SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.
Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.
It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.
"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.
Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.
Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.
Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.
LACKING SUPERSTARS
Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.
Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.
Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.
(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's not just the game balls that are deflated at Southern California this fall.
An unimpressive season reached a new, weird low late Wednesday night when No. 21 USC announced a student manager had been dismissed for underinflating several game balls before the Trojans' loss to No. 2 Oregon last weekend, earning a fine and a reprimand for the school from the Pac-12.
Coach Lane Kiffin then spent a soggy Thursday morning on campus explaining why the Trojans' latest brush with questionable tactics was an isolated misdeed by an overeager student, not an indication of a somewhat sleazy culture building around a program still attempting to emerge from the clouds of heavy NCAA sanctions in 2010.
"I was just disappointed, because it was just a distraction," Kiffin said. "It was a distraction that nobody knew about here, that had no effect on the game. If anything, it had a negative effect to be throwing two different types of balls for a quarterback. I was just disappointed, because it was a distraction that we didn't need."
Kiffin is telling the truth: With two straight losses, the preseason No. 1 team can't afford to waste much thought for anything other than the salvage of its season. USC (6-3, 4-3 Pac-12) hosts Arizona State (5-4, 3-3) on Saturday before finishing against No. 17 UCLA and No. 4 Notre Dame, hoping to earn a probable rematch with Oregon in the Pac-12 title game.
Kiffin insists his coaching staff and quarterback Matt Barkley knew nothing about the manager's actions on the Oregon sideline, where officials apparently discovered three underinflated balls before the game and two more at halftime. Kiffin offered no thoughts about the possible motivation of the unidentified manager, saying he hadn't spoken to the student.
USC athletic director Pat Haden, who took over the department after Kiffin was hired nearly three years ago, was obviously unhappy about the embarrassment.
"We acknowledge the Pac-12's reprimand and fine," Haden said in a statement released through Twitter. "We regret this incident occurred. It was unacceptable and we apologize for it. I can assure you this will not happen again."
Deflating footballs is an uncommon — but not unfamiliar — bit of gamesmanship on many levels of football. Softer balls are thought to be a bit easier to throw and catch — and that's exactly what the Ducks did while racking up 730 yards during a 62-51 win over USC, which had the worst defensive game ever at a school that began playing football in the 19th century.
Kiffin said he realizes "conspiracy theories ... will think we were behind this," but thinks the lack of an obvious advantage to be gained from the tactic — and the sloppy manner in which it happened — should prove the innocence of his coaches and players.
"I don't think if we were trying to deflate balls, we would be directing a student manager on the Oregon sideline, right in front of them, to be deflating balls, and then playing with some deflated and some non-deflated balls," Kiffin said. "I'm sure if we knew that, our kickers wouldn't have been happy with that, either. No kicker is ever going to happy with a deflated ball."
While Kiffin claimed he didn't hear about the officials' discovery until Sunday, Oregon coach Chip Kelly told SiriusXM's College Sports Nation channel Thursday he heard about it after the game.
"It doesn't affect us," Kelly said. "I mean, we worry every day, or are concerned with every day, of what we can control and what we can't control, and what other teams do doesn't really affect what we're doing."
USC announced the Pac-12's fine and reprimand late Wednesday night, well after every member of the program except Kiffin is done talking to the media for the week. Barkley and his offensive teammates only speak to reporters for a few moments on Tuesday mornings — another part of a strict policy on injury reporting and media access instituted by Kiffin this season, ending USC's tradition of famously open practices and Kiffin's own largely cordial relationship with Los Angeles media before the last few months.
While Kiffin has been fairly successful on the field, particularly given the Trojans' NCAA-mandated scholarship limitations, the underinflated footballs are just the latest minor misstep adding up to a potentially major problem. Kiffin's apparent predilections for cutthroat competition and gamesmanship have followed him from USC to the Oakland Raiders to Tennessee and back again.
Last month, USC backup quarterback Cody Kessler took off his No. 6 jersey and put on No. 35 while playing on special teams against Colorado, even running for a 2-point conversion attempt with the new jersey. Players are allowed to wear different jerseys for many reasons during games, but it's widely considered deceptive, if not unethical, to change numbers during a game specifically to confuse an opponent.
USC also is still the FBS' most penalized team with 85 penalties for 702 yards, even after a relatively clean game against Oregon. The Trojans counter that they were a mostly clean team last season, and that the Pac-12 has seven of FBS' 16 most-penalized teams, perhaps indicating more about the conference's officiating crews than the schools' play.
But after USC's latest brush against propriety, even Kiffin acknowledged it's fair to wonder whether his staff has created a culture of moral relativism, where a student might deflate footballs on his own just to try to gain an advantage.
"I don't believe that at all," he said. "I believe this was a very isolated incident that had nothing to do with the coaches or the players on this team."
This week’s Ask the Expert features Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, who will answer questions related to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an author of “The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.” Dr. Doraiswamy has also served as an adviser to government agencies, advocacy groups and businesses.
About five million Americans today live with Alzheimer’s disease, and a new diagnosis is made about every 70 seconds. Cases are expected to triple over the coming decades as baby boomers age.
Misperceptions and misdiagnoses are common about Alzheimer’s, which ranks second to only cancer among diseases that adults fear the most. Many people do not understand that there are dozens of causes for memory loss besides Alzheimer’s, including many that can be fully reversed if caught early.
Among the questions Dr. Doraiswamy is prepared to answer:
What are the best tests to determine if it is or isn’t Alzheimer’s?
How do you determine your own risk?
What are the family-care options? Medications for memory? Medications for behavior problems? Preventive strategies?
What has been learned from the latest clinical trials?
How can you improve your memory?
Please leave your questions in the comments section. Answers will be posted on Wednesday.
You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.
John Gress for The New York Times
Dan Brown, inventor of the Bionic Wrench, is defending his patent rights against the Max Axess, made in China.
Last Christmas, Sears had a brisk seller in the Bionic Wrench, an award-winning, patented tool with spiffy lime green accents. This holiday season, though, Sears has a special display for its own wrench, in the red and black colors of its house brand, Craftsman.
The Bionic Wrench is made in America by Penn United Technologies. Sears sells the Max Axess, sourced from China.
One customer who recently spotted the new Craftsman tool, called the Max Axess wrench, thought it was an obvious knockoff, right down to the try-me packaging. “I saw it and I said, ‘This is a Bionic Wrench,’ ” recalled Dana Craig, a retiree and tool enthusiast in Massachusetts who alerted the maker of the Bionic Wrench. “It’s a very distinctive tool,” he added.
The tools have one significant difference, Mr. Craig noted. The Bionic Wrench is made in the United States. The Max Axess wrench is made in China.
The shift at Sears from a tool invented and manufactured in the United States to a very similar one made offshore has already led to a loss of American jobs and a brewing patent battle.
The story of the Bionic Wrench versus Craftsman, which bills itself as “America’s most trusted tool brand,” also raises questions about how much entrepreneurs and innovators, who rely on the country’s intellectual property laws, can protect themselves. For the little guy, court battles are inevitably time-consuming and costly, no matter the outcome.
Still, the inventor of the Bionic Wrench is determined to fight. He is Dan Brown, an industrial designer in Chicago who came up with the wrench after watching his son try to work on a lawn mower. Mr. Brown says he believes that the Max Axess wrench copies his own and he is planning to file suit against Sears, which declined to answer any questions about the wrenches for this article.
The Bionic Wrench is distinguished by its gripping mechanism, a circle of metal prongs that, inspired by the shutter in a single-lens reflex camera, descend evenly to lock onto almost any nut or bolt.
Since Sears has halted new orders, the Pennsylvania company that makes the Bionic Wrench has had to lay off 31 workers, said Keith Hammer, the project manager at the company, Penn United Technologies. “And that’s not to mention our suppliers,” he added.
Mr. Brown sees a broader issue than just the fate of his wrench. “Our situation is an example of why we’re not getting jobs out of innovation,” he said. “When people get the innovation, they go right offshore. What happened to me is what happened to so many people so many times, and we just don’t talk about it.”
Inventors typically spend $10,000 to $50,000 to obtain the type of patent Mr. Brown has on the wrench, said John S. Pratt, a patent expert at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in Atlanta. Though he said he could not comment on the merits of Mr. Brown’s potential suit, patent infringement cases can be especially difficult in the tool field, where many improvements are incremental, Mr. Pratt explained.
A defendant in such a case would most likely argue that either the tool did not warrant a patent in the first place, or that its own product did not violate the patent.
The fact that Sears made some changes to the wrench’s design, like making the grooves that allow the metal prongs to slide back and forth visible instead of hidden, will make the case more challenging, he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that Sears isn’t particularly careful about breach of patent, so there’s probably another side to the story,” he said.
After patenting the wrench in 2005, Mr. Brown formed a company, LoggerHead Tools, to bring it to market, making a point of having it made in the United States.
The Bionic Wrench was greeted with enthusiasm at trade shows and in industrial design competitions, and the company survived the downturn in 2008. Mr. Brown resisted overtures from large chain stores that wanted to sell the tool under their proprietary brand, he said, and rejected the lure of cheaper manufacturing in China. “I was raised a different way,” he said.
The tool sold fairly well on its own — LoggerHead has shipped 1.75 million of them — but Mr. Brown, 56, who teaches industrial design at Northwestern University, says LoggerHead operated on a shoestring and he plowed much of the profit back into the company. “You cannot have big offices and fancy cars and everybody with an administrative assistant, because we are competing with China,” he said.
Diego Azubel/European Pressphoto Agency
Soldiers marched past the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday, on the eve of the 18th Communist Party Congress.
BEIJING — With a robust defense of one-party rule and a vow to learn from a string of political scandals this year, a senior official on Wednesday laid out the agenda for China’s much-anticipated Communist Party Congress, which gets under way on Thursday.
The weeklong congress is expected to cap a long and at times fractious transition from the current leadership of Hu Jintao to his presumed successor, Xi Jinping. If all goes according to plan, Mr. Xi and half a dozen other top leaders will be presented to the public next Thursday.
Officially, the new team is to be selected in the coming week by the 2,280 delegates participating in this congress, the 18th in the party’s 91-year history. Delegates are also scheduled to discuss a work report that is to lay out in broad strokes the country’s future course over the next five years, and approve it along with a report on anticorruption measures.
In fact, much of what will go on during the congress has already been decided. The delegates are voted on by lower-ranking members but based on guidance provided by higher-ups, a process known as “democratic centralism.” So, too, the work and corruption reports, which will be discussed by the delegates but are not expected to be substantially altered before being approved.
At a news conference on Wednesday, the congress’s spokesman and deputy head of Communist Party propaganda, Cai Mingzhao, defended this system as one that allows members to express their views in a controlled setting.
“We must combine centralism on the basis of democracy, with democracy under centralized guidance so that we will create a political situation in the party in which we have both centralism and democracy, both discipline and freedom, both unity of will and personal ease of mind,” Mr. Cai said.
He also said the Communist Party had earned the right to rule China.
“The leading position of the Communist Party in China is a decision made by history and by the people,” Mr. Cai said. “Political system reform must suit China’s national reality.”
Mr. Cai seemed to pour cold water on widespread reports that the party was planning to reform its internal elections, for example by having more candidates than slots for top bodies. That would allow delegates to vote out unpopular leaders. He said votes would be secret and some multicandidate elections would take place, but all would be “in accordance with the electoral method adopted by the congress.”
That is not to say that the congress’s decisions are already widely known.
Still uncertain is who will be next to Mr. Xi when the top leadership is presented in a week. This group, known as the Politburo Standing Committee, essentially runs China.
According to plan, it will include Mr. Xi and Li Keqiang, who is expected to take over as head of the government bureaucracy next year. Both men are current members of the Standing Committee.
It is also unclear how many members the committee will have. It currently has nine posts, and is expected to be reduced to seven.
Pundits have been speculating on who the other members will be and what various appointments might mean for China’s direction. But even last week, new names and combinations were making the rounds in Beijing, indicating that party leaders and their various factions were still vying to put forward their candidates.
Mr. Cai also said the party had learned from the scandals surrounding two high-ranking officials: the former Politburo member Bo Xilai and the former railway minister Liu Zhijun. Both have been accused of corruption, although Mr. Bo is also accused of covering up the murder of a British businessman. “The lessons are profound,” said Mr. Cai, who added that the party would pursue strong anticorruption measures.
Mr. Cai also said the congress would pursue reforms and work on a “master reform plan on income distribution” to more equitably divide China’s growing economy. The country has one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor in the world, leading to frequent bouts of unrest and violence.
“In this way, we will make the fruits of reform and opening up benefit our people more and in a more equitable fashion,” Mr. Cai said.
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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Andrew Luck has joined the shaved squad, too.
Nearly three dozen players on the Indianapolis Colts have shaved their heads in a show of support for head coach Chuck Pagano, who is undergoing treatment for a form of leukemia.
Luck became a new member of the no-hair club Wednesday morning. Players and coaches were not available for comment because they were headed to Jacksonville, but a team spokesman confirmed that Luck will indeed look quite different when he takes off his helmet Thursday night.
"Buzzed heads and orange locks in honor of Chuck," team owner Jim Irsay tweeted. He also included a link to a photo showing many of the players who had gotten buzzed.
Indianapolis (5-3) has gone to great lengths to give their ailing coach encouragement.
Reggie Wayne wore orange gloves against Green Bay, the ribbon color used to raise awareness for leukemia. Nameplates above player's lockers at the team complex now include orange stickers with Pagano's initials in the middle of Indy's trademark horseshoe. They sent Pagano a game ball after their surprising win over the Packers on Oct. 4. Irsay has placed signs reading (hash)Chuckstrong in each end zone of Lucas Oil Stadium, and the team has been trying to raise money to support leukemia research.
The newest addition to the agenda came late Tuesday when the team said Wayne, Luck and interim coach Bruce Arians would participate in a fundraiser at Dunaway's, a local restaurant, on Nov. 16. They will sign autographs and take photos with fans to help benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
So when Pagano showed up in the Colts' locker room Sunday without his grayish hair or trademark goatee, player director of engagement David Thornton decided to bring in a barber following Tuesday's practice.
The idea was an immediate hit — and seems to be growing larger by the day.
About two dozen players, including kicker Adam Vinatieri, defensive end Cory Redding, Pro Bowl safety Antoine Bethea and punter Pat McAfee, left the team headquarters Tuesday night with no hair. It's a new look for McAfee, who had a ponytail until last fall when he cut it off and donated the hair to Locks of Love, a cancer charity.
"We haven't been together long... But we're in this together," McAfee wrote in a Twitter message.
On Wednesday morning, more players joined the contingent, including Luck, the No. 1 overall draft pick and this week's AFC offensive player of the week.
At this rate, all of the Colts could have a whole team without hair playing Thursday night at the Jaguars. Arians, one of Pagano's close friends and a prostate cancer survivor, doesn't have any hair, either, though he's donned that look all season.
Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia on Sept. 26 and remained hospitalized for treatment until Oct. 21. He watched the next two Colts games from his home before doctors allowed him to attend Sunday's victory over Miami. Pagano watched the 23-20 victory from the coaches' box and spoke with his team before and after the game.
"I've got circumstances. You guys understand it, I understand it," Pagano said in an emotional postgame speech. "It's already beat. It's already beat. My vision that I'm living is to see two more daughters get married, dance at their weddings and then lift the Lombardi Trophy several times. I'm dancing at two more weddings and we're hoisting that trophy together, men. Congratulations, I love all of you."
On Monday, Pagano's physician, Dr. Larry Cripe of the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center, said Pagano was in "complete remission." Cripe said Pagano is still scheduled to have two more rounds of chemotherapy. The second round starts this week and will last four to six weeks, Cripe said.
Arians has said the Colts hope to have Pagano back on the sideline Dec. 30, Indy's regular season finale against Houston.
___
Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL
This week’s Ask the Expert features Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, who will answer questions related to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an author of “The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.” Dr. Doraiswamy has also served as an adviser to government agencies, advocacy groups and businesses.
About five million Americans today live with Alzheimer’s disease, and a new diagnosis is made about every 70 seconds. Cases are expected to triple over the coming decades as baby boomers age.
Misperceptions and misdiagnoses are common about Alzheimer’s, which ranks second to only cancer among diseases that adults fear the most. Many people do not understand that there are dozens of causes for memory loss besides Alzheimer’s, including many that can be fully reversed if caught early.
Among the questions Dr. Doraiswamy is prepared to answer:
What are the best tests to determine if it is or isn’t Alzheimer’s?
How do you determine your own risk?
What are the family-care options? Medications for memory? Medications for behavior problems? Preventive strategies?
What has been learned from the latest clinical trials?
How can you improve your memory?
Please leave your questions in the comments section.
You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.
Autumn is traditionally the time of year when people start snapping up Apple products. It’s also when investors, in anticipation of another blockbuster holiday season from the company, do the same with Apple shares.
But this year, even though Apple’s iPhones and iPads don’t seem to have lost any of their allure for holiday shoppers, its stock seems headed straight for the discount rack.
On Wednesday, Apple’s shares slid 3.8 percent. They outpaced a broader decline in the stock market set off by investors’ uncertainty about how the outcome of the presidential election will affect taxes and consumer demand for the types of products Apple sells.
During the campaign, President Obama proposed increasing capital gains tax rates for people earning over $250,000 to 20 percent from the existing rate of 15 percent, and his re-election Tuesday night may have prompted some investors to unload shares in anticipation of a broader sell-off in stocks ahead of a tax increase, analysts said.
Owners of Apple shares would have good reason to fear higher taxes on capital gains. Apple shares have appreciated mightily since 2005 when they were about $35 apiece; they began this year at $411 and peaked at more than $700 in late September. The drop on Wednesday only added to what has been a grim few weeks for Apple shares, which have fallen over 20 percent from that peak, to $558 on Wednesday.
The decline has followed a sequence of seemingly unrelated events, including a broader-than-normal overhaul of its product line that is expected to hurt profit margins in the near term and a rare shake-up in Apple’s senior ranks.
“It has just been wave after wave of bad news,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.
The events also do little to diminish the questions reflecting longer-term concerns with which investors pepper analysts like Mr. Munster. How much bigger can Apple — with a $525 billion market value, the biggest of any corporation — get? Won’t Apple soon run out of people to sell iPhones, iPads and Macs to?
Those concerns have been one of the biggest reasons Apple’s stock has long traded at a discount, strange as that may sound, to its peers in the tech business. Apple’s forward price-to-earnings ratio — the value of the company’s stock divided by its expected earnings per share for the coming year — is just under 10.
That figure is 14 for Google, 32 for Facebook and 131 for Amazon. Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, said the company generally did not comment on its share price.
Apple executives have said they still see huge opportunities for the company and it is still growing at a remarkable clip for a company its size. During its last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 29, Apple’s revenue jumped 45 percent to $156.51 billion and its profits rose 61 percent to $41.73 billion.
While Apple’s most recent financial report was mostly in line with Wall Street forecasts, the company warned that its profit margin would most likely decline in the holiday quarter because of a sweeping refresh of the company’s iPad, iMac and MacBook laptop lines.
Apple products often cost more to make during their first months on the market, but those costs come down as the process becomes more efficient and volumes increase. The company said its new iPad Mini would be among those products with low profit margins, raising concerns that Apple will make less money as it competes in lower-priced segments of the mobile market.
Apple’s worrisome financial report came just days before Apple announced the departure of Scott Forstall, the head of its mobile software development, in a move that it said was aimed at increasing collaboration between departments at the company. Apple split the responsibilities of Mr. Forstall, who was a divisive figure at the company, among an array of other Apple executives.
The surprise firing of Mr. Forstall was unusual for Apple, where turnover in its senior ranks is rare compared to other big technology companies.
Then late last week, the research firm IDC reported that 75 percent of smartphones shipped in the third quarter were Android phones, the main rival to Apple in mobile software. A year earlier, Google, the maker of Android software, had market share of 57.5 percent. The iPhone’s share rose at a much slower pace, jumping to 14.9 percent of shipments from 13.8 percent, IDC estimated.
But Apple is still making huge profits from the mobile market, far more than Google is. Even with the recent decline in its shares, Apple’s stock is still up 38 percent for the year.
David Rolfe, chief investment officer at Wedgewood Partners, which counts Apple as its biggest stock holding, said he remained confident that Apple was one of the best investments around.
“The bears think Apple is in the eighth inning,” Mr. Rolfe said. “We think they’re still in the fourth or fifth inning.”
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