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By Adrianne Jeffries 2/17 5:58pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: Kerfuffles Edition

FROM RUSSIA WITH CAPITAL. Once upon a time Betabeat reported that RTP Ventures, the $750 $700 million Russia-based fund, was establishing a U.S. office with venture capitalist Kirill Sheynkman based in New York. Less than five months later, sources say the fund will no longer be a one-man show. If all goes according to plan, RTP will be bringing on two splashy-name hires in the next month to six weeks, we’re told.

GO IPO YOURSELF. A young coworker in our newsroom has quit Facebook, she says, because she doesn’t want the company and its shareholders making bank off her data in an IPO. And she’s not the only one! When she told a friend, the friend said she’d done the same thing for the same reason. Just one more and it makes a trend! Meanwhile, that high school senior who wrote a florid New York Post editorial which said, among other things, that “Lost in the hype of the company’s stock-market debut this year is that while Facebook is ubiquitous, it may also be a fad,” merely quit because the site was making him feel bad. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 2/03 6:03pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: Rushed Edition

BETAWORKS. Has a new filing with the SEC indicating $7.8 million of a $15 million offering in options and warrants raised. Does this have to do with Betaworks’s evolution from a fund/incubator into “a true company, not a fund,” as per John Borthwick’s recent letter to investors? The filing indicates a reinvestment of money paid out to investors in dividends, John Borthwick said, so the filing doesn’t represent a new round; and the amount being reinvested is actually closer to $10 million.

STEALTH TOWN. What is fiftythree.com? Sources say a local VC is leading their round. The web offers no clues, their Twitter page doesn’t work, and we haven’t received an email from their stealthy splash page. Things that are 53: a bank and savings and loan holding company, the We Are the 53 percent meme, and the Year of the Consulship of Silanus and Antonius. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 1/13 7:22pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: When Embargoes Break

ALL THE VERTICALS. BuzzFeed is staffing up. Yeah. We know. They have $15.5 million. We know. The site launched its already highly scoopy 2012 vertical alongside the already-popular “cute” and “LOL” verticals, with reporters covering the presidential campaign with the vigor of a dedicated cat blogger; we know. Now it’s time to conquer the internet by rapidly adding “verticals” (as they’re called!) and editor-in-chief Ben Smith is already thinking of where to boldly go next. We heard from a potential poach-ee that the next section will be… tech! We asked Mr. Smith today if this was true. “I don’t want to say,” he said, shaking his head, but acknowledged that the next vertical isn’t far off. Maybe it’s divorce… Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 12/16/11 4:49pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: Reactions to Stanford Dropping Out of the Race

Stanford totally dissed New York City today by dropping its bid to build a tech campus on Roosevelt Island. What happened to all the lovey-dovey intercoastal necking that was so irritating to local contenders for the project? The city repeatedly highlighted the bid from the prestigious Stanford in speeches and press releases. But did Bloomie then say Stanford was “desperate” to build a campus in New York, during a talk at MIT? The negotiations fell apart suddenly; Stanford’s delegation was in New York and reportedly negotiating as late as yesterday. An announcement by Stanford took its competitors by surprise. Even the city did not have a statement ready, suggesting perhaps even they didn’t know. All signs point to: the city dropped the ball.

Fred Wilson was pleased; but what did the Twittersphere think? Turns out, most were sad to see Stanford go. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 12/02/11 5:26pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: Fear of Facebook

FACEBOOK FEVER. Facebook is opening an engineering office in New York. ”For us this isn’t a satellite office, this is going to be a core part of our engineering stack,” said a company exec today. So how does the still-nascent New York tech scene feel about the arrival of such a giant?

“I mean, Google is freakin’ massive, and they’ve almost had no effect on the community,” Hacker Union head and 10gen engineer Brandon Diamond told us by Gchat. “They’re trying to get out there, but they seem to be awful insular. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook is the same way… it will probably help more than it hurts. Fb obviously isn’t banking on the ‘tremendous number of hackers living in NYC.’ Instead, I think they believe they’ll be able to woo many new hackers with the added bonus of being in a cool city. It’s a boon.”

As to whether the new office will lure back some of the talent Facebook poached in the form of Drop.io, Hot Potato, Daytum and Mail Rank, but survey says no. “I don’t suspect? Highly doubt it, actually,” says a source, regarding the Hot Potatoes. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 11/18/11 5:32pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: An Address to the General Assembly

INSIDE VOICES. Someone has complained about General Assembly members making noise in the elevator! An email went out to coworking residents this afternoon, subject: “Courtesy to our neighbors in 902,” from cofounder Matthew Brimer, which a resident forwarded to Betabeat:

Hey Folks,
We’ve been getting a number of complaints from other tenants in the building regarding inappropriate language and behavior of some members of our community. We were sad to hear it.

Keep in mind that we share 902 Broadway with hundreds of other working professionals, so please be mindful of this and make an extra effort to be polite and courteous when in the elevators and lobby.

On a related note — we have access to the building’s freight elevator (accessible on 21st between Broadway and Park), which is oftentimes a faster and less crowded means of getting to and from the 4th floor. Feel free to use it during daytime hours.

Thanks,
The GA Team

Bummerzone! But Betabeat reached out to three GA residents, none of whom had any idea what the email was in reference to. “I’m surprised by it,” said one resident. “I’ve never noticed untoward behavior in common building areas or even in GA really.” He added, referring to the Canadian record label that has an office in the building: “I bet it was actually Nickelback and they’re just trying to pin it on GA.” Another resident was just as stumped. “I was confused too,” he said. “Have no idea.” And three makes a trend: “I’m sure just some old lady complained,” said a former resident. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 11/11/11 5:40pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: Poach Motel and More @FakeDaveTisch Guesses

POACHER KING. In the course of researching a story about poaching etiquette—o, the ham-fisted ways of recruiters with unlimited InMail!—Betabeat learned of a notoriously aggressive recruiter who is a known poacher. “It is an individual male who has his name in the title of his company, it’s a very small company more prevalent in New York,” a source told us. Guesses, Betabeasties? Perhaps Dave Carvajal of Dave Partners, or Paul Daversa from Daversa Partners: “Daversa Partners is exceptional at the three things that drive legendary search work: we partner with the companies that dominate the market; we consistently capture the attention of game changing executives; and we close the unrecruitable candidates.” Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 11/04/11 5:12pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: Fake Twitter Edition

WHO FAKED A TISCH? Betabeat was considering “The Real Dave Tisch” as a headline for this week’s profile, among other puns and permutations (a friend of Mr. Tisch’s submitted ”a Tisch named Wanda” via Mr. Tisch–makes no sense, looooooove it). So today we started wondering: who is @fakedavetisch, the occasionally-harsh but very funny parody Twitter account? We started poking around–but the secret is being held close to the vest. “Dave Tisch????” suggested one local VC. “Just joking.” We know it’s not the Tischster–he didn’t know who was behind the account himself until after the most recent demo day–but he did give us some clues. It’s three people: two employees of VC firms, one entrepreneur; two are female, one is male. One moved out to San Francisco. Hmm…

Phineas Barnes: The VC’s tweets are stylistically similar, and @fakedavetisch tweeted to his #todayskicks app. “But pretty sure Phineas doesn’t have a mean bone in his body,” one VC countered.

Caren Maio: We got a tip that the Nestio CEO and TechStar could be the brilliant mind behind the snark. “Haha no, I’m not…but please let me know when you find out! I’ve been trying to figure it out for months,” she told Betabeat in an email.

Phoebe Espiritu: The hackstar doth protest too much, wethinks… “Nooo keep @fakedavetisch‘s identity secret! It would be like unmasking Batman!” she tweeted. Sounds like something @fakedavetisch would say, we countered. “No! I wish! otherwise I’d give myself hugs and hoodies all the time!” she said.

Sarah Tavel: The Bessemer VC just moved out to S.F. One source said she’s too much of a straight shooter; another claimed she “wasn’t around for TechStars.” But we’re not so sure… Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 10/28/11 6:01pm

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Rumors & Acquisitions: Foursquare Vs. ZocDoc! Groundlink Vs. Uber! And Pinterest Vs. America

THIS TOWN AIN’T BIG ENOUGH! Guys, startup office space in New York is hard to find, and Betabeat is ON IT. Okay, so you remember how Foursquare and Tumblr both had their eyes on the tenth and eleventh floors of that sweet Soho elevator building at 568 Broadway where Thrillist, ZocDoc and Dennis Leary’s production company, Apostle are housed? Okay, so Foursquare was the favorite–but there may be a new contender.

Betabeat has learned that ZocDoc has been in the market for new space–60,000 square feet, ideally on one floor–for a move at the end of 2012. There’s not much out there that meets that criteria. Wouldn’t it be nice to take the tenth floor at 568 Broadway, directly above the teal-painted ninth floor? That way they wouldn’t have to say goodbye to that conference room with the mural of Sanjay Gupta high-fiving Dr. House! ZocDoc would probably really like it if Foursquare would only take one floor, which is more than three times the size of Foursquare’s current office, so that ZocDoc could take the other.

But both companies are growing like gangbusters–ZocDoc already expanded in March and then again in October, Foursquare is the hottest startup job in the city–and have to look out for expansion down the road. What’s a big startup in a small town to do?*

VERY PINTERESTING. Betabeat, when we first glimpsed the Silicon Alley darling Pinterest for ourselves: “It’s for girls!” Apparently, it’s also for middle America. Pinterest’s biggest market is Utah, we heard, and it’s gaining steam with users in other middle-America states, contrary to the usual outside-in adoption pattern most startups see.

Betabeat mentioned to a source that many peeps using Pinterest in New York, who responded. “Don’t people just use Svpply?” Do they? We don’t see too many peeps using Svpply either. One thing we do see peeps using is Tumblr–although we’ve documented that startup’s other problems on the business and developer relations fronts. Could Pinterest–which picked up New York angel Brian Cohen as an investor after taking the NYU Stern business plan competition by storm–be on the way to taking down two New York startups in one fell swoop? Read More