Beyond Silicon Valley

More than a dozen venture capitalists are scheduled to speak next Monday and Tuesday at the Pacific Northwest Venture Capital Symposium in Bellevue. The event is subtitled: "Opportunities Beyond Silicon Valley."

The lineup looks pretty good, with venture capitalists such as OVP Venture Partners' Chad Waite, Ignition's Jonathan Roberts and Draper Fisher Jurvetson's Jennifer Fonstad on the agenda.

I hope to attend and provide some updates about hot topics.

News Corp.'s Internet push

When I interviewed Scout Media CEO Jim Heckman last month about the sale of his Seattle online sports network to News Corp., he said the deal was one of many that Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate was planning.

Heckman wasn't kidding. Yesterday, News Corp. purchased IGN Entertainment -- operator of the GameSpy.com and Rottentomatoes.com Web sites -- for $650 million.

It also recently gobbled up Intermix Media -- owner of the popular MySpace.com social networking Web site -- for $580 million. And it is targeting an undisclosed search engine as part of a planned $2 billion Internet spending spree.

The three recent acquisitions share one thing in common: they are all consumer Web sites that are wildly popular with the coveted 18 to 34 year old demographic.

This Bloomberg News story provides a good overview of News Corp.'s recent acquisitions and includes an interesting tidbit about how much the company paid for Scout Media. It put the price tag at about $60 million, which is what I speculated in this earlier post.

And here is The New York Times story, which also put the figure on Scout at $60 million.

Teranode, OnRequest attract money

Two new venture capital financings to report today.

OnRequest Images, a Seattle company that matches advertising agencies with professional photographers, raised $8 million from Frazier Technology Ventures and Maveron.

And Seattle's Teranode -- whose software helps scientists design laboratory experiments -- landed $9.5 million from Cargill Ventures, Trident Capital, Ignition Partners and WRF Capital.

Here's the story I did on OnRequest, which also includes information about Frazier Technology Ventures naming former RealNetworks executive Paul Bialek as partner.

And here is a short brief on Teranode.

Now that Labor Day has passed and many venture capitalists are back from their summer vacations, I expect that these two deals will not be the last this month.