From StarTribune.com, via SAI, from YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim:

Silicon Valley has a lot of noise, a lot of hype. People are very excited about all of the Facebook stuff, Facebook applications. It’s just been a huge hype over the last year when actually … there isn’t really that much value. It’s just a bubble. It’s almost a distraction. continue reading...

A lot of traditional VCs (particularly those based in the West Coast) woke up this morning and tossed some chairs around and broke some really expensive shit because of this article in the Wall Street Journal, lauding Peter Thiel and his partners over at Founders’ Fund, which include Sean Parker, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery. The fund’s investments include:

- Iron Port Systems: email security software (recently sold to Cisco for $830M).
- Slide: the #1 or 2 widgets maker on Facebook.
- Facebook: apparently, a popular social networking site.
- Powerset: the natural search language company launched on the heels of a XEROX patent. continue reading...

Last year, I published the 13 Most Web Explosive Startups of all time and ranked Paypal at #8, ironically, eBay, who bought Paypal for $1.5B, ranked #4.  To see who was #1, read the entire post here.

Paypal is king of online transactions, eCommerce in the USA by 2010 will represent a $300B segment.  Online advertising is getting everyone excited but will be, at best, a $30-70B industry.  As such, Paypal will clearly prove to be a bigger and better acquisition as time goes by. continue reading...

That 2002 $1.5B deal for Paypal is looking shinier and shinier with every passing quarter (both quarters as in cents, nickels and dimes… as well as reporting cycles):

If eBay Live! is a celebration, then eBay’s online payment service is the guest of honor. PayPal’s first-quarter revenue grew 31%, to $439 million, at a time when eBay’s core shopping business grew just 23% and active buyers and sellers grew 10%. PayPal is proving that its success, while connected to the growth of eBay’s shopping sites, is not solely dependent on it. continue reading...