The e-trader group, announced its acquisition of the award-winning discount site, Koodos. One of the UK’s leading fashion e-tailers, the site offers consumer discounts of up to 80%. The deal, involving a part cash, part share consideration for an undisclosed sum, represents the next step in the company’s strategy to become the UK’s leading e-commerce business focused on the fast growing clearance and overstock market.

Miriam Lahage, original CEO, will remain with the company for the interim to ensure a smooth transition as she passes over to Miranda Grubb, Managing Director of whatafind.com and new CEO of Koodos

Intel Capital point out, quite rightly, that venture funds may be wary of start ups and early stage ventures in the future. This is simply because it is very hard to make money from them. As a general rule, the earlier stage you invest, the more likely you are to lose your money. The later you invest, (and the more money you have), the less skill is required to make your money work. In our view, the emerging kings and queens of the early stage investment world will be experienced entrepreneurs who have made money on multiple projects and are now bringing more than cash to a project. They will however have to be prepared to make mistakes that cost them along the way.

Reid Hoffman, ex PayPal and founder of LinkedIn has joined Greylock as a partner as Greylock closes a $575 million new fund. This is good news for Valley Start ups as Reid has been an active angel for many years and has invested over $4 million on start ups including Facebook and Flickr. It is also good news because Reid has actually founded, built and sold companies himself. As he himself says,

“The current next generation of great V.C.’s will be folks who have a depth of operating experience, preferably even company-founding experience. It’s critical for being really helpful to entrepreneurs to actually have experienced the problems yourself.” Reid Hoffman

Well a big, ‘Duh!’ to that. This is probably not Reid’s most insightful comment of all time – he is a smart guy. The fact that he says it at all however is a sad indictment of the venture industry where for too long, too many smart people without operational experience have been ruling the lives of entrepreneurs that do. This is how it used to be, or how it was supposed to be but the VC industry forgot. This is even more true in Europe.

As the venture industry takes a long, hard, forced look at itself, it would do well to remember that part of the problem that it has created for the asset class is that there are too many VCs who don’t know how to build a business from the inside.

Reid is one of a number of Silicon Valley visitors to Cambridge in the third week of November. For information about how to apply to meet Reid and others in private (but free) round table workshops, go here.

Please note you need to apply before 7th November.

Anyone that has ever started a company will recognise this feeling.

Luckily, not all the time.

Much excitement at BLN Towers this afternoon as the final line up of participants in the forthcoming Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge (SVC2C) is announced. With founders from companies including PayPal, Tesla Motors, LinkedIn, Serious Materials, Sling Media, Kiva and a thing called Twitter. This is a serious bunch of people and the opportunity to learn from their experiences, as well as teach them a little bit about what we know here is not to be missed.

We are running a series of (free) CEO workshops with selected Cleantech or Internet CEOs and the participants on the morning of 21st November. If you would like to apply to participate in this programme, you need to apply by 7th November (next week). Click here to register but READ THE NOTES BEFORE YOU DO!

Here is the list of the currently confirmed SVC2C participants*:

• Allen Morgan, Mayfield Fund, Managing Director
• Biz Stone, Twitter, Co-Founder
• Blake Krikorian, Sling Media, Founder
• Bob Cart, Greenvolts, Founder
• Brett Bullington, Angel Investor
• Caterina Fake, Flickr, Founder
• Hans Peter Brondmo, Plum, Founder
• Hugo Barra, Google Mobile, Group Product Manager
• James Rosenthal, Google, Strategic Partnerships
• Jeff Saperstein, Author, Writer
• Jigar Shah, Carbon War Room, CEO
• Julie Hanna Faris, Kiva, Chair of the Board
• Limvirak Chea, Google, New Business Development
• Mark Mitchell, Serious Materials, COO
• Nick Heller, Google, Strategic Partnerships
• Peter Thiel, PayPal, Founder, Investor
• Premal Shah, Kiva, Founder
• Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn, Founder, Exec Chairman
• Rob Jonas, Google, Director of Strategic Partnerships
• Robert Swerling, Google, New Business Development
• Salar Kamangar, Google, Adwords Inventor
• Ted Shelton, The Conversation Group, Partner
• Toby Prehn, G2 Energy, Founder, Investor
• Marc Tarpenning, Tesla, Founder

* Obviously, whilst these individuals are currently confirmed to attend the programme, we cannot guarantee the attendance of any individual due to circustances beyond our control.

For more on the Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge Programme, click here.

To apply to participate in the CEO workshops, click here to register but READ THE NOTES BEFORE YOU DO!

Garmin down 18%, Tom Tom down 9.5% after Google announce free live Sat Nav to mobile phones. Having just been give a quote of £3,100 + VAT and labour to replace the Sat Nav/Air Con system in my car, I take some pleasure in the knowledge that I now have an alternative. Sat Nav on my phone: £0. Plug-in ceramic car heater from Amazon: £17.97. Making £3,500 while someone else loses about a $billion: weird.

Google, through their PowerMeter product have partnerered with AlertMe and British Gas to offer a home energy management solution that allows consumers to monitor and manage their home energy use via iGoogle. This is the only UK Google PowerMeter product available in the UK although at £99 per year, it is a little way from being free, Google’s favourite price, to consumers yet. In June 2009, AlertMe announced an £8 million Series B round of funding from leading clean technology investors including Good Energies, Index Ventures, SET VP, and Vantage Point, bringing the total amount raised to £13 million.

Tim Weller knows his way round B2B publishing. He founded Incisive Media in 1995 with 13 employees and has led it ever since doing some very high profile deals along the way. At peak, some 2,000 people worked at Incisive although the group has been through a painful restructuring over the past 18 months it is now an organisation of 700 people.

Tim Weller, CEO, Incisive Media

Restructuring the business has also meant that Incisive has focused on building the business it wants to be going forward in a way that has been harder for many other publishers. Tim just wrote his first blog post – a surprise as Incisive is remarkably web-centric as he proved at our recent discussion.  A bit of a rallying call for the troops, but some very valuable insights into what he is thinking.

One thing particularly stood out for. It is a hugely important point. I agree with him and I think will increasingly make a difference to established publishers as they make the move into new forms of distribution:

“Branded content and established brands matter more than ever; they stand out from the market noise, representing authority, trust and integrity. And, quality journalism represents a greater barrier to entry today, regardless of platforms and technology innovations.”

You can read the full post here.