Ram Shriram made a mint, invests in Mint

Ram Shriram is No. 271 on the Forbes Billionaires list. He's a veteran of Netscape and Amazon, and an investor in StumbleUpon and Google. He owes his place on the list to the latter, where, as an angel investor, he had more shares than anyone besides the company's founders at the time of its IPO. Now he acts as a "sherpa" to young companies, helping guide them to success. He also participated in financial-planning startup Mint's latest round of financing. Mint CEO Aaron Patzer shares a story about Shriram's investing habits after the jump. If you want this guy as your startup sherpa, take notes. More »

MerchantCircle provides a circle jerk for local businesses

The first rule of Valleywag: Never pitch Valleywag. But sometimes the temptation just proves too great. In response to a post about Google and Yelp's rivalry in local search, a MerchantCircle employee contacted us to tout the company's supposed leadership in the market, pitching the site for some Valleywag love. Well, here's some tough love. We've looked into MerchantCircle's business model .. and found nothing but self-love. More »

How funding works: So startups are abandoning venture capital. Why?

An insightful article on "startups on a shoestring" in the New York Times covers the rise of companies running on angel investors, loans, or even credit cards. It's a switch from the more famous method of raising piles of venture capital from a firm. But what does that mean? It means startup founders get to keep more of their money and power. More »

Heaven must be missing an...: These angel investors could fund your startup

Today in "Ask Valleywag," the advice column for Silicon Valley set, we help a startup kick up the funding a notch. Earlier this month, Valleywag reader Scott asked: More »

Yahoo angels buy into Etsy.com

Online boutique Etsy — think of it as a hipper eBay for handmades — would be just another dot-com, except for the familiarity of its funders. VC Fred Wilson names the Etsy angel investors: More »

Remainders: Win Maker Faire tickets from a squid

• Are you going to eat all that? No? GoDaddy will take it, thanks. [Monkey Bites]
• Bridge-selling for dummies, round one— [Newswire Today]
• And round two. [Inc.]
• Yahoo to go: Soon you can use Yahoo Instant Messenger anywhere — and message your three buddies who refuse to use AIM. [TechCrunch]
• The Onion on iTunes: How is this even fiction? [Onion]
• The Onion on MySpace: Too. Fucking. Funny. [Onion]
• Local event lister Laughing Squid is giving away tickets to this weekend's DYI tech event, the Maker Faire. [Laughing Squid]

Boom Ventures steals Sequoia Capital copy

A reader going by "Milk Coma" found some familiar passages at the site of Boom Ventures (the Stanford-spamming angel investor). From his page "The Entrepreneur": More »

Build an Angel Investor spam list in two minutes

Four steps to pitching your investment firm to any and all members of Stanford's computer science department: More »

Ron Conway, the angel flying a little too close to the sun

This angel investor's popping up on too many shoulders. Ron Conway, head of Angel Investors, L.P., has been passing his personal investment list — which apparently includes potential investments — to plenty of players in the tech sector. I haven't nabbed a copy yet, but a few too many people have; Ron lately got in trouble with a potential investee. More »

Open blinds: "Gimme a hand with this blog."

Which Valley blogger took funding on April 1? This deal's not sealed, but someone's angel investor has loose lips.