S.F. luxury home prices set record in second quarter: "Luxury home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area set a record by posting a double-digit gain in the second quarter compared with a year ago, according to a survey by First Republic Bank and Fiserv CSW Inc., a research firm." —Silicon Valley Business Journal

Better times for VC seekers: "Entrepreneurs seeking venture financing in the second quarter found a more receptive audience, according to a study by the law firm of Fenwick & West." —Silicon Valley Business Journal

Internet Mergers: Who's Next?: "Dealmaking has returned to the Internet sector with an intensity not seen in years. Web companies have shaken off the stigma associated with the Nasdaq crash of 2000 and are attracting big buyers from both the on- and offline worlds." —BusinessWeek

Idealab Reloaded: "If this were 1999, the roster of Idealab startups would be much longer. Idealab housed as many as 50 dot-coms simultaneously at the height of the Internet craze, when Gross, with his superkinetic inventiveness and geeky charisma, seemed to embody the promise of the web. " —Fortune

Equity Is Altering Spending Habits and View of Debt: "Homeowners took $59 billion in cash out of their houses in the second quarter, double the amount in the 2004 quarter and 16 times the average rate of the mid-1990s, according to data released this month by mortgage giant Freddie Mac." — Yahoo! News

Greenspan warns of end of housing boom: "U.S. home prices could fall as the housing surge 'inevitably' slows, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Saturday as he cast doubt on central banks' ability to sway such asset values." —Yahoo! News

Greenspan: Investments Won't Soar Forever: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Friday cautioned Americans against thinking the value of their homes and other investments will only go higher, saying 'history has not dealt kindly' with that kind of optimism." —Yahoo! News

Strategy Shift for the Fed?: "Greenspan is still chary about making it policy to deflate perceived bubbles, but he now admits that inflated asset prices can't be ignored" —BusinessWeek

Mr. Housing Bubble: "Not only is this hilarious, but its also a good use of distribution... the website gives let's me create HTML to blog their t-shirt with. Good tradeoff. They give me funny I give them traffic."



—Charlie O'Donnell (Union Square)

Why the PodShow investment makes sense - at least to me: "At the end of the day, the worst that can happen is that they lose their $9M (or whatever they will have invested) – and all things considered (in their context), they certainly won’t lose sleep over that. And the business model, and the exit strategy will take care of themselves – eventually." —Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)

I'll be sure to mention in my next VC pitch that the worst that can happen is that they lose everything.

Be Warned: Mr. Bubble's Worried Again: "Today, nine years after his lunch with Mr. Greenspan and five years after the markets finally did crash, Mr. Shiller is sounding the same warning for real estate that he did for stocks. In speeches, in television and radio interviews and in a second edition of his prophetic 2000 book, 'Irrational Exuberance,' he is arguing that the housing craze is another bubble destined to end badly, just as every other real-estate boom on record has." —The New York Times

Thanks to Seth Levine for the link.

VC Funds Jump 165% in Q2: "Investors show confidence in venture capitalists by plowing more than $6 billion into VC funds in the period." —Red Herring

Housing hasn't stumbled yet: "The whole nation, it seems, is listening intently for the hiss or pop or bang or kaboom that would signal the end of the housing bubble. They won't hear it in the coming week's housing data, which cover home sales in July, though." —MarketWatch

NYU finance professor: GOOG's share price is insane: "Using even the most optimistic forecasts for Google's performance over the coming decade, he arrived at a price target of only $110 per share- and that's assuming a 1,400 percent increase in revenues from Google's current levels.  This professor literally wrote the textbook on pricing companies ('Investment Valuation'- John Wiley and Sons, 2002) and he concludes by saying he's 'baffled' that anyone would pay close to $300 per share for Google." —F-edGoogle

Optical network market shows first growth since 2000: "Industry figures out Thursday show that the optical network equipment market, long frozen in the tundra of the telecom winter, has finally started to thaw." —Silicon Valley Business Journal

IPO Watch: Sounds of Money: "Since the beginning of August, the Street has been alive with the sound of IPOs, songs unheard for a number of years." —Red Herring

Open Media, Meet The VCs: "A lone cautionary voice of reason, a meat-and-potatoes investor, who will remained anonymous, pointed out that with so much money in the Valley, some of the late 1990s mentality is creeping back. A lot of people are looking to invest outside their comfort zone, on the logic that something’s got to sick. High stakes poker seems safer, but that’s just me." —Om Malik on Broadband

Repeating history in Internet time: "Now, 10 years after Netscape and 5 1/2 years after the AOL-Time Warner merger signaled the popping of the Internet bubble, investors are finally returning to the Web with some of that old zeal, rightly or wrongly." —MarketWatch

Rightly, man, rightly!

Blogging as a business: "Ahh, many of my friends are making fortunes. It sure is starting to get tempting out there. Speaking of fortunes: watch for several acquisitions in the next few months of blog services. The money is starting to flow. The consolidations are starting to happen." —Robert Scoble

BitTorrent, seeded, now waits for VC funds: "The podcast start-ups of today are like Wine.com today, while Bit Torrent is Cisco of the digital content revolution." —Om Malik on Broadband

In the words of Anthony Michael Hall, "This is getting good."

Bay Area hiring picture brightens: "Nearly 4 out of 10 Bay Area executives surveyed say they plan to hire more people in the next six months, according to a report released Wednesday." —Silicon Valley Business Journal

PodShow Inc nets $8.85m in financing from sequoia and kleiner perkins: "There is little that gets Valley girls and boys as hot and bothered as when an Internet company gets funded by both Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. So it's worth noting that the iconic venture shops have participated in an $8.85 million Series A round for PodShow Inc., according to a regulatory filing. For an added bonus, both John Doerr and Ray Lane have taken board seats, joining both Jerry Newman of Bear Stearns and omnipresent angel investor Ram Shriram (Google, Plaxo, Zazzle, etc.), who is representing shareholder Harris MyCFO Inc." —John Furrier (BroadDev)

I hope their boardroom has really wide doors to accommodate the egos!

Hot IPOs, M&As, and More: "Investment pro Tom Taulli says the recent action 'can't be an anomaly. It's a sign of strength in the whole market.'" —BusinessWeek

Marking the 10th year of Street's love of Net IPOs: "When Netscape Communications Inc. shares more than doubled on their first day of trading 10 years ago today, Netscape became the first in a long line of dot-coms to complete blockbuster IPOs." —MarketWatch

Brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?

Baidu's wake-up call; 3 implications: "There are a lot of lessons we can learn from Baidu's IPO, not the least of which is that we haven't learned all the lessons from the dot-com days." —MarketWatch

That Hissing Sound: "Bubbles end when people stop believing that big capital gains are a sure thing. That's what happened in San Diego at the end of its last housing bubble: after a rapid rise, house prices peaked in 1990. Soon there was a glut of houses on the market, and prices began falling. By 1996, they had declined about 25 percent after adjusting for inflation. And that's what's happening in San Diego right now, after a rise in house prices that dwarfs the boom of the 1980's." —The New York Times

Bob Metcalfe, Vint Cerf, and George Gilder: "The power of the network was in uber-abundance this week. We have the story behind Bob Metcalfe’s Law, from Bob. Vint Cerf’s view of history and future of the Internet, by Vint. And the next batch of disruptive technologies as viewed by George Gilder, by the Telecosm Guy himself." —AlwaysOn Network

A Bubble 2.0 three-bagger. Nice.

Yahoo May Buy Stake in Chinese E-Com Firm Alibaba: "Yahoo is in talks to purchase a 35% stake in China's biggest home-grown e-commerce company, Alibaba, for almost $1 billion, in what would be the biggest investment by a foreign company in China's Internet industry to date, reports Forbes.com." —PaidContent.org

Baidu IPO jumps 354% into the record books: "Shares of the Chinese Web-search-engine operator Baidu.com vaulted 354% Friday in the IPO market's biggest splash in at least five years." —MarketWatch

<Insert lame joke about being hungry for another IPO in 30 minutes here.>

Top 10 dot-com flops - CNET.com: "These are the celebrity victims of the [old] new-economy bust." —c|net

Yeah, that's right, I've gone old school with the c|net capitalization/punctuation. Chalk it up to the nostalgia. I sold software to 4 of these 10 companies.

Baidu.com prices IPO above range: "Chinese Web search engine Baidu.com late Thursday priced its initial public offering at $27 a share—above the company's recently raised range, according to reports citing the underwriter." —MarketWatch

Venture Capital: Startups are coming back—quietly: "Here's a sign that Seattle's startup community is back on track. A number of well-known technology entrepreneurs are quietly operating in 'stealth mode'—keeping a low profile and purposely hiding details of their business plans." —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

I can't wait to hear what Brad "Inspector Gadget" Husick is up to.

Baidu.com is IPO of the week: "Included in this week's busy IPO lineup is a deal that could prove to be one of the hottest offerings of 2005. The company goes by the name of Baidu (pronounced 'Buy--do'), a fast-growing, ad-supported online search engine in China, and it has been referred to by many in the investment community as the 'Chinese Google.'" —MarketWatch

Zero. Zip. Nada.: "The US personal savings rate fell to zero in July – its lowest level since the latest spending binge started (post 9/11) and the 2nd lowest since the Great Depression. You can read the full government report here (be sure to check out some of the tables – very interesting information). " —Seth Levine (Mobius VC)

VCs party like it's 1999 with Brilliant Shopper deal: "Silicon Valley venture capitalists with no Internet experience are rushing to fund Internet companies. Sound like 1999? Think again. We're in 2005, and it's happening again—at least in some quarters." —SiliconValley.com

A Return to Dot.Bomb?: "Domain name pricing creeping up on marketable top level domains." —Designtechnica

10-year yield, S&P 500 reach Fibonacci targets: "The S&P 500 has also apparently broken out, as it reached last Thursday (1,245.15) the highest price seen since June 13, 2001." —MarketWatch