Gawker: valleywag, levensohn venture partners

While wantrepreneurs worry about a recession, it's a great time to be a VC

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:00:00 EDT

During an economic downturn, Scale Venture Partners' Sharon Wienbar explains to Sarah Lacy in this excerpt from a Yahoo Tech Ticker interview, "the strong get stronger, the weak get weaker, the strong buy the weak." Which means that while founding developers are off waiting for their $300 economic stimulus check and trying figuring out a way to make $.92 CPMs on ads on their Facebook apps, life is totally awesome right now for venture capitalists. Another VC, Pascal Levensohn, agrees: "The risk premium is coming back. This is a great time. It imposes discipline on entrepreneurs." In case you needed a translation, "discipline" is VCspeak for "getting ripped off."

Years after muscling out cofounders, Tom Chavez sells Rapt to Microsoft

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:20:11 EDT

Microsoft will acquire San Francisco-based Rapt, which helps publishers manage their ad inventory. VCs Kip Sheeline of Levensohn Venture Partners and Arthur Patterson of Accel Partners saw their firms cash out on the deal, along with cofounder and CEO Tom Chavez. But not without a little founder blood on their hands.

Back in 2006, Rapt cofounders Adam Galper and Paul Dagum sued Sheeline and Patterson's firms, accusing them and Chavez of unfairly bolstering their stakes in Rapt. But that's sometimes what happens when a startup needs four funding rounds. The parties settled 10 days later. We're hoping somebody remains bitter enough to tell us how much Microsoft paid.