Five Venture Capital Plays of the Week

Former Square COO and prolific angel investor Keith Rabois is joining Khosla Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's top-tier venture-capital firms.

Popular car-sharing startup Lyft has raised $60 million in a major new round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm started by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen. The new funding comes as the ride-sharing market is exploding, with upstart firms like Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar leveraging smart phone technology to provide alternatives to traditional transportation options like taxi-cabs and rental cars.

Popular car-sharing startup Lyft has raised $60 million in a major new round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm started by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen. The new funding comes as the ride-sharing market is exploding, with upstart firms like Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar leveraging smart phone technology to provide alternatives to traditional transportation options like taxi-cabs and rental cars.

If you look beyond the over-hyped, revenue-less startups in New York, you'll find other entrepreneurs who are quiet and heads-down, creating real businesses.

(Reuters) - Pinterest, the increasingly popular online bulletin board, raised $100 million in a financing round that values the U.S. start-up at $1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The funding is led by Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten, with Pinterest's existing venture-capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners also participating, the report said. Pinterest could not immediately be reached by Reuters for comments. ...

The former British prime minister will help shape public policy for companies in Khosla Ventures' $1.1-billion tech portfolio. The green technology movement in Silicon Valley landed an international name Monday when Khosla Ventures said former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would join the venture capital firm as a senior advisor.

The Silicon Valley venture capital firm will finance early and mid-stage clean energy and information technology companies as well as high-risk 'science experiments.' In a sign that green technology investing is bouncing back, Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures said Tuesday that it had raised $1.1 billion to spur development of renewable energy and other clean technologies.

Alec Andronikov, 29, has started and sold two companies, and he may have another hit on his hands. That's if Lindsay Lohan has it her way.