funding

While some entrepreneurs seek to protect their ideas with nondisclosure agreements, investor Mark Cuban has a different idea: open-source your business plan.

What does this mean? As Cuban explains, it means that start-ups should openly post their business plans online. Yes, this means that a competitor could take a plan and run with it, but given that the quality of execution often differs markedly from the quality of an idea, the risk may be lower than you think.

You must post your business plan here on my blog, where I expect other people can and will comment on it. I … Read more

Correction at 9:10 a.m. PDT: The size of the average M&A deal is lower than originally reported.

Israel's high-tech merger activity fell last year, but it's IPO market took a far greater hit, according to a report released Wednesday.

The country exited the year without a single high-tech initial public offering, a first since 2003, according to the Israel Venture Capital Research Center report.

With the global economy taking a beating and the markets leaving investors running for cover, it's not surprising to see companies pulling back on IPO plans, in hopes of … Read more

So what kind of car are you going to get next? Perhaps, I might tempt your credulity by asking you to consider a new eco-car called the LEKO.

A Toyota? No, an IKEA.

A strange Web site has appeared, roulez-leko.com, on which a very relaxed, modern, eco-friendly chap, allegedly the great car designer Christophe Grozs, stands next to an apparent car draped with the word LEKO and the tagline "la voiture selon IKEA."

Yes, the car according to IKEA.

The LEKO (L'eco, get it?), allegedly has the backing of the World Wildlife Fund in France. Which might mean the fund has put money into the creation or that the car will have plastic panda-skin seats.

It also will save you untold (because unspecified) amounts of money on your expenditure. And it is humongously eco-friendly.

This is an ad, right?

If IKEA made a car, the doors might not fit quite perfectly into the body. Then you'd really have to work hard to use those tiny screwdrivers to make sure the engine didn't wobble. And just imagine the number of screws it would take to put in the cup holder.

There's the name too. Real IKEA product names never make sense. They always seem to resemble a fair to middling Scrabble hand--for example, KLIPPAN or LYCKSELE. LEKO is far too meaningful.… Read more

E-marketing firm SmartReply has acquired mobile-advertising specialist MSnap in an effort to increase its presence on wireless devices.

SmartReply, which distributes advertisements via voice messages, e-mail, and text messages, is seeking to create the largest U.S. mobile-messaging ad network through the acquisition, according to a post on MSnap's Web site.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and MSnap and SmartReply were not immediately available for comment, but according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, MSnap's shareholders will receive a minority stake in SmartReply.

MSnap, founded in 2006, has received investments from Partech International and … Read more

Y Combinator on Monday announced that it has raised a $2 million venture fund with the aid of Sequoia Capital and angel investors.

In making the announcement, Y Combinator noted that it plans to increase the number of start-ups it funds to 60 a year, up from 40.

For Web services and software start-ups, that may bode well. Y Combinator focuses its investments on those two sectors and funds companies that are in their early stages.

As it notes, one unusual twist to this venture firm is its reliance on the strength of entrepreneurs' ideas, rather than on their business … Read more

Intel is accused of monopolistic business practices pretty much all of the time. So much so that the big bully boilerplate isn't worth repeating.

The latest reports of charges against Intel are interesting because of the timing. According to this March 10 headline, the Korean Fair Trade Commission has ruled against Intel. That would be news if it hadn't been news eight months ago. Here's an English-language summation of the case that was news in June 2008. (CNET News report here.)

Not that all complaints about Intel business practices are unfounded. Certainly not. But how many times … Read more

Auditude, a video advertising company best known for technology that can identify clients' video content and run ads against it, has raised a $10.5 million Series B funding round from Redpoint Ventures and existing investor Greylock Partners. This brings the company's total funding to $23 million.

Last time we checked in with Auditude, the company had inked a deal with News Corp.'s MySpace and Viacom's MTV Networks to detect both official and user-uploaded MTV content on the social network's MySpaceTV platform. It was seen by many as a savvy antipiracy measure. Since then, Auditude has … Read more

On day one of our special report on making a business out of green tech, reporter Martin LaMonica talks about how some green-tech companies have changed their business models to adapt to the dearth of venture funding.

Also in this podcast: one start-up that might make you rethink your cable TV service; Amazon releases e-book Kindle app for the iPhone; and Research In Motion goes to great lengths to protect intellectual property.

Today's stories:

Start-up offers alternative to subscription TV

AMD chipmaking arm launches as Globalfoundries

Windows 7 gets down to business

Office 14 crawls toward beta… Read more

Marc Andreessen is adding venture capitalist to the growing list of titles he wears in the tech world, which includes serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and browser technology pioneer, according to a report in peHUB.

Andreessen is launching the venture fund with Ben Horowitz, a former Netscape veteran and co-founder of Opsware, two companies that Andreessen co-founded, the report states.

The venture fund is the latest evolution to the angel investment relationship Andreessen and Horowitz share. Last year, for example, the pair were angel investors in mobile video service Qik and virtual world company Metaplace.

And Thursday night, Andreessen made an … Read more