(Photo: The Spectacle Blog)

What is it with eccentric billionaires? Today Yuri Milner announced that he'd decided to create his very own Nobel prize, but that news pales in comparison to what Australian businessman Clive Palmer is planning. The outlandish executive, who seems to be somewhat of a favored fixture in Australian gossip rags, is rumored to be working on a new Jurassic Park-themed adventure for his already pretty exotic vacation compound, Palmer Coolum Resort.

And of course, what Jurassic Park experience would be complete without an actual living, breathing dinosaur that hasn't existed for millions of years? If you can't have your own T-Rex, why even open the damn place?

According to Sunshine Coast Daily:

The controversial billionaire is rumoured to be planning to clone a dinosaur from DNA so he can set it free in a Jurassic Park-style area at his new Palmer Resort in Coolum.

Mr Palmer has, apparently, been in deep discussion with the people who successfully cloned Dolly the sheep to bring his dinosaur vision to life.

Apparently Mr. Palmer has already brought the Titanic experience to life at the resort, though it does not involve clinging to floating wood in sub-zero water and praying not to freeze or drown to death. Actually, it's a culinary journey where a chef "lovingly recreates" the same meal served on the Titanic. Perhaps Mr. Palmer thinks death by iceberg makes a nice aperitif?

As for the dinosaur, we remain skeptical. Maybe we should stick to practicing with a wooly mammoth first.

Mr. Milner. (Photo: Wikipedia/Debray Riveros)

It's a question as old as semiconductors: Once you've racked up a couple of billion dollars investing in the tech sector, what are you to do with all that cash? Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner--who's made himself quite a nice little nest egg betting on companies like Facebook and Groupon--has a somewhat novel answer. The New York Times reports that he's founded his very own Nobel Prize.

The Fundamental Physics Prize will dole out $3 million each to worthy, boundary-pushing thinkers. No experimental proof required, says Mr. Milner:

Sometimes a radical new idea “really deserves recognition right away because it expands our understanding of at least what is possible,” Mr. Milner said.

The Times says that the new prize is the academic world's most lucrative. The Nobel Prize is $1.2 million and usually split; MacArthur Genius Grants are a mere $500,000, doled out in quarterly increments.

One of the winners, MIT professor Alan Guth, told the Times, "It knocked me off my feet." Coming into a small fortune after a lifetime in academia will do that to you, even if you're the kind of person who spends his days contemplating "cosmic inflation," or the rapid post big-bang expansion in the universe. The Times adds:

The $3 million has already appeared in Dr. Guth’s bank account, one that had had a balance of $200. “Suddenly, it said, $3,000,200,” he said. “The bank charged a $12 wire transfer fee, but that was easily affordable.”

Mr. Milner's idea isn't entirely out of the blue, and in fact this kind of investment is very much in vogue. Look at Elon Musk betting the farm on Tesla Motors and Space X, or reread the rockets-and-immortality mission statement of Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund. Closer to Mr. Milner's home territory, there's the example of Dmitry Grishin, a.k.a. the "Russian Mark Zuckerberg," who's put $25 million into a new venture devoted to investing in robotics.

And lest anyone snicker at the sheer new-money swagger of Mr. Milner's move, let's remember that once upon a time Alfred Nobel was just the dude who invented dynamite.

(Photo: www.successstories.co.in/)

Some may tsk-tsk the "learn to code" meme, but that hasn't deterred New York-based Codecademy from sticking to its vision of teaching all of us to code. Today, cofounder Zach Sims announced on the company blog that the startup has raised $10M in series B funding from VC firms Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures, as well as angel investors Yuri Milner and Richard Branson.

Folding London-based Index Ventures into its investor portfolio has a lot to do with Codecademy's future plans. Mr. Sims said that Codecademy is a "global movement," and that the company is looking towards international expansion, having already hired people from countries like Jordan and Finland. "We want anyone, anywhere to have access to an education that can change their lives," wrote Mr. Sims.

Mr. Grishin, holding court at Dean & Deluca

Last week, Betabeat met 33-year-old Dmitry Grishin, the so-called "Russian Mark Zuckerberg," to talk about robots. Or more specifically, to talk about the $25 million investment Mr. Grishin just made to launch Grishin Robotics, a global investment firm--based in New York City!--with the goal of bringing personal robots into every household in the world.

Mr. Grishin is the CEO of Mail.ru, one of the largest Internet companies in Russia, offering services like email, instant messaging, and social networking. After going public on the London Stock Exchange in 2010, Mail.ru currently has a market cap of $7 billion. Mail.ru also happens to have sold a hefty chunk of its Facebook stock in the company's recent IPO, which might explain why Mr. Grishin decided the time was right to pursue his dream. "I have personal passion for robotics," Mr. Grishin, a graduate of Moscow State Technical University's Robotics and Complex Automation program. "I really believe this is a cool, cool area."

As it happens, talking to Mr. Grishin was not our first conversation about the impending robot revolution in recent weeks.

Between Nick Paumgarten's opus about the rise of drones in The New Yorker and The Economist's cover story about the ethics of our metal overlords, which Mr. Grishin yanked out of his briefcase, the discussion about robots in everyday life has taken a sharp turn, of late, from science fiction into the domestic sphere. Just as SpaceX founder Elon Musk decided not to wait around for NASA, it looks like this burgeoning field might be led by private investors who made their fortune in the Internet boom and now want to think bigger.

The robotics industry has been around for 40 years, said Mr. Grishin, but recently a number of technological innovations have significantly reduced the cost of production. It used to cost anywhere from hundreds of thousands to a $1 million to manufacture your average robot, he said. But progress in smartphones and even electric cars has driven down the price of wireless technology, cameras, processors, memory, and batteries. "Do you know Microsoft Kinect device?" asked Mr. Grishin. "It’s a very cheap scanner and this is very useful in robotics and now it costs only $150."

So what do we mean when we talk about personal robots? Anything from robotic cars to telepresence robots that can, say, help a CEO monitor her employees from every angle. "If you just put camera in one direction, one person will show a lot of activities, but the others will be drinking or doing nothing," Mr. Grishin speculated, adding, "I personally believe [in] anything related to drones." He described flying quadcopters with attached cameras. "It’s just my idea," he said, but drones could used to help negotiate traffic or parking--flying ahead of the user to show potential traffic jams or hovering behind to help you figure out how much space you had before you hit the curb.

Mr. Grishin said he launched Grishin Robotics in New York City because of its proximity to robotics hubs in Boston (MIT) and Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon) as well as its connections to capital markets. "There is no clear leader in robotics right now," he said, pointing to innovation hubs in Europe as well as South Korea, where corporations like Samsung and government funding in robotics could give it an early edge. "You know Roomba?" he asked us. "It’s from [an American] company called iRobot, but there’s a lot of South Korean companies who want to replicate the idea." Soon, we might see 1o to 20 robotic vacuum cleaning devices on the market.

The biggest issue the industry faces is lack of capital, said Mr. Grishin. "Most of the VCs are focused on mobile applications, but you really need risk capital to improve this area. I want to focus fully on mass market robotics. And I definitely believe this is next huge big industry," he said. In contrast, the Internet startups don't actually require that much capital to get to market. "It looks like California," he said, making the gesture of panning for gold. "I’m not saying this is [a] bubble, I’m just saying everybody’s there."

Thus for decades, innovation has been limited to software, Internet, and PCs, he said. "Nothing happened in terms of space, in terms of airplanes, cars, nothing really. I believe you need to bring this kind of innovation to the offline world."

That means lending robotics the same emphasis on user-experience, customers, and iteration. "Small teams. Quick, quick time to the market," said Mr. Grishin. "Because now you have five to 10 years to develop the technology and then five to 10 years to go to the market, which will never work."

In terms of taking care of aging populations in Europe and Japan or saving lives in combat, he said, robots could be a huge help. "I don't know about New York, but in Moscow, it’s very difficult to find people to clean the street," said Mr. Grishin. "And you can get robotics to do this and lot of other stuff."

What about the inherent dangers of unmanned cars or military drones? The same fears attended innovation in air travel or even the Internet, argued Mr. Grishin. "It’s an interesting topic. For example, robotic cars, they’re already allowed in Nevada," he said. "Any innovation brings a lot of good stuff and sometimes bad stuff. You need to count on regulators." Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, should be focused on the right implementations of the technology.

Grishin Robotics already has an office on 34th Street and small staff. Mr. Grishin wasn't yet ready to divulge names, but he did say he had two American employees and one Russian staff member. His main focus will still be on Mail.ru. "I will just give my money and passion and review investments."

If Mail.ru sounds familiar to American audiences, perhaps it's because that's where Russian billionaire Yuri Milner started his career. The Mail.ru Group was affiliated with Digital Sky Technologies, Mr. Milner's global investment firm with stakes in Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon. In fact, Mr. Grishin was once Mr. Milner's CTO.

Mr. Grishin, who described Mr. Milner as a friend, added that he has several offers from people want to invest in Grishin Robotics, but for now he's limiting investment to his personal funds. He also eschewed the term "venture capital," preferring "investment firm" instead. "[VCs] have a limited time of investment and this is very bad for robotics and new generations. You need to be committed for [the] long-term," he said.

Grishin Robotics will invest its "initial" $25 million in 10 to 20 early stage or mid-stage companies that already have a prototype and need money to get to the mass market, Mr. Grishin explained.

Despite our repeated attempts to get Mr. Grishin's take on the Terminator franchise or Battlestar Galatica, his vision remained firmly planted in the real world. "I like movies," he said. "I believe that dreams are very good, very motivating. But now you can make dreams come true and it's very important to find good applications for robotics. The technology is already ready."

via Wikimedia

Nobody does nouveau-riche quite like a Russian oligarch. But Alisher Usmanov, the richest man in Russia, might have perfected the form. Although most of the press around Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the valuation-happy venture capital firm, focuses on founder Yuri Milner, Bloomberg reported earlier this year that Mr. Usmanov actually owns an 80 percent stake in the firm. That means that when DST sold Facebook shares worth about $1.7 billion during the company's IPO, about $1.4 billion of that went to Mr. Usmanov.

And the man hasn't wasted any time making it rain. In the days since the IPO, Mr. Usmanov, who first made his fortune in mining and metals, has purchased the biggest private jet in Russia, a wide-body Airbus A340-300. Putting Putin to shame, apparently.

The A340 has a range of as far as 9,000 miles and can seat as many as 375 people, according to the website of the manufacturer, Toulouse, France-based Airbus SAS. The plane’s 2001 catalog price was $238 million, though the final cost could swell to $350 million or even $500 million depending on how it’s decorated and outfitted, said Oleg Panteleyev, an editor at Aviaport.ru, a website that tracks the aviation industry.

“It’s definitely the largest business jet in Russia and maybe even the largest in Europe,” Panteleyev said by phone from Moscow today. Billionaire Roman Abramovich has a Boeing 767 and President Vladimir Putin uses a Russian-made Ilyushin Il-96, both of which are smaller than the A340, he said.

The jet will be named Bourkhan, after Mr. Usmanov's father. But that's not the only big ticket item purchased with a nod to filial piety. A local paper also reports that Mr. Usmanov has commissioned a $100 million yacht. That one will be named after his mother, Dilbar.

Perhaps a ride on Mr. Usmanov's new vehicles will be enough to convince his fellow Muscovites that tech stocks can pay off--even with an underperforming IPO.

DrChrono with Y Combinator founder Paul Graham. From left to right: Michael Nusimow, Mr. Graham, Katelyn Gleason and Daniel Kivatinos.

Drchrono, the company that is working to get more doctors using easy tools on the iPad and in the cloud, just announced a $2.8 million round of funding led by Yuri Milner. The Russian tech mogul must really like these guys! Mr. Milner invested just over $1.2 million in Drchrono's seed rounds back in July and August; now he's recruited Google's search guru Matt Cutts as an investor. Betabeat interviewed Drchrono's Daniel Kivatinos back in May, while the company was stilling finishing up the Y Combinator program. "Investors in Silicon Valley are the best you can find. If they see amazing ideas, they will move fast to cultivate that idea but invest if they can," he told us at the time. Drchrono makes iPad apps for doctors to handle things like billing and patient check-in.

Nick Ganju (left, co-founder & CTO), Cyrus Massoumi (back center, co-founder & CEO), Oliver Kharraz, MD (right, co-founder & COO) and Netta Samroengraja (front center, CFO).

ZocDoc just announced a surprise extra $25 million on top of the $50 million the startup recently raised from Yuri Milner and DST, and the money came from high places--Goldman Sachs is investing directly in ZocDoc. That is to say, not through Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and not through Goldman's Principal Investment Area, but with money off its own balance sheets, ZocDoc CEO Cyrus Massoumi told Betabeat.

One of ZocDoc's first angel investors works at Goldman Sachs in a "unique position," Mr. Massoumi said. Goldman also manages some of ZocDoc's finances, and can be expected to handle or at least advise them on any acquisitions ZocDoc might make in the future. Plus ZocDoc's executives have personal friends at the firm, Mr. Massoumi said. (He and co-founder Dr. Oliver Kharraz used to be closer to that world--the two previously worked at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and continued to wear suits and ties after starting ZocDoc until a friend told them they looked too much "like consultants" to be entrepreneurs, which prompted them to hit the Gap.)

"We're just really excited," he said. "There is not a large healthcare institution domestically, perhaps internationally, that does not have a relationship with Goldman Sachs."

Talks with Goldman started a few weeks ago, in a "mutual conversation," after the DST investment, Mr. Massoumi said.

Often when a private equity firm or investment bank gets involved with a tech startup, the expectation is that an IPO is around the corner. ZocDoc is expanding fast and hard, recently launching in Boston, where the average wait time to see a doctor is 50 days.

ZocDoc wants to spend its Series C funding on reaching all 51 U.S. markets, Mr. Massoumi said. 'It's important to us that we keep the promise that we've made and make sure that ZocDoc is accessible in as many places around the country as possible, as quickly as possible."

But wouldn't an IPO to raise a quick pile of cash help with that?

"It's not something we're really thinking about," he said. "I would not expect that from us. We're not planning to go public any time soon."

And why not?

"We don't have to," Mr. Massoumi said.

So $75 million is enough?

"I thought $50 million was going to be enough," he said.

Betabeat happened to ask the IPO question of Mr. Massoumi's co-founder, Oliver Kharraz, who kept the secret of the Goldman funding impeccably under his hat when we visited ZocDoc's office last week. Dr. Kharraz said the same thing--ZocDoc isn't thinking of an IPO, the founders aren't thinking of an exit.

This partnership struck Betabeat as having several additional advantages:

-Goldman's early investment puts it in a good position to eventually underwrite the company's IPO
-the partnership with Goldman could gives ZocDoc's early investors some options for liquidating their stakes, while allowing ZocDoc's executives to have some control over how and when that happens
-optics! Goldman hardly invests in tech startups, and rarely at such paltry levels. The last company we recall getting a Goldman investment was ... Facebook. And remember who co-invested in that deal?

ZocDoc earns $250 a month for every doctor in the system (which is why it keeps the number of doctors closely guaded). TechCrunch reported that ZocDoc, which has raised a total of $95 million to date, was valued at $700 million before the DST investment.

There's a method to their madness. Image via TechCocktail

TechStars will now offer every accepted company a $100,000 convertible note.The money will come from a new $24 million fund backed by Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, TechStars Alumni, and several individuals investors.

This $100,000 convertible note becomes equity during later funding rounds. It comes from a separate pool of capital than the $18,000 which startups must accept in return for 6% equity when they agree to join the TechStars program.

"During our last program two or three of our strongest companies were a month away from being out of business. They needed to go raise $50,000-100,000 in the middle of the program and that’s a massive distraction," said Mr. Tisch.

This funding can help a team make a critical hire or, if they're in New York, afford an apartment and avoid sleeping on their desk. "We think it's the right size to help the focus during the program but not throw their valuation out of whack for later rounds," TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen told Betabeat.

Startups don't have to take the funding, and can decide to accept at any point during the program. Unlike the previous funding, which came from local capital specific to each TechStars city, this funding will connect the startups with a national network.

TechStars is currently in Boston, Boulder, New York and Seattle, plus affiliated programs that have popped up in over twenty locations, with seven international satellites. "Y Combinator started the year before us, and it's the same genre, but under the microscope, we could not be more different," said Mr. Cohen. "The fundamental difference between us and the other accelerator programs is they have a black box, while we have open sourced our model."

Image via TechCocktail

Ready for some e-book learnin'?

When Betabeat first visited General Assembly a few weeks before it opened, co-founder Adam Pritzker told us that the vision was to create an educational space free from the pressures of venture capital so often tied into startup incubators and accelerators.

That has all changed now. Howard Schultz's Maveron fund led the round, snagging Yuri Milner's DST Global and Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions as investors in General Assembly. Alexis Ohanian, Hosain Rahman, and Alex Asseily are also in the round. The new money will allow GA to expand far quicker than they could relying on a $200,000 grant from the city, dues from members and freebies from sponsors like Rackspace and Skype.

General Assembly is reportedly eying global expansion, especially through online offerings of its classes and event series. DST and Amazon certainly have the chops to help GA hit global scale. Perhaps the city should rethink the cost benefit of attracting a major engineering school to New York when our home-grown campus is poised to become a worldwide classroom.

The critical component missing from the Fortune story is how much money GA received in this funding round and what the terms are. Brad Hargreaves revealed that the funding totals $4.5 million and that some of the money will be used for expansion to another retail space in Manhattan and a campus in London.

DST is already offering $150,000 to every company that goes through Y Combinator and one would assume startups accepted into GA may now have a similar option. Perhaps the dealflow is explicit, like Startfund, or perhaps implicit, via the goodwill that comes through funding. However, Mr. Ohanian, a YC grad, said GA is dreaming bigger. "Not looking to make a YC competitor at all, though. The GA vision is much bigger than a tech accelerator," he said in an email.

GA seems to have its eyes on virtual education as a source of future revenue. As Mr. Hargreaves wrote, "When we launched our first certification program—Front-end Web Development—a few weeks ago, we received over 100 applications for only fifteen available spots. Demand for this kind of education has clearly outstripped supply. And we want to answer the call....So will we open a bunch more campuses? Put all our classes online? Start training executives? We don’t know. Right now we’re singularly focused on continuing to create a great, meaningful experience at our New York campus. That said, we see the bigger picture: there is immense demand for social, application-driven education in technology, design, and entrepreneurship, and we’re committed to addressing this real need."

The Drchrono team with Y Combinator's Paul Graham.

New York born, Y Combinator-bred Drchrono, a tablet app for doctors, just added another big name investor to its cap table. Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has invested $650,000.

As Adrianne Jeffries wrote about Drchrono when they raised $675,000 back in July:

Drchrono started in New York almost three years ago with the goal of bringing the same principles of good design that rule companies like Square and Mint to electronic medical records. After a stint in the Rose Tech Ventures incubator, founders Daniel Kivatinos and Michael Nusimow skipped coasts to join Y Combinator. “The alumni of YC is a really powerful network,” Mr. Kivatinos told Betabeat in May, and right he was: The start-up just raised a $675,000 seed round from a dazzling line-up of investors including General Catalyst, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, Gmail creator and FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, Google’s Principal Engineer Matt Cutts, and the Start Fund (made up of investments from Yuri Milner and SV Angel).

Mr. Milner must have liked what he was seeing, because he went back in for a double dip out of his personal account. Drchrono hopes to make an iPad as standard issue in a doctor's waiting room a beat up clipboard and germ ridden copy of last August's Cosmo.