U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

The web­site FormDs.com has post­ed a very in­ter­est­ing map with a break­down of in­vest­ment dol­lars over the course of the past year. The map caught the eye of Boulder-based ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Jason Mendelson - not sur­pris­ing­ly, as the map points to Colorado as one of the most en­trepreneuri­al states. FormDs.com bas­es its find­ings on the fil­ings, as the name sug­gests, Form D, an SEC re­quire­ment when star­tups and other pri­vate­ly-held com­pa­nies raise ven­ture cap­i­tal. By track­ing the­se fil­ings, (...)

In the wake of the first dot com boom and sub­se­quent crash, reg­u­la­tion swept through the fi­nan­cial in­dus­try, push­ing a wedge be­tween those who rat­ed stocks and those who backed them, buck­ling down on in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion and weed­ing out a vis­i­ble few who had not ex­act­ly act­ed with their clients' best in­ter­ests in mind. With pub­lic trust in cor­po­ra­tions fur­ther de­clin­ing in the fol­low­ing few years with high-pro­file scams led by Enron, Worldcom and others, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has played an (...)

Kineto Wireless, de­vel­op­er of soft­ware that lever­ages Wi-Fi tech­nol­o­gy for mo­bile phones, has raised $3 mil­lion in equity and debt fund­ing, ac­cord­ing to a fil­ing with the SEC. Based in Milpitas, Calif., Kineto al­lows mo­bile phones to work on both cel­lu­lar and Wi-Fi net­works. Last mon­th, T-Mobile an­nounced plans to preload its Android phones with Kineto’s app for Wi-Fi call­ing. The com­pa­ny last raised $9 mil­lion in fund­ing in March. Investors in­clude Venrock Associates, Sutter Hill (...)

Zetta, a com­pa­ny that pro­vides cloud stor­age to busi­ness­es, has raised $11.5 mil­lion in a sec­ond round of fund­ing, ac­cord­ing to a fil­ing with the SEC. Existing in­vestors ­Foun­da­tion Capital and Sig­ma Partners con­tribut­ed to the round. Founded in 2007, Zetta pro­vides in­stant data re­cov­ery to en­ter­pris­es in the health­care, tech­nol­o­gy, en­er­gy and ed­u­ca­tion sec­tors. The com­pa­ny is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has raised $22.5 mil­lion to (...)

Everyday Health, the on­line health con­tent giant which filed to go pub­lic in March, but has been mum about its plans since, is with­draw­ing its of­fer­ing. The com­pa­ny says it will in­stead take $20 mil­lion in new fund­ing. The de­ci­sion is a blow to a dig­i­tal me­dia IPO mar­ket, which had fi­nal­ly been show­ing some signs of life over the last year. In re­cent months, Demand Media, Skype, and Tudou have all filed reg­is­tra­tion state­ments with the SEC and there has been buzz that some other play­ers, (...)

In July, I blogged here about the "crowd­fund­ing ex­emp­tion" pe­ti­tion, File No. 4-605, which the SEC had just post­ed to their web­site. The pe­ti­tion seeks to al­low peo­ple to so­lic­it in­vest­ment of up to $100,000 in amounts capped at $100 with­out hav­ing to reg­is­ter with ei­ther the SEC or their state's de­part­ment of cor­po­ra­tions (a pro­cess which can cost $50,000 and up). Many peo­ple, my­self in­clud­ed, be­lieve that this sim­ple ex­emp­tion, which the SEC has the au­thor­i­ty to al­low, pre­sents min­i­mal (...)

After an "anony­mous loy­al read­er" tipped Business Insider on Tuesday to an in­ter­nal memo from Google say­ing the com­pa­ny was re­ward­ing em­ploy­ees with both a cash bonus and a raise, news broke Wednesday that the leak­er, a Google em­ploy­ee, had been tracked down with­in hours, and fired. With all prop­er sym­pa­thies to some­body who just lost their job, there can be lit­tle flex­i­bil­i­ty in this re­gard - for if the per­son can­not be trust­ed with in­for­ma­tion deemed con­fi­den­tial and se­cret, they (...)

By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer dis­closed in an SEC fil­ing Friday that he sold $1.34 bil­lion worth of stock on November 3-5, at prices rang­ing from $26.74 to $27.18 a share. After the sales, which in­clud­ed 49.3 mil­lion shares, Ballmer con­tin­ues to hold 358.9 mil­lion shares. Meanwhile, in a pair of SEC fil­ings, Microsoft Chairman and founder Bill Gates dis­closed the sale of 3 mil­lion shares for a com­bined $81.7 mil­lion. Gates (...)

Microsoft has is­sued a state­ment de­scrib­ing Steve Ballmer’s plans to sell up to 75 mil­lion shares in order “to gain fi­nan­cial di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and to as­sist in tax plan­ning”. A sale this large is bound to ring alarm bells with share­hold­ers, how­ev­er Ballmer has cleared the air of any brew­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. “Even though this is a per­son­al fi­nan­cial mat­ter, I want to be clear about this to avoid any con­fu­sion. I am ex­cit­ed about our new prod­ucts and the po­ten­tial for our tech­nol­o­gy to change (...)

<img align='left' src="http://pho­tos.mac­nn.com/news/1011/Microsoft-Ballmer.jpg" bor­der='0' width='176' height='120' /Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has re­cent­ly sold about 12 per­cent of his stake in the com­pa­ny, re­cent SEC fil­ings re­vealed, prompt­ing a state­ment from Microsoft that the ex­ec­u­tive plans to part with about 75 mil­lion shares to­tal, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 per­cent of his 408 mil­lion es­ti­mat­ed shares, by year's end for "di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and tax plan­ning" (...)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has sold 12% of his stake in the tech giant in a trans­ac­tion worth more than $1.3 bil­lion. According to a fil­ing with the SEC, Ballmer has sold 49.3 mil­lion Microsoft shares in the past three days, bring­ing his to­tal own­er­ship to 358.9 mil­lion shares, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.2% of the com­pa­ny. Essentially, he sold 12% of his shares at a price be­tween $26 and $28. Knowing that the me­dia would no­tice such a large trans­ac­tion, Ballmer post­ed a state­ment on Microsoft’s (...)

The Geological Society Of America (al­so known as the Geosociety) com­plet­ed the in­stal­la­tion of a so­lar pow­er gen­er­at­ing rooftop at their Boulder, Colorado head­quar­ters yes­ter­day. The pro­ject was fund­ed by Xcel Energy and the City of Boulder, and in­stalled by Bella Energy. Good thing they bought in­to re­new­ables al­ready. The price of so­lar pho­to­voltaic pan­els could rise steeply if the Geosociety’s pre­dic­tions about min­er­al trade wars come true. The group of 17 min­er­als in the rare earth (...)

Trooval, a com­pa­ny that de­vel­ops soft­ware for time­share op­er­a­tors, has raised $1.6 mil­lion in equity, ac­cord­ing to a fil­ing with the SEC. North Bridge Venture Partners par­tic­i­pat­ed in the round. Based in San Francisco, Trooval’s soft­ware helps com­pa­nies pre­dict a vis­i­tor’s buy­ing po­ten­tial in re­al-time. The on­ly in­for­ma­tion re­quired for anal­y­sis is the con­sumer’s name and con­tact in­for­ma­tion. The com­pa­ny al­so of­fers an on­line mar­ket­ing plat­form to the time­share in­dus­try. Companies: north (...)

RediLearning, a Florida star­tup that de­liv­ers con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion course­work on­line to nurs­es, ther­a­pists and other se­nior care health work­ers closed a $1.75 mil­lion round of fund­ing from an­gel in­vestors, SEC fil­ings re­vealed to­day. The chief ex­ec­u­tive and co-founder of RediLearning, Michael Hemlepp, said that the com­pa­ny would use the cap­i­tal to “Cre­ate ad­di­tion­al con­tent and fea­tures for our pro­pri­etary learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem, and hire at least ten more em­ploy­ees over the next year.” (...)

GainSpain, a com­pa­ny that makes low-pow­er Wi-Fi chips, has raised $5 mil­lion of an ex­pect­ed $20 mil­lion in equity, ac­cord­ing to a fil­ing with the SEC. In August, the San Jose-based star­tup re­leased a Wi-Fi mod­ule that can be em­bed­ded in­to home ap­pli­ances, al­low­ing users to op­er­ate de­vices like re­frig­er­a­tors and dish­wash­ers from a lap­top or cell phone. Founded in 2006, GainSpan has raised more than $35 mil­lion to date from Opus Capital, Intel Capital, New Venture Partners, OVP Venture (...)

Apple is in strong fi­nan­cial shape, re­port­ing its best quar­ter ev­er lead­ing in­to the busy hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son, and hav­ing more than $50 bil­lion in cash in the bank. But even Apple has to wor­ry -- about com­peti­tors run­ning off with its mar­kets, sup­pli­ers screw­ing it with bad terms, and ex­ec­u­tives flee­ing. Apple ex­press­es some of its biggest wor­ries ev­ery three months in its quar­ter­ly re­port to the SEC, in a sec­tion called "Risk Factors." It doesn't get very speci­fic -- no men­tion of (...)

According to Google's Q3 fil­ing with the SEC, the search giant bought so­cial ap­pli­ca­tion mak­er Slide for $179 mil­ion in cash. Previous es­ti­mates had the price as high as $228 mil­lion while the com­pa­ny, start­ed in 2006 by Paypal co-founder Max Levchin, was val­u­at­ed in 2008 for $550 mil­lion. This marks an­oth­er step by Google which could indi­cate a more ag­gres­sive move in­to the so­cial realm in the days ahead. Google Me any­one? Click to read the rest of this (...)

IBM is an­nounc­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of yet an­oth­er com­pa­ny to­day: Toronto-based fi­nan­cial gov­er­nance soft­ware com­pa­ny Clarity Systems. Financial terms of the deal were not dis­closed. Clarity Systems’ soft­ware al­lows or­ga­ni­za­tions to au­to­mate the pro­cess of col­lect­ing, prepar­ing, cer­ti­fy­ing and con­trol­ling fi­nan­cial state­ments for elec­tron­ic fil­ing with the SEC and other reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies. The soft­ware al­so helps CFOs au­to­mate bud­get­ing, fore­cast­ing, plan­ning, con­sol­i­da­tion, score­card­ing and (...)

Skype was re­cent­ly sold by eBay to a group of pri­vate in­vestors and now those in­vestors are look­ing to raise as much as $100 mil­lion with an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) which has been filed with the SEC. It’s hard to tell what the price of shares will be for Skype stock, how­ev­er some an­a­lysts have priced the com­pa­ny around the $2.75 bil­lion mar­ket val­u­a­tion point. The com­pa­ny was pur­chased from eBay by a group of in­vestors in September, those in­vestors in­clude: Silver Lake, Index (...)

The US Government's typ­i­cal re­spon­se to man-made and nat­u­ral dis­as­ters is to leap in­to a fren­zy of cre­at­ing new reg­u­la­tions. The idea is that with stronger reg­u­la­tion, fu­ture dis­as­ters will be pre­vent­ed and the na­tion as a whole will be made sounder. The log­ic makes per­fect sense - let's close loop­holes, over­sights, sys­temic prob­lems that cre­ate pain and suf­fer­ing. Unfortunately, we need to on­ly look at how cur­rent reg­u­la­tors are per­form­ing in order to un­der­stand the ef­fi­cien­cy and (...)