Friday, January 20, 2006
LAVA Honors Bob Hoff of Crosspoint, Best Funding Deals
The Los Angeles Venture Association held its annual LAVA Awards Dinner last night, honoring Bob Hoff of Crosspoint Venture Partners with a Lifetime Achievement award. Hoff, a General Partner at Crosspoint, headed the firm's Orange County presence and has been instrumental in cultivating entrepreneurship in the area. Hoff was an investor in STAC Electronics, Pairgain, and Efficient Networks, was a former director of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and was presented the award by Crosspoint's John Mumford. The Best Venture Funding of the year went to Amp'd Mobile, and was accepted by CEO Peter Adderton. The award for the Best Biotech Financing to Therox, which is developing an aqueous oxygen treatment useful in the treatment of heart attacks. The Best Software Financing award went to Vendare Media, a search media firm, and LAVA also awarded the Best IPO to Fastclick, which went public last April and was quickly snapped up by competitor ValueClick in September. The best M&A exit went to Intermix Media (operators of MySpace.com) for its acquisition by News Corp. The Los Angeles Venture Association is a local organization made up of venture capital firms and service providers. Proceeds from last night's dinner went to CASA, Court Appoint Special Advocates, a charity that supports children placed into the foster care system.