Capitalists

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

So much time is wasted searching for talent. So many job fairs, college recruiters and human resources staffs troll for warm bodies and fresh minds, all making the same mistakes: recruiting on credentials rather than potential, experience rather than imagination. Bad hiring is expensive, time-consuming and utterly wasteful for any business. George Anders, a veteran business journalist, provides some help, asking questions of everyone including the U.S. Special Forces, Silicon Valley venture capitalists and basketball scouts to help us understand how to identify exceptional talent.

Rosscomp Corp. said it has suspended operations while executives negotiate with creditors and prospective buyers to determine whether the company will survive. The ailing Santa Ana computer parts maker said it received from creditors a second notice of default for non-payment of more than $100,000 in interest and principal on $938,000, two-year convertible subordinated notes.

Getting investors excited about long-lasting batteries was a challenge for Leyden Energy in the early days. Raising funds was even harder. Then came the iPhone. The popularity of Apple's mobile device and other smartphones sent engineers into a frenzy to create batteries that could outlast the power hogs. The Fremont, Calif., lithium-ion battery company was already working on a solution, and as a result it recently raised $20 million in venture funding. Energy storage companies such as Leyden Energy led clean technology investment during the third quarter by raking in $421 million in venture capital, a 1,932% increase from the same period last year, according to an Ernst & Young report.

Re "Uneasy Calm Settles Over Jakarta," May 17: Reading the list of capitalist rats deserting Indonesia--General Motors, FedEx, Citibank--reminds one of 20 years ago, when Iran descended into chaos. Large capital is drawn to undemocratic regimes, where it is convenient to exploit the masses for the short term. With democratic rights limited, unions banned and an elite willing to do business, American capitalists forsake our heritage for the "opportunities" of investment. Indonesia proves this is a dubious recipe for long-term economic growth as well as a tragedy for the populace.

In what would have been an unaccustomed move for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist not too long ago, Alan Salzman recently flew to Copenhagen to attend a conference on climate change and schmooze government policymakers. His mission: Explain the role of venture capitalists and their green-tech start-ups in cleaning up the environment. "All aspects of clean tech bump up against government regulations," said Salzman, whose firm, VantagePoint Venture Partners, has funded such high-profile firms as electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. and solar power plant developer BrightSource Energy Inc. A few years ago, venture capitalists rarely ventured too far from Sand Hill Road, a stretch of low-slung office parks nestled among redwood trees in the hills above Stanford University that is home to some of the world's biggest venture firms.

For cartoonists of a certain age, it used to be so simple. There was us, and there were the pigs: crony capitalists, clueless chauvinists and head-banging cops. For the capitalists, like Pat Oliphant's sloppy bankers or John Sherffius' morphing Wall Street icon, the symbol is making a comeback, not that it ever went away. As Steve Breen demonstrates, bacon-bearing politicos have been the place-holders for the unflattering visual sobriquet for years. Pork chops anyone? -- Joel Pett

Re "U.S. Firms 'Work' for China Workers," World Report, July 19: We at the Federation for a Democratic China, a worldwide organization, firmly believe that international business interests can be induced to contribute positively to China's democratization--a win-win situation on a long-term basis. A good place to start is a code of conduct to prevent them from being vulture capitalists. R. T. HUANG Los Angeles

Under capitalism, the average citizen enjoys more freedom and greater happiness than under any other economic system. Therefore, I have been a longtime advocate of the establishment of the Saturday before Labor Day as a national holiday, Capital Day. I believe that competition is our healthy way of cleaning up non-competitive firms, which do not provide consumer products at good prices. Success in our economic system is not guaranteed, as many entrepreneurs try several ventures before they succeed.

Re "Truth Is, We Need More Goldwaters," Commentary, Aug. 16: Pete Hamill should know that those of us who miss Barry Goldwater are large in number, represent many shades of political opinion and long for elected leaders who give citizens the respect of telling them the truth. For us Republicans who still remember our party's environmental legacy, Goldwater is a genuine hero. Goldwater was a deeply patriotic man who understood in his bones that conservation of America's great natural heritage is truly conservative, unlike the mob of shouting pundits, crony capitalists and spin-doctoring buffoons whose twisted ideology brands protection of our air, water and land as radical.

Since succeeding his brother Fidel as president in 2008, Raul Castro has repeatedly promised to adopt market reforms intended to help save Cuba's ailing economy. And he has delivered, for the most part, slowly but steadily. The year he took over, Castro made it easier for Cubans to buy cellphones. Last year, the government agreed to increase the number of permits issued for privately run barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants and other businesses in the hopes of spurring grass-roots economic activity.

Venture capitalists, thrashed by months of bad economic news, are scrambling to find investors after pulling together the smallest pot of money in eight years. Firms raised $1.7 billion in the third quarter — less than half the $3.5 billion collected in the same period last year and the lowest amount since the third quarter of 2003, said the National Venture Capital Assn. "August and September were just abysmal for any type of venture-backed situation," said David Menlow, president of research firm IPOfinancial.com in Millburn, N.J. "Investors want to feel there's hope for the marketplace rather than feeling that everyone is standing at the edge of the abyss.

Silicon Valley, the politically liberal technology hub, is an unlikely incubator of conservative Christian activism. But a group of its venture capitalists is backing an ambitious project that seeks to affect the 2012 election by registering 5 million new conservative Christians to vote. The nonprofit organization United in Purpose is using sophisticated data-mining techniques to compile a database of every unregistered born-again and evangelical Christian and conservative Catholic in the country.

In today's celebrity culture, there's no shortage of big names who ride the rollercoaster of success and shame. Just look at Charlie Sheen or Arnold Schwarzenegger. But those outsized celebs have nothing on Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith, the man who bequeathed to the city what is now Griffith Park. Griffith charmed the city of Los Angeles with his generosity, only to shock it later with an act of unhinged violence. Although he would grant Los Angeles two more major gifts, Griffith never completely resuscitated his reputation.

It has taken businessman John Aglialoro nearly 20 years to realize his ambition of making a movie out of "Atlas Shrugged," the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand that has sold more than 7 million copies and has as passionate a following among many political conservatives and libertarians as "Twilight" has among teen girls. But the version of the book coming to theaters Friday is decidedly independent, low-cost and even makeshift. Shot for a modest $10 million by a first-time director with a cast of little-known actors, "Atlas Shrugged: Part I," the first in an expected trilogy, will play on about 300 screens in 80 markets.

What's with the kitty? Yvon Chouinard invented better, eco-friendly rock-climbing gear in his own smithy. He climbed from a hardscrabble childhood in the Maine backwoods to become a legendary outdoorsman, philanthropist, environmentalist and pioneering businessman, the founder of Patagonia Inc. There probably isn't a major mountain range in the world he hasn't climbed, but it's the slippery slope of global eco-business where he's registered his...

I read with amusement the front-page story "Firms Pick Up Travel Tab for State Pension Officials" (Sept. 8). As a teacher of political science at Cal State Fullerton and a contributor to the Public Employees' Retirement System, I was pleased to learn that my pension funds are being supervised by people aware that we live in a global economy. I have no choice but to trust that these officials will make the wisest financial decisions possible given the worldwide options existing in the international marketplace.

Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston's campaign for a fourth term in November has a number of strategic elements, not the least of which are a special appeal to younger voters and a heavy solicitation of campaign contributions from the housing and real estate industries and from venture capitalists. This weekend, Cranston sent a message to all those groups by announcing new legislation and by taking on the Senate Finance Committee's new tax reform bill.

I've been wondering for a couple of years whether someone would bring Los Angeles the kind of not-for-profit news website that has popped up in cities like San Diego, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Austin and Chicago. That day may be drawing closer, as venture capitalist and former newspaper executive Tom Unterman has been quietly exploring the formation of such an organization to focus on public policy issues. Unterman has been quietly discussing the idea with a handful of community leaders around Los Angeles on and off for at least a year, with his deliberations picking up momentum of late.

Rand Paul, the diminutive, curly-haired eye-doctor-turned-candidate, stood last week before the cameras in a county GOP office and declared he had someone he'd like to thank. That person, he said, was the one "who made this election juggernaut possible this year, the person who's responsible for the growth of the Republican Party more than any other one individual. It's the guy in the White House. " And with that, Paul showed himself to be not so bad at the occupation he claims to loathe.