Old school approach by a new fund

Named after founders Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the fund had an easy time raising $300 million (£185.2 million) and is now officially public, which means the duo behind it have been talking it up. Not that it needed the press. It was already the talk of the Valley.

The enterprise will be old school, it seems. No plans to invest in clean tech or electric cars. No money to go to China or India. Instead the idea is to take Andreessen and Horowitz's experience in building companies like Netscape and Opsware (which they sold to HP for $1.7 billion) and use it to actively mentor promising US start ups through either a sale or an IPO. Andreessen calls the concept a "throwback" to how local venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers began.

Contrary to first reports, it will pursue everything from early-stage investments in the thousands of dollars up to late-stage injections of around $50 million. And it will focus on consumer electronics and the back-end services that support them.

What's interesting is how the fund ignores the view that the Valley is only one of many places where good venture capitalists ought to be looking to put their money. Instead, Andreessen and Horowitz plan to invest almost exclusively in Valley start ups, calling the area "the most target-rich environment" there is.

Sure, they say, the US doesn't exactly top the charts when it comes to offering young people a solid grounding in science and engineering. But that's not prevented it, Andreessen reminded insider blog VentureBeat, "from being where Netscape, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Paypal, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, VMWare, Juniper, Nvidia, Siebel, and Salesforce.com were created, all within the last 15 years".

"Contrast that to any other country, or region, and I'll take it," Andreessen says. The man, perhaps, has a point.

Who says Facebook is killing off face-to-face social interactions? Only last week, the online network inspired my neighbour Colin to knock on my door. Since Facebook has moved its HQ nearby, it seems, the company's employees have been filling local streets with their cars, making it hard for residents to park. So Colin's leading a petition to restrict parking to residents.

Here's another first for Craigslist. Pretty much the minute the cash- strapped state of California decided to issue IOUs instead of paying its bills, a resale market for the promissory notes opened on the online classifieds website.