FLATIRON PARTNERS

In 1996, Fred Wilson co-founded Flatiron Partners with his partner Jerry Colonna. Flatiron, named after the Flatiron District, became a successful, primarily follow-on investment fund in the New York City area, with investments in notable Dot-com bubble successes and failures including Alacra, comScore Networks, Yoyodyne, Geocities, Kozmo.com, New York Times Digital, PlanetOut, Return Path, Scout electromedia, Standard Media International, Starmedia, and VitaminShoppe.com. The firm's 1996 fund c... apitalized at $150 million with two investors: SOFTBANK Technology Ventures and Chase Capital Partners, the private-equity arm of Chase Manhattan Corp. The firm later raised another fund capitalized at $500 million with Chase Capital Partners as the sole active LP. In 2001, Wilson and Colonna essentially shut down Flatiron (although they still manage what remains of its portfolio). Wilson offered a blunt assessment in July 2005 in Business 2.0, "Yeah, boy, we really screwed up a bunch of things."More