A prominent Silicon Valley investment firm has hired a college sophomore as an associate venture capitalist. Before you rush out to dump all your tech stocks in anticipation of the coming bubble crash, know this: She's a high achieving college sophomore.
No one quite understood why venture capitalist Stewart Alsop was handing out salamis at Alsop Louie Partners' annual party at Tres Agaves Tuesday night. Power investors in the crowd: Ann Winblad and Ron Conway. The boring business gossip: Sequoia's funereal presentation to entrepreneurs on the coming financial apocalypse. The more interesting personal gossip: Alsop is dating Robin Wolaner, the founder of Parenting magazine — see, everyone's a founder of something in the Valley! — and the author of CEO confessional Naked in the Boardroom. (Since I first wrote this post, Wolaner emailed me to mention that she's also, much more recently, the founder of TeeBeeDee, a social networking website.)Alsop hastened to clarify to partygoers that Wolaner is his "no. 1 girlfriend." Why the enumeration? He still has a habit of picking up other women. I mean that literally. I saw him pick a blonde girl off the floor and give her a full-body hug at the party. That's leverage, of some kind or another. I took one of Stewart's sausages to give to the host at my next party.
