Lewis Perdue

Back in early May when Vice President Al Gore tapped former California Congressman Tony Coelho to chair his 2000 presidential campaign, tongues wagged over Coelho’s past, having resigned from Congress in 1989 rather than face an ethics probe over his financial dealings. Washington insiders predicted that Coelho’s business dealings would become a campaign issue for […]

USENET has long presented a confusing landscape to all but the hardest core of tech-minded Internet habituis, growing as it did out of the university and research communities searching for intellectual and technical exchanges of information and esoterica. Deja.com, formerly known as Deja News, and America Online Inc. were the first to funnel millions of […]

The drab IPO Friday for Internet fax and unified messaging pioneer jfax.com shows that first-mover status is no guarantee of success. The field has gotten very crowded very fast this year with upstarts such as efax.com, RocketTalk and the newest contender, onebox.com which has raised more that $20 million in two rounds since its launch […]

If Seattle-area small-business portal Onvia really does have a better idea for entrepreneurs, they’re keeping it a well-hidden secret, at least for now. Onvia describes itself as “a business-to-business online operations center devoted to meeting the needs of entrepreneurs through targeted business products, services, tools and expert advice from a single point of purchase.” In […]

Social scientists say that being squashed together with other people in an elevator with all pretenses of personal space demolished is one of life’s most awkward moments. Boston-area start-up Captivate Network is betting that when you find yourself in this position (or when you’re alone and done fiddling with your hair, tie, panty-hose, whatever), you’ll […]

With record amounts of venture capital flooding the Internet market space, you’d think start-ups seeking seed funding could do lunch and walk away with a grocery bag filled with used hundred-dollar bills. According to research firm VentureOne VCs invested a record $3.59 billion in the first quarter of this year, a 31.8% increase over first […]

WESTFORD, Mass.– Elevator passengers are no longer safe from the Net thanks to $7 million in second-round financing provided to Captivate Network by Advent International, Olympic Venture Partners, ABS Capital Partners and Primus Venture Partners. Captivate which develops information devices to be installed in elevators said it also obtained a $3-million line of credit with […]

At a time when DotCom startups start writing their IPO prospectuses while the ink is still wet on their first checks from the first round of funding, Los Altos, Calif.-based VirtualVineyards.com is an old timer — founded in 1994 — and a target for critics who say it’s getting too long in the tooth to […]

Internet wine e-tailers have recently harvested a record crop from the VC vineyards, uncorking close to $80 million in an increasingly hot race to be the Amazon.com of vino. Startup WineShopper.com is the biggest winner, nailing down $46 million from a consortium lead by Menlo Park powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). Also receiving […]

Until somebody comes up with a workable IP-based, Star Trek transporter to deliver the goods for e-tailers, the demand for moving boxes from one bricks and mortar location to another will continue to expand. “Billions and billions of dollars,” is the Sagan-esque market size according to Jennifer Fonstad, a director at Redwood City, Calif. venture […]

Hospitals spend up to 15 percent of their total budgets on furnishings and equipment purchases that are frequently wasteful and over-priced. Neoforma.com was founded to help solve that problem. “This sector is wrought with inefficiencies,” said AlexArrow, analyst at Wedbush Morgan. “Overpayments are the norm and a hospital will frequently buy equipment that is available […]

Raghav Kher never had much trouble making big deals when he was Microsoft’s director of strategic business decisions, engineering many of that company’s high-profile acquisitions such as Hotmail. But Kher found himself thrashing about for solutions when his wife asked him to get their two-story, three-bedroom house near Seattle painted. “It was very frustrating,” Kher […]