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@Dropbox is excited to welcome Bono & The Edge as investors. Thanks for the support and look forward to great things!

Revealed: Bono And The Edge of U2 Are Dropbox Investors  In the annals of celebrities investing in tech startups, this one’s looking especially smart. Bono and The Edge, the singer and lead guitarist of Irish rock band U2, got into Dropbox’s $250 million second round last year, they said in a tweet today. It’s the first individual, publicly announced startup investment for the vocalist, to our knowledge. And unlike grandly-conceived social media startups or late-stage investments that celebrities have gone after in recent years, Dropbox is still in its early days. I imagine some khakis-and-blue-shirt VCs are a little jealous of the multiples ahead. Bono, of course, has something of a track record in tech investing already. He’s the co-founder and managing director of Elevation Partners, which has bet widely over the years with money in Palm, Forbes, gaming companies, Yelp and Facebook. Never mind some of those others, results from the last two have inspired the team to go raise a new $1 billion investment fund, according to reports. But until now, Bono’s role has been more high-level, not so much in sourcing deals with the latest startups growing out of the Valley floor. The Dropbox investment — and the backstory — suggest that this is could change. Bono and The Edge seem to have gotten into the deal via a relationship that developed years ago, in a different era. Back in 2007, entrepreneur brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi had just launched a fast-growing music app called iLike on Facebook. They had a new feature they wanted to launch, a way for artists to post videos to fans through the app, so they went through some mutual friends to reach out to U2. The result: a video interview with Bono and the band about a previously-unreleased track, Wave of Sorrow. The relationship has developed from there, it appears. The Partovis were early angel investors in Dropbox, and have maintained contact. Judging from the photo recently posted to Twitter, they introduced the band members to founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Even if Bono doesn’t get deeper into other early-stage companies, he has a lot of work left here — doing follow on rounds on Dropbox, possibly via Elevation. Dropbox@Dropbox @Dropbox is excited to welcome Bono & The Edge as investors. Thanks for the support and look forward to great things! pic.twitter.com/17lpnfx2 2 Apr 12   CRUNCHBASE DROPBOX Company: Dropbox Website: dropbox.com Launch Date: June 1, 2007 Funding: $257M Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi.

Frustrated by working from multiple computers, Drew was inspired to create a service that would let people bring all their files anywhere, with no need to email around attachments. Drew created a demo of Dropbox and showed it to fellow MIT student Arash Ferdowsi, who dropped out with only one semester left to help make Dropbox a reality.

Dierks Bentley Performs ‘Home’ After an Intro From Bono at 2012 ACM Awards

Ethan Miller, Getty Images
Dierks Bentley has friends in high places. No, seriously. The singer performed his smash hit song ‘Home’ at the 2012 ACM Awards tonight (April 1), but not before he was introduced by none other than Bono. Yes, that Bono, of U2 fame.

Bono delivered a pre-taped intro, gushing that Bentley’s music makes him feel patriotic about America. Mind you, Bono is a tried and true Irishman. The singer said, “America is not just a geography or a country, but an idea.” That is pretty much country music in a nutshell, that’s for sure. And with that, Bentley began his song, after Bono called him a friend. We told ya Bentley has A-list pals.

Performing on the part of the stage that jutted out into the crowd, Bentley turned in a perfect rendition of the song while strumming his acoustic guitar. The crowd connected with Bentley as he soared through the song, which is the title track of his latest album, which recently hit No. 1 on the radio airplay charts.

We are left to wonder, though, Maybe we can expect a Bentley + Bono duet at the 2013 ACMs?

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Bono\’s homage at the CMA\’\'s

VIDEO LINKED ABOVE!
Source : By: Amy Sciarretto | Yesterday

Source: NME
A new charity compilation featuring unreleased tracks by U2, Coldplay and Beck has been announced.

Model Christy Turlington Burns is teaming up with coffee giants Starbucks to release ‘Every Mother Counts Volume 2′, the second album to benefit the organisation she founded of the same name. Every Mother Counts is an awareness and mobilisation campaign which seeks to reduce the maternal mortality rate.

The compilation, which will be available to buy from May 1-29 in the US, features an acoustic version of Coldplay’s early hit ‘Yellow’, U2′s Bono and the Edge’s acoustic cut of ‘Original Of The Species,’ and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder’s ‘Skipping’. No release date has yet been set for the UK.

Beck’s ‘Corrina, Corrina’ and tracks by David Bowie, Sting and Lauryn Hill also feature on the record.

Turlington Burns told Rolling Stone: Bono and Chris Martin were great supporters of the project the first time around, and when I knew I wanted to include men on this album they were obvious choices.
She added: “They are also both fathers to daughters. I generally wanted a diverse group of artists who were parents.”

The full track listing for ‘Every Mother Counts Volume 2′ is as follows:

U2′s Bono And The Edge – ‘Original Of The Species’
Eddie Vedder – ‘Skipping’
Paul Simon And Edie Brickell – ‘Pretty Day’
Faith Hill – ‘Wish For You’
Sade – ‘The Sweetest Gift”
Lauryn Hill – ‘I Remember’
Rita Wilson – ‘Baby I’m Yours’
Diana Krall – ‘Don’t Fence Me In’
Seal – ‘Secret’
Dave Matthews Band – ‘Sister’
Sting – ‘Fragilidad’
Alanis Morissette – ‘Magical Child’
Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros – ‘Mother’
David Bowie – ‘Everyone Says ‘Hi’
Cedella Marley – ‘Get Up Stand Up’
Beck – ‘Corrina, Corrina’
Rufus Wainwright – ‘Instead Of The Dead’
Patti Smith – ‘Somalia’
Coldplay – ‘Yellow’

Facebook’s decision to halt trading of shares on secondary markets is a necessary calming manouvre intended to pave the way for the necessary investor road show ahead of May’s IPO.

It was widely reported last night that Facebook was halting trading of shares on secondary markets like SharesPost and SecondMarket Inc as it prepares for the IPO.

The move is a necessary one in the so-called quiet period leading up to the flotation.

But it will be anything but quiet as Facebook’s top brass parade through a seemingly never-ending line of institutional investors who will ultimately decide the success of the IPO.

In its filing in February, Facebook revealed it hopes to raise US$5bn in an IPO in early May. Its SEC filing, Facebook revealed that in 2011 it achieved revenues of US$3.7bn, up from US$1.9bn a year earlier. It derived a net profit in 2011 of US$1bn, up from US$606m last year.

Facebook has total assets of US$6.3bn and liabilities of US$1.4bn.

However, the most eagerly anticipated IPO of the decade could be mired by the actions of Yahoo!, which chose its timing well to hit Facebook with a claim that the social network has been infringing its patents. Yahoo! alleges Facebook infringed patents relating to patency, online advertising, customisation and messaging.

In a filing yesterday, Facebook warned that an unfavourable outcome to the patent litigation could hit its business materially.

The social network counts around 850m users worldwide but it is expected to breach the 1bn-user milestone later this year.

So who gets what if IPO is a success?
So who gets what when Facebook IPOs in May? Employees of Facebook hold 30pc in the company while founder Mark Zuckerberg holds 24pc of the company’s stock.

Ireland’s own Bono from rock band U2 is set to enjoy a Beautiful (pay) Day when Facebook goes public. The rock star is one of the lead investors in Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm that spent more than €156m for a 1.5pc stake in the social network. Elevation has seen its stake increase more than sevenfold in just more than two years. The shares are now worth between €1.1bn and €2bn.

Other investors include Digital Sky Technologies (10pc), Accel Partners (8pc), Dustin Moskowitz (6pc), Eduardo Saverin (5pc), Sean Parker (4pc), Goldman Sachs clients (3pc), Microsoft (1.3pc), Peter Thiel (3pc), Greylock Partners (1.4pc), Meritech Capital Partners (1.6pc), Chris Hughes (1pc), Li Ka-shing (0.75pc), Interpublic Group (0.5pc) and Goldman Sachs (0.8pc).

John Kennedy |

(Yet another article.. U2 IS INDEED BACK IN THE STUDIO!)
By Ken Sweeney Entertainment Editor
Wednesday Mar 21 2012

THESE shoes are made for rocking. Long known as the shyest man in music, U2′s Adam Clayton let his footwear do the talking yesterday.

The bass player took time out from recording the group’s 13th album to help launch ‘Walk In My Shoes’, a new initiative from St Patrick’s University Hospital in support of positive mental health for young people.

Wearing a pair of eye-catching Christian Louboutin black studded shoes, the 52-year-old was following in the footsteps of his mother, Jo Clayton.

Mrs Clayton was a founding member of the Friends of St Patrick’s and a tireless fundraiser for the Dublin hospital, located between Heuston Station and St James’s Hospital, until her death last year.

Essential

“I think it is essential to take care of people with mental health problems. Money raised will be used to help put young people back on the road to mental health,” Adam told the Irish Independent.

Eimear Keohane, fundraising manager of St Patrick’s, praised the guitarist for taking on the role as ambassador for ‘Walk In My Shoes’.

She revealed he was carrying on the good work done by his late mother who passed away, aged 77, last August after a battle with cancer.

“We are honoured today that Adam is continuing in his mother’s footsteps by promoting the ‘Walk In My Shoes’ campaign,” she said.

“Jo Clayton was a valued fundraiser for the St Patrick’s Hospital Foundation for many years, from the early 1970s.”

Sarah Surgenor, communications manager of St Patrick’s University Hospital, said the presence of the famous rock musician at the launch would help raise awareness of the need for funds to support young adults in need of mental health services.

Mr Clayton last wore his black studded Louboutin shoes, worth €500, at a party he hosted to celebrate his 52nd birthday last week.

RTE’s John Murray and Daithi O Se, rugby pundit Brent Pope, snooker player Ken Doherty and ‘Dragon’s Den’ member and publisher Norah Casey were among others who took part in the launch.

Snooker player Ken Doherty, who wore striking spats, said his motivation for getting involved was the loss of so many young lives. “I have been to eight funeral in the last two years, and seven of those were suicides. The most important thing is that people in difficulty talk and don’t bottle it up,” said Mr Doherty who said there was a lot of “pressure” on sports stars.

‘Dragon’s Den’ star Norah Casey, who walked into the Four Seasons wearing two odd shoes, said that as CEO of Harmonia, Ireland’s largest magazine publishing company, she made a point of taking on employees who were open about suffering from depression.

“I think it’s brave of them to own up to it, and therefore I should be brave as an employer. But I think sometimes employers are scared of taking on people with mental health issues,” said Ms Casey, who at one point in her career nursed in a psychiatric hospital.

John Murray of RTE Radio One, the official radio partner of the campaign, said life had grown “more difficult” for young people in recent years.

“Young adults once moved from school to college to work but things aren’t like that any more, which has a lot of parents worried. Any campaign that helps to raise awareness of how young people cope with issues they may be struggling with is worth highlighting”

The campaign name originated from a young service user at St Patrick’s University Hospital who said he wished his “friends could walk in my shoes” so they could understand his mental illness.

Taking place on April 26, ‘Walk In My Shoes’ will see people all over Ireland wearing unusual or mismatched shoes while donating €2 to provide mental health services to young adults aged 18 to 25 years.

More details can be found on www.walkinmyshoes.ie

- Ken Sweeney Entertainment Editor

Irish Independent

Read more: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/get-on-your-boots-adam-steps-into-limelight-for-charity-3056299.html#ixzz1qARg8pvp