Ram Shriram is No. 271 on the Forbes Billionaires list. He’s a veteran of Netscape and Amazon, and an investor in StumbleUpon and Google. He owes his place on the list to the latter, where, as an angel investor, he had more shares than anyone besides the company’s founders at the time of its IPO. Now he acts as a “sherpa” to young companies, helping guide them to success. He also participated in financial-planning startup Mint’s latest round of financing. Mint CEO Aaron Patzer shares a story about Shriram’s investing habits after the jump. If you want this guy as your startup sherpa, take notes.

Ram Shriram actually came in about a month after we closed our round. At the time we only had about $200k open in the round. Unlike most investors (who wait a week, talk to their friends, bring you back for multiple meetings), Ram said “Okay, I’m in” before I was done with the presentation. He then explained that he had no upper limit on what he could invest (good problem to have!), but that his accountants lose track if he doesn’t invest at least $500k. So needless to say, we opened the round up a bit.

(Photo courtesy of Ram Shriram)

NBC has announced yet another new video product — and left behind a wake of confusion. NBC Direct, which is launching this fall, will offer ad-supported downloads of its popular properties that can be viewed up to a week after they air on television. A convenient feature for anyone wanting to watch the shows on their time, for free. But NBC’s video strategy, since its break up with iTunes, is exploratory at best. It’s testing out this download service, while selling episodes on Amazon Unbox, and presumably continues to offer streaming content from its website. And what’s to happen to Hulu.com, its YouTube-killing venture with News Corp.? It looks like someone can’t make up his mind, or is taking the precaution of not putting all its video eggs in one basket.

Source:Valleywag

Congratulations to entrepreneur Aaron Patzer, pictured above with an oversized novelty check. His financial-services startup Mint was the big winner in this week’s TechCrunch40 conference, bringing home the $50,000 prize for being the “best in show.” So, what was the overall view of TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis’s big event? This take, sent to us late last night from an out-of-town journalist, explains it better than we could.

I’m drunk. But that’s okay, because my editor spiked my TechCrunch piece. “This isn’t what we expected at all,” he said of the show, having been lured by the big-brain judges and the presumption that Arrington’s top-secret reveal would be another iPhone. I suspect the next such blind event will have trouble getting reporters to show up, except the sort such as Wired who make themselves part of the story. These effectively worked for Arrington this week, publishing what he wanted when he wanted. Given the endless EMBARGO EMBARGO EMBARGO rules I couldn’t keep straight, it was a relief to have no actual news to break. I forget my point, but see you somewhere else next year.