Techcrunch: Paul Kedrosky: Why I Love Venture Capitalists
Posted by on under venture capitalists, angel investors, failure rates, paul kedrosky, quacks, founders, investments, targets, jobs, commercial bankers | 
Hating venture capitalists is profoundly satisfying. After all, they are slack-jawed, monied, oily, know-nothings who carom off innovation, fire capable founders, squash angel investors, and exist mostly to make commercial bankers look smart and interesting. Or at least that’s the story we like to tell. By “we," of course, I mean all of us who lovingly poke venture capitalists in the eye with sticks now and then. They are such easy targets, what with making up numbers about how many jobs they create, missing great investments, delivering awful ten-year returns to investors, having higher failure rates among companies they fund than among the ones they don’t, and generally being so self-important and irony-unaware. But that doesn’t mean VCs are quacks. Or that what they do isn't hard. Or that it’s unimportant. Because it is important, and the good ones are smart, and what they do is very, very hard.
Tagi: venture capitalists, angel investors, failure rates, paul kedrosky, quacks, founders, investments, targets, jobs, commercial bankers
There was more than one attendee at TechCrunch50 last month that thought stealth startup 
The Audit Bureau of Circulations has 
Google has just launched into a surprise roundtable at its music event in Hollywood, where a number of top music executives and artists are discussing the news and the music industry. I'm live blogging my notes below (everything paraphrased). Guests:
Mos Def
Wendy Nussbaum (UMG)
Steve Savoca (Domino Recording)
Syd Schwartz (EMI)
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park)
Ryan Tedder (OneRepublic) MS: We used to be called Hybrid Theory. We settled on Lincoln Park, we went online to see if we could get our URL. We were online early on, changed the name of the band to get URL that would give the fans the most direct link to our fans.
Q: Did you ever think international? Do you think about the French version of the Linkin Park website?
MS: We're in the process of doing that right now to create an easier experience for fans in Asia and Europe..
“I’ll take you! I live there!” a small boy with a blue shirt and a perfect toothy grin said as he ran ahead of me. His quiet friend in yellow jogged beside him smiling shyly, his jet-black Elvis curl bobbing on his forehead. The boy in blue stopped a few yards in front of me turned around, beaming and added in Hindi, “I know computers quite well.” These weren’t middle class kids on the well-trod, parent-driven Indian path to seats at IIT. These were Delhi slum kids, whose families likely live on less than $2 a day. And yet, for the last five years, they’ve spent several hours of their free time every day playing games and learning English, Math and Science on computers. So how have they bridged the much-agonized-about digital divide without a hand out from a chip company, computer company or wealthy philanthropist? A for-profit Indian company called 