mine-is-bigger

5 best videos of the $233 million megayacht Tom Perkins no longer wants

Nicholas Carlson · 03/26/08 05:00PM

At 289 feet, the Maltese Falcon, is the world's largest sailing yacht. Its owner, venture capitalist Tom Perkins, is over it. He's looking for a buyer to take the Falcon off his hands for about $233 million, according to The Wealth Report blog. Of the Falcon, Perkins once told Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes: "I just wanted the biggest boat." It was a beautiful sentiment, people, and we're here to honor it. So below, the five best videos on the Web catching the Maltese Falcon in all its glory.

Early Netscape engineer admits to owning the Mozilla M5

Nicholas Carlson · 03/25/08 05:40PM

Yesterday we speculated that a BMW M5 with a "Mozilla" vanity plate might belong to Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker, who could afford the $80,000 car with her $500,000-a-year salary. We were wrong. "I will admit to it being mine," Lou Montulli, one of Netscape's founding engineers, commented on the post. On his personal site, Montulli admits to more.

Larry Ellison and fellow billionaire trade accusations of rigging the America's Cup

Jackson West · 03/24/08 07:00PM

The America's Cup is the world's premier opportunity for the ultrariches to prove whose is bigger. But if you think the race has anything to do with sailing, you'd be mistaken — it's about who can muster the most capital. This year the victor could be rigged by lawyers, not sailors, thanks to a spat between billionaire software tycoon Larry Ellison and billionaire biotech tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli.

ArcSight's Robert Shaw gets a free yacht-club membership and you don't

Nicholas Carlson · 02/18/08 02:20PM

Of all the companies gone public in the past year, only one pays for its CEO's yacht-club membership. That's security-software maker ArcSight, which went public on Valentine's Day. The CEO is Robert Shaw. According to Footnoted, Shaw's other benefits include an apartment near ArcSight's Cupertino headquarters, a car for when he's in San Francisco and airfare for travel between Shaw's homes in Montana and Cabo San Lucas. All of which isn't as unusual as the yacht-club membership.

Meghan Asha's party plane

Nicholas Carlson · 02/07/08 05:00PM

Videoblogger Meghan Asha, who pals around with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington from time to time, comes from a wealthy Los Gatos family, we hear. The evidence? She flies around the country in a private plane. Here's what that party venue in the sky looks like. That's Asha between fellow geek-luster Julia Allison and comedian Demetri Martin. A tight squeeze.

Steve Jurvetson fails to make the mile-high club

Nicholas Carlson · 12/11/07 05:19PM


Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson has a thing for rockets. He once built and launched a miniature replica of the Nazis' V2 rocket, the weapon Hitler used to devastate London during World War II. Well, the early investor in Hotmail, is back at it. Now director of space operations at local blogger Todd Lappin's faux company, Telstar Logistics, Jurvetson and a team traveled to Farmington, California to launch the Telstar Logistics Expediter over the weekend. They strapped a video camera to it, so enjoy the ride. All 5,186 feet of it. So close, and yet so far.

Saudi Prince buys world's biggest plane — are Google boys next?

Jordan Golson · 11/12/07 06:43PM

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia is purchasing a custom Airbus A380. The biggest passenger plane in the world — 6,000 sq. ft. — will cost more than $400 million once it is outfitted with all the accoutrements necessary to fly one of the richest men in the world. The prince already owns a custom Boeing 747, previously the biggest private plane in the world, and has a fortune worth around $20 billion. Don't count out Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, though. The Google boys are worth around $20 billion each and also have an affinity for custom jets.

Larry Ellison has at least one oversized ball

Owen Thomas · 11/10/07 09:29PM


I've always heard Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had big cojones. No photographic proof, alas, has arrived at Valleywag yet. But this gigantic disco ball — so large it had to be transported by flatbed truck — for an event at Oracle's OpenWorld conference, which starts tomorrow, seems proof enough. To make room for Oracle's other outsized ambitions, San Francisco has closed off Howard Street through next Saturday. (Photo by Royce Perez)

Actually, the biggest boner for Facebook belongs to Alexa

Nicholas Carlson · 11/01/07 11:38AM

A loyal reader and apparent Facebook enthusiast notes in his Facebook status, "so valleywag apparently has a bigger boner for FB than i do ... weird, huh?" I can only assume this comment comes in response to our chart yesterday showing Facebook's vast superiority to the gang of also-rans Google has rousted up to support OpenSocial. But here's the thing. No way do we have the biggest boner for Facebook. That prize goes to Alexa. Care to inspect for yourself?

Owen Thomas · 10/04/07 06:29PM

"Eat your heart out Larry and Sergey." — Reporter Mary Anne Ostrom, describing the Airbus A380 which landed earlier today at San Francisco International Airport. The humongous jet can carry as many as 800 people — 16 times the passenger capacity of the Google founders' party plane. [San Jose Mercury News]