It's not like the man has to start something new. His own news site, Breitbart.com, does huge traffic because it's where all of Drudge's wire report items link to. He also has a video site, and he worked on the launch of the now-successful Huffington Post (though he's since divested—he's a true conservative believer).

Breitbart works the afternoon shift at the Drudge Report. The two have remarkably seamless editorial styles, though some feel Breitbart has a lighter touch. More importantly, while Matt Drudge himself rarely speaks to the press or flits about in public settings, Breitbart is actually popular, and even a bit of a real-life schmoozer:

Before we left [a party at the Republican convention], the pundit Jonah Goldberg accused him of being the most popular guy in the room.

At the National Journal party, publisher David Bradley was delighted to finally put a face to the name. “That’s Andrew Breitbart?” he exclaimed. Walking into the Weekly Standard party, a friend from L.A. greeted him. “Have you had a chance to take a shower yet?” joked Steve McEveety, who is Mel Gibson’s producing partner.

Okay big shot! Breitbart is truly Dr. Jekyll to Drudge's Mr. Hyde. And a good man to know. We plan to get a good deal of comedy value out of his new venture.

[NYO]

On the one hand, a childhood pal — Russell's mom was reportedly best friends with Levy's mom — can do far worse than guiding one to tens of millions of dollars in wealth. And Pilot Group did more than passively watch its investment grow. From what we hear, Pittman's salesmanship was key to growing Daily Candy's advertising base. Such involvement would be in keeping with Pilot Group's focus on taking a "control position" in its investments. After the investment firm acquired Daily Candy, the newsletter's subscriber count grew tenfold to 2.5 million.

But not everyone buys that version of events. Said the tipster, an AOL veteran who followed Daily Candy closely:

For Pittman to brag that subscribers have increased since he made

the investment is just private equity puffery and delusion. That

would be like my grandmother taking credit for the business success of

the stocks she owns.

Perhaps Russell's help was not so selfless. As our source notes, Russell's advice on the deal would have been "highly conflicted," Russell having worked for Pittman for several months before the Daily Candy investment closed in late 2003.

His line to other potential portfolio

companies and strategic partners is that through his friendship with

Dany, HE was responsible for the early success of Daily Candy as a

startup, so he didn't feel compunction about duping the original

shareholders... Whatever the case, Pittman was not a genius to have his

junior guy abuse a family friendship in a predatory deal.

Let this be a lesson to startup founders who are not yet sufficiently cautions about venture capital investment, or who spend too much time worrying about whether their fameball girlfriends really truly love them for the right reasons: If you're not careful, you might have to settle for a paltry $25 mil when the big payday comes. After taxes, you'll barely be able to afford a decent loft!

[It's a] community service site with videos of athletic women like Jackie Joyner-Kersee or Florence Griffith Joyner. But it is also a technology site. It was one of the very first sites with high-definition video being distributed on the Internet. As people used that site, we saw how well it ran on different machines. We looked at the algorithms. WOA TV was a complete test bed for us and a cool site for something that wasn't covered enough, like women in sports.

Most heterosexual men would just troll YouTube for clips of sporty women. Perlman? He started an entire company around the concept of female bodies in motion, and developed an elaborate creation myth for it. If he can persuade the likes of Takahashi that his collection of videos of women running in spandex is a massive technological step forward as well as a politically correct celebration of female athleticism, he can sell anything to anyone.

Entrepreneurs, like everybody else, hate uncontrollable risks, but on the other hand, they're overconfident in their own abilities — they think they can control their abilities in a random drawing of people. It's like the Lake Wobegon effect in assessing their position among peers. They think they're above the average.

Basically, entrepreneurs are irrationally arrogant. Really. They're not risk-takers, they just think they're better than you. And then they make enough money that they ARE better than you.

Hate your boss yet?

Ego Makes Entrepreneurs? [BusinessWeek]