Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | yesterday
Hi5 launched its developer platform at the end of March, opening up access to its 80m+ registered users. It is a top 20 traffic site globally, although not as popular in the US. Unlike other platforms, Hi5 does not publish a ranked application directory, so it has been hard to get real data on how [...]
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 05/15/2008
Gamasutra summarizes a panel discussion at ION today about designing games with gold farmers in mind. I recently noted some of the challenges of dealing with in game inflation when designing games. This panel deals with some other game design challenges when you have a virtual economy: On the topic of the need to plan an [...]
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 05/13/2008
Last week I mentioned that I’m speaking at Interplay Con on May 22nd. Another great conference focused on social games is the Social Gaming Summit on June 13th, also in San Francisco. Lightspeed is the Platinum sponsor of this conference and we have been working closely with Charles Hudson and David Sachs to organize the [...]
Paidcontent (Free subscription) | 05/13/2008
Greentech Media , the online environmental news and research outfit, has raised $2.75 million in a second round funding. New backers Egora Holding and The Massachusetts Green Energy Fund co-led the round. Previous investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Northport Private Equity also participated, along with another new backer, King Hill Capital. Cambridge, MA.-based Greentech...
VC Ratings (Free subscription) | 05/12/2008
Early-stage venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners on Monday announced the final closing of its eighth fund with $800 million for information technology and cleantech investments. The Menlo Park, Calif., firm...
bizjournals (Free subscription) | 05/12/2008
Lightspeed Venture Partners said Monday it has the closed funding of Lightspeed Venture Partners VIII L.P. with $800 million of limited partner commitments, above the firm's target of $675 million.
EE Times (Free subscription) | 05/12/2008
Lightspeed Venture Partners (Menlo Park, Calif.) has said it has closed Lightspeed Venture Partners VIII LP capitalized with $800 million of limited partner commitments, above the firm's target of $675 million.
VentureBeat (Free subscription) | 05/12/2008
While there have been reports of some venture firms having difficulty raising new funds, top firms seem to still be getting money with ease. In the past month we’ve seen Foundation Capital take $750 million, Kleiner Perkins grab $700 million, plus its $500 million “Green Growth” fund, and now Lightspeed Venture Partners is announcing its [...]
BrandFaqs: The Brand Blog (Free subscription) | 05/12/2008
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a leading global venture capital firm, announced today the closing of Lightspeed Venture Partners VIII, L.P. capitalized with $800 million of limited partner commitments, above the firm's target of $675 million. This closing brings Lightspeed's base of committed capital to over $2 billion. "We are pleased by the strong response from our limited partners," said Barry Eggers,...
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 05/12/2008
The WSJ had an interesting article last week about how some consumer electronics companies were working to reduce return rates: The U.S. electronics industry last year spent about $13.8 billion to re-box, restock and resell returned products, according to a study by technology consultant Accenture Ltd. Especially galling to manufacturers is that many returns are preventable: [...]
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 05/09/2008
Bret Terrill has an interesting post using Compete stats to look at the effectiveness of the Zynga and SGN game networks in cross promoting traffic through their game bars that is worth a read.
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 05/08/2008
Reader of this blog will know that I have a high degree of interest in Social Games. There are a couple of social gaming conferences coming up in the next couple of months. The first is Interplay which is being held on May 22nd at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco. It specifically is focused [...]
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 05/07/2008
Siqi Chen, CEO of Serious Business (publisher of the Friends for Sale game), pointed me to an excellent white paper on the money supply impacts on an online economy recently. It notes that in most games, players control the rate at which new cash is introduced into the economy. To avoid hyper-inflation, it recommends four [...]
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 05/05/2008
iPhone users browse the web on their phones far more than the users of other phones. According to the NY Times, over Christmas 2007, Google got more traffic from iPhones than from any other type of phone, despite the iPhone’s small market share: The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just [...]
Inside Facebook (Free subscription) | 04/30/2008
Recently, I spoke with Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners about the future of gaming on social networks. Jeremy has been writing frequently about social games on his blog and recently moderated a panel on the topic at Web 2.0 Expo. During our conversation, Jeremy brought up some important points regarding the way the core mechanics [...]
