D: All Things Digital, The Wall Street Journal technology conference, is in full swing in Southern California.

Netflix (NFLX) Chief Executive Reed Hastings led off the proceedings this morning talking about international expansion. The Internet movie outfit is going to launch in Toronto first, a “bold” move, going to Canada, he jested. Then, Netflix will open it’s doors in an undisclosed foreign market shortly thereafter.

The upshot: international expansion could hurt profits. “We tell investors that the better it goes, the more money we are going to lose because we are going to invest” more in expansion, Hastings says. He says it takes one to three years for Netflix to establish itself in a new country, which is relatively fast. Hastings, who is a Microsoft (MSFT) board member, would not comment about hedge fund manager David Einhorn’s call for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s ouster.

He was wiling to discuss his own open letter to short sellers to cover their negative bets, even calling short-selling “healthy” for markets.

“I’m not trying to have a battle with the shorts,” (but) if you have a friend on the short side and you think he’s losing money, and you think he’s wrong, then you want to tell him.”

The conference, now in its ninth year, got off to a rip roaring start last night when News Corp. “acting CEO” Jane Lynch, the star of the Fox Television hit Glee, recommended comic strips be added to the WSJ and other humorous mandates involving Sara Palin and talk show shock host, Glenn Beck.

Google (GOOG) Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was the opening night keynote. The former CEO, who serves as an advisor to President Obama, says he has no intention to take a cabinet post or agency job, which had been rumored. But he will be active in the coming campaign just as he was during the President’s first election.

Note: For further ongoing coverage of D, see also former Tech Trader editor Eric Savitz’s blog at Forbes.com.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

To those who think the woman- an RBS staffer who was promoted twice while she was (maybe) having an affair with Goodwin- “impaired” his “decision-making capacity,” which ultimately resulted in the bank having 82% of its ass owned by the government, think again! An internal investigation has concluded that 1) the woman was no more of a distraction than a hobby 2) he didn’t empower her to make any “big” decisions and 3) Goodwin was fully capable of running RBS into the ground without anyone else’s help, thankyouverymuch.

The Royal Bank of Scotland employee at the centre of an alleged affair with Sir Fred Goodwin, its former chief executive, played no part in important strategic decisions at the bank, according to an internal investigation. People familiar with the probe said it focused on whether the employee, who remains at the bank, was involved in any key decision-making work, such as the bank’s acquisition of ABN Amro, judging credit risk, assessing regulatory issues or conducting internal audits. “We have only known about this for several weeks, and as soon as we did know we conducted an investigation,” said one person familiar with the process. “We are satisfied the employee in question did not compromise the bank in any way.”

[A] person with knowledge of the internal investigation said it was “slightly ludicrous” to suggest that Sir Fred’s decision-making capacity had been impaired by an extramarital affair. “There is no suggestion that he spent day after day locked away in a secret bolt-hole,” he said. “He went on holidays, he had hobbies. This was comparable.”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

If you’re a workaholic at a tech startup (or anywhere else), it’s probably a challenge to make sure you’re eating tasty, healthy meals, at least if you aren’t being fed by the chefs at a company like Google. So a startup called Gobble just launched an online marketplace where you can order home-cooked meals for pickup and delivery.

Gobble is currently in beta testing in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it also announced that it has raised $1.2 million in funding. On its frequently asked questions page, the Palo Alto, Calif. company describes itself as “peer-to-peer lasagna” and says it can serve both individuals and companies that want to feed their workers.

When I was growing up, I remember my parents (both workaholic engineers) would sometimes order meals from friends. This is a similar idea, but on a larger scale and searchable. Users go to the site, enter their geographic area, then see a list of meals they can purchase. They can narrow their search based on date (Gobble doesn’t support same-day orders), dietary restrictions, and by using tags like “cheesy” and “meaty”.

Gobble says chefs apply to work with the company and are selected based on their personality, knowledge, and the quality of their food. Several of them are also nutritionists who specialize in creating healthy meals.

The company is founder and chief executive Ooshma Garg’s second startup. She says that the idea emerged, in part, from her experience at her first company, Anapata, where she found herself eating fast food and takeout three times a day. Gobble’s investors include Greylock Discovery Fund, Felicis Ventures (which also invested in VentureBeat), Founder Collective, and Ron Conway’s SV Angel.

Companies: Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund, Gobble, Greylock, SV Angel

People: Ooshma Garg, Ron Conway

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Popular flash sales site Gilt Groupe announced today that it has raised another $138 million in funding, and is now reportedly valued at around $1 billion.

The round exceeds earlier reports that pegged the New York City company’s new funding between $80 and $100 million. Japanese telecom Softbank invested $62.5 million, while separately contributing enough funding to Gilt Groupe Japan to take a 50 percent stake in the company. The remaining $75.5 million came from previous investors General Atlantic and Matrix Partners, as well as new backers Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, Pinnacle Ventures, TriplePoint Capital, and Eastward Capital.

Gilt Groupe says it now has more than 3.5 million users. It’s pretty obvious by now that there’s a lot of cash flowing into online shopping (deals sites Groupon and LivingSocial have both raised big new rounds), but Gilt Groupe made its name by focusing on luxury products and services, something that has carried over when it expands beyond flash sales, for example into Groupon-like deals at Gilt City.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, chief executive Kevin Ryan said the company will bring in $500 million in revenue for the year ending in June. And while he said there are no specific plans to go public, this will probably be Gilt Groupe’s final round of funding.

Companies: Gilt Groupe, Softbank

People: Kevin Ryan

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

A profit is nearly within reach.

Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester said the “sins from the past are receding” after the government-controlled lender posted a bigger-than-estimated first quarter loss.

“There are still a few of them with us, and there will be several more quarters obviously in which that receding happens,” Hester told reporters today. “As we tick off each of these items from the past, then that growing operating profit will become increasingly available to shareholders.”

RBS CEO Says ‘Sins From the Past’ Fading as Bank Has Loss [Bloomberg]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Wikinvest, a finance startup that’s trying to challenge established sites like Yahoo Finance with more interactive, data-rich features, just announced that it will be launching a new product called SigFig.

So what does it actually do? Well, the site isn’t up yet, and it sounds like the site will only be placeholder until the service launches this summer. But Wikinvest says that SigFig will “provide personalized portfolio advice and investment analysis”.

On one level, that may sound like an incremental improvement to Wikinvest’s existing service, which allows already allows users to track stocks, especially their own portfolio. I suspect this is bigger, however. Not only is Wikinvest launching this under a new name, it has already recruited a number new investors and advisors specifically for SigFig, including Owen Van Natta (former chief operating officer of Facebook and former chief executive at Myspace), Steve Schultz (former general manager of Yahoo Finance), Charlie Cheever (Quora co-founder and former lead with Facebook Platform), and several others. (The press release isn’t clear about who actually invested and who is just an advisor.)

WIkinvest previously raised $2.5 million from DCM.

[image from the 20th Century Fox film Wall Street]
[image via

Tags: SigFig

Companies: wikinvest

People: charlie cheever, Owen Van Natta, Steve Schultz

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Allen Weintraub is a convicted felon who’s racked up his share of securities violations and, in 2007, filed for bankruptcy. He’s also a man with a dream- several in fact- that last March, he went after. In short, Weintraub wanted to buy AMR Corp- all of it. Eastman Kodak Company, too. And unlike some people, who are all talk and not a lot of action, Weintraub set out to make his dreams a reality.

In the AMR case, Weintraub sent a letter March 29 to “Gerald Arpey” offering $9.75 per share of AMR stock, an offer worth about $3.25 billion. Gerard Arpey is chairman, president and chief executive of AMR. That followed Weintraub’s March 19 offer for all shares of Kodak for about $1.3 billion.

Apparently Weintraub initiative wasn’t cool with the SEC, which filed a suit against him today, that Weintraub would characterize as bull shit typical of people trying to hold him down.

In the suit filed Tuesday in a federal district court in Florida, the SEC alleges that Allen Weintraub and his Sterling Global Holdings “have substantially no assets” and “lack the means to complete the tender offers.”

In its complaint, the SEC said Weintraub tried to obtain bank financing for his tender offers for Kodak and AMR, but banks turned him down…On April 26, Weintraub sent a follow-up letter to Arpey urging him to negotiate with him. “I won’t even address the personal comments, because in my opinion they are without merit,” Weintraub wrote.

Why can’t people step back and give him room to work? If he says he’ll pay, he’ll pay. Fascists.

[Dallas News]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Disqus, a startup offering a commenting system across a number of sites (including VentureBeat), says it’s turning four years old this week, and it’s using the occasion to reveal some big numbers. Not quite the biggest, but perhaps the most important is the fact that the company has raised $10 million in new funding from North Bridge Venture Partners and Union Square Venture Partners.

The company says it’s seeing rapid growth, having more than doubled the amount of unique visitors to Disqus sites since November 2010, from 200 million to nearly 500 million. There are now 750,000 “communities” using Disqus and 35 million commenters have created profiles. The company is also pointing to a recent study by Lijit showing that 75 percent of sites using a third-party commenting system use Disqus.

All of that adds a little substance to the comments earlier this year by co-founder and chief executive Daniel Ha (no relation to me) that he wasn’t too worried about the threat from Facebook’s new commenting system for publishers.

“They’ve put a stake in the ground –- they see a lot of value in what we do,” Ha said at the time. “But we haven’t seen [Facebook] make a dent in our traction, which is why we aren’t shaking in our boots.”

San Francisco-based Disqus was incubated at Y Combinator. It previously raised a $500,000 round from backers including Union Square, Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners, Naval Ravikant, and Aydin Senkut (who is also an investor in VentureBeat).

[image via Flickr/Robert Scoble]

Tags: commenting systems

Companies: Disqus

People: Daniel Ha

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Shares of OpenTable (OPEN) are down are down $5.10, or almost 5%, at $99.90, after the company reported revenue about in line with expectations, EPS above estimates, and said it appointed a new CEO.

Q1 revenue rose 59%, year over year, to $33.7 million, slightly ahead of the average $33.5 million estimate. EPS of 28 cents was 5 cents better than expected.

Separately, the company said it appointed CFO Matthew Roberts as its new chief executive, replacing Jeffrey Jordon, who will become executive chairman.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

$$$ The death of bin Laden could create even more instability to the Middle East and northern African nations now undergoing turmoil, potentially driving up oil prices and creating more economic strife for the U.S. and other developed countries. “I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but I’m not sure [it is] great,” Ruben Vardanian, chief executive of the Moscow-based asset management company Troika Dialog Group, told a moderator at the Milken Conference. [MarketWatch]

$$$ Debt-Limit Deniers Don’t Buy ’Chicken Little’ Warnings [Bloomberg]

$$$ Buffett [with a 25 pound box of See's peanut brittle] Believes Reputation After Sokol Is Still Intact [Reuters]

$$$ Steve Cohen may pick up $55 million in pocket change on two paintings [Bloomberg]

$$$ Study: Paul Krugman Is America’s Most Correct Columnist [Daily Intel]

$$$ Ex-Lawyer For Kenneth Star Admits Role In Fraud [WSJ]

$$$ Rejecting Wall Street, Business School Graduates Turn To Entrepreneurship [Dealbook]

$$$ Ross Says It `Was Time to Harvest‘ ICG Investment‎ [Bloomberg via WaPo]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker