Bijan Sabet Videos

Venture Outlook: Investing in the Real-Time Internet Participants: Bijan Sabet (@bijan) - General Partner, Spark Capital Howard Lindzon (@howardlindzon) - Founder, Social Leverage Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) - moderator Ron Conway - Founder and Managing Partner, Angel Investors Los Angeles October 27, 2009

We're celebrating Internet Week New York with a special edition of The Deal's award-winning Behind the Money online video show, in which we ask entrepreneurs and venture capitalists why they love New York. Special thanks to our guests: Drop.io's Sam Lessin, Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet, KPG Ventures' Dave Hill, Buddy Media's Mike Lazerow, NY Tech Meetup's Nate Westheimer and mediabistro.com's Laurel Touby. And big thanks to The Deal's George White and Maria Woehr for conceiving, producing and editing the piece. Internet Week New York, which kicks off Monday, is a festival of events saluting New York's thriving Internet industry. It is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in cooperation with the City of New York and The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting. Like the Web itself, Internet Week is open: Anyone can attend events, and anyone can throw events citywide. Look for us at Silicon Alley Insider's Startup 2009, where 10 startups will compete for a $25,000 investment from General Catalyst Partners and $50,000 in services, and where we'll be conducting video interviews with presenters all day on Wednesday, June 3.

"We're looking for entrepreneurs that are taking on these very ambitious projects and that have passion about what they're doing and are really trying to do something very big," says Spark Capital general partner Bijan Sabet in Part 2 of The Deal's Behind the Money video interview. Spark recently launched a new seed-stage program to nurture entrepreneurs in New York and Boston, where Spark is based. "It's not like we're sitting around at Spark, saying, 'We'd love to find a company that's building a widget for Facebook'. We're looking for something really different." As an example of a startup with a big idea, Sabet points to Spark portfolio company Boxee, which develops media center software and which raised $4 million in December from Spark and its frequent New York co-investor, Union Square Ventures. Sabet, who is 40, points out that entrepreneurs in their 20s and early 30s have a competitive advantage: They have never known a world without the Internet. About Spark portfolio company founders David Karp (Tumblr Inc.), Charles Forman (OMGPOP, previously known as Iminlikewithyou) and Evan Williams (Twitter Inc.), Sabet says, "They grew up on the Internet. They're Net natives. When they think about things, they have an instinct that is unique compared with entrepreneurs who are 10, 15, 20 years older." Incidentally, in the video Sabet mentions having worked at Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) in the past. Sabet jointed the company as part of the team that created WebTV Networks, which Microsoft bought for $425 million in August of 1997. Click here to see Part 1 of our chat with Sabet, in which he talks about co-investing with Union Square and others. Click here to see our video with Tumblr's David Karp, here for our video with OMGPOP's Charles Forman and here for our video with Boxee's Avner Ronen.Watch the video interview below or download it at iTunes.

Bijan Sabet, co-founder of Boston's Spark Capital, talks about partnering with other VC firms, especially New York's Union Square Ventures in this episode of The Deal's Behind the Money video show. Spark and Union Square co-invest in Boxee, Bug Labs, Covestor, Tumblr Inc. and Twitter Inc. To get a feel for the mechanics of co-investing, we asked Sabet to walk us through how he met David Karp, the 22-year-old founder of Tumblr Inc., and introduced him to Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson. In December, the two firms invested $4.5 million in Tumblr, following up on a $775,000 round the previous year that included TV producer Fred Seibert, entrepreneurs Jakob Lodwick and Martin Varsavsky, as well as Betaworks, an innovative incubator in New York. To find the next generation of Twitters and Tumblr, last week Spark announced a new seed-stage program called Start@Spark. Through the new program, Spark will invest up to $250,000 each in promising startups in the Northeast. Click here to watch The Deal's video interview with David Karp about raising Tumblr's Series B. Click here to watch our interview with Union Square Ventures partners Brad Burnham, Albert Wenger and Fred Wilson about Hacking Education.Watch the video interview below or download it at iTunes.

Today, Wallstrip proves yet again that the Blackberry can make people do strange things. Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM)

(3-2-07) Wallstrip BlackBerry champion and innovative venture dude Bijan Sabet rests his thumbs while he chats with Lindsay. Correction: We displayed the logo for Spark Capital Investment Bank, rather than Spark Capital. Bijan Sabet has no affiliation with the bank.