venture

Many of you may have heard that Matthew Aslett is over at The 451 Group now.

A popular and very funny session today was the session entitled “Venture Capital 2.0: Bright Future or Broken Forever?”. This session was moderated by Mike Arrington of Techcrunch who is a former VC himself and current angel investor. It appeared like it could be boring listen to a bunch of venture capitalists talk, but Arrington did a very nice job spicing it up with well-timed insults and jokes.

Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post is working on a “citizen media” venture with NewAssignment.net (which I wrote about in an earlier post), has an interesting perspective on the future of newspapers in a recent post.

Medialink, a producer and distributor of short form video and audio has announced it will use Brightcove Internet TV to distribute video content to its clients on the Web. The content produced by Medialink will contain source disclosure and contact details for users to learn more about products and services featured in the video clips.

Heavy.com an online video site catering to males 18-34 has closed a $20 million financing round from Polaris Venture Partners. This is the second round of funding from Polaris, which forked over $10 million to the company in early 2006. The funding will be used to broaden Heavy's network globally and create new brands.

Money. Startups need it, investors have it, and venture capital firms can bring them together. Though the prospect of composing a business plan and getting it in front of a VC might seem daunting, it could be well worth the effort.

Podcasting as a viable business venture takes another mainstream step with news that PodTech Network has received $5.5 million in venture capital funding from Venrock Associates, US Venture Partners, and Silicon Valley angel investors.

One of the biggest challenges that the owners of small and mid size businesses have is waiting 30 to 60 days to get paid on their invoices.