "library of stylish and unique email stationery designs."

BNTER retools design; profile pages "now highlight who you're closest to by graphing whom you're attributed with the most on Bnter." FITOCRACY adds Twitter and Facebook integration. NORTH BROOKLYN BREAKFAST CLUB on Friday, NYC STARTUP AND DIM SUM ENTHUSIASTS MEETUP Saturday.