But AdMob’s founder and CEO, Omar Hamoui, really deserves the attention for building a company that in three years became the largest player of mobile Web ads and ultimately, a coveted jewel for the largest Internet company.

Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital and the first investor in AdMob, was quick to praise Hamoui, telling VentureWire that the entrepreneur “has a very keen perception of mobile and a very unconventional approach. All the things you hear today, since the iPhone, about the independent developer - Omar identified that community years ago.

“He kept a maniacal focus on the independent developer,” Goetz continued. “He ignored the carriers, he ignored the ‘walled garden.’ When he started, there was no economy around mobile. It was the inception of this market. He’s a special entrepreneur, and he built an extraordinary business in a short time.” (It’s worth noting that Sequoia has added a picture of Hamoui on its sparsely decorated home page as a tribute to him.)

Hamoui, 32, dropped out of the Wharton School to start up AdMob in January 2006 in an effort to find the best platform for bringing Internet advertising to cellphones. As the story goes, Hamoui originally built a mobile service in 2005 called Fotochatter designed to let people easily share their online photos with friends who can view and comment on them through their mobile phones. But he found it difficult to market the mobile service online, so he set out to start another company to help advertisers do just that.

Hamoui’s first hire was Russell Buckley, now AdMob’s head of European operations, who originally reviewed Fotochatter on his blog MobHappy years ago. That blog is how the pair connected. Earlier this year in May, Buckley reminisced about that chance encounter in a blog post and added: “Over 80 Billion ads and 3 years later, we’ve come [a long] way since then, have over 100 employees and a valuation at least in the hundreds of million dollar range.”

Buckley then posted a short series that shared “some of the lessons [Hamoui] learned” while building AdMob. While we wait to hear back from Hamoui about the Google deal (he commented on his blog here), we found it useful to direct our entrepreneur readers to Buckley’s blog posts which tap into the mind of Hamoui, who offers his thoughts on company launches, deals and negotiations, sales and marketing, competitive threats and communication.

As an example, and in light of the Google acquisition, here are Hamoui’s short pieces of wisdom about deals and negotations, as written by Buckley who adds his comments:

Understand what you really have to lose (which is usually not much)

If you are a person with a laptop and an idea, don’t worry about messing up the 100m dollar business you think you will someday be.

Russell adds: It’s hard to emphasise how important this is. In reality, most people have very little real downside to having a go and even if the idea doesn’t work out (and most don’t let’s remember) you’ll still learn a ton, which will add considerably to your value in business.

I’d also add, on a related note, that far too many entrepreneurs get paranoid about protecting their idea to the point of paralysis. The value of most ideas is in the execution, not in what the concept actually is. To make it reality, you need to share it – actually, with as many people as possible, counter-intuitive though this might seem. And in my view, forget about NDAs and the like. They’re pretty useless all round as far as I’m concerned, but for one man and a laptop, a total waste of time and effort, which at best just create speed breakers for your idea.

Leave something on the table

If your partner feels as good as you walking away from the table, you are much more likely to have a successful relationship

Russell adds: This is so important. Many self-proclaimed “great deal makers” focus too much on getting the best for themselves and wonder why the relationship falls apart or never achieves its potential.

Wait until the rubber hits the road to evaluate a deal

Don’t get too excited until the results actualize. Most deals are not as good as they look on paper

Russell adds: Oh yes. If I had a penny….etc

It’s also worth remembering that many of the best deals come from existing relationships with partners or customers. This isn’t as sexy as hunting down the big mammoth stomping around in the jungle, but effective account management is a skill you ignore at your peril and every company could improve this aspect of their operation.

The Google offer no doubt looked good on paper. Hamoui will be staying on with AdMob and Google for now, but you can bet once he’s ready to move on to start another company, venture capitalists will be lining up to invest.

If you want to hear more from Hamoui, below is a one-year-old, half-hour interview by Robert Scoble who around the two-minute mark gets Hamoui to talk about his negotiations with venture investors, including Sequoia Capital, which invested in the company in 2006. Hamoui said he was introduced to Sequoia after he didn’t like a term sheet from another venture firm. On a Thursday night, he flew out to meet Sequoia, even though he had until Friday to decide whether to accept the other firm’s offer. Within 24 hours, Sequoia offered Hamoui a competing term sheet and he signed it two minutes before the other offer’s deadline. Sequoia’s partners deserve credit for seeing something in Hamoui, who was the only employee of the company.

“I had to do the pitch [to Sequoia] like four or five times,” he tells Scoble, “because it has to be a unanimous decision. Every partner has to see it, and every partner has to vote yes otherwise they won’t do it….The overall market opportunity is extremely substantial. And they tend to be market investors, so they’re whole theory is that if the market is spectacular, even a sub-optimal product with a sub-optimal team will do fantastically well. Not that, hopefully, we are either.”

Associated Press

A new study, A Wake-Up Call for America, by accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP documents an alarming decline in publicly traded U.S. companies – 22% since 1991 – and has some thoughts on what to do about it.

In the five years before the Internet bubble, there were 520 initial public offerings per year versus 122 per year post-bubble, evidence of a “serious and systemic dysfunction” in the U.S. stock market, said David Weild, a Grant Thornton capital adviser and co-author of the report. At the current rate, the number of U.S. publicly traded companies will continue to decline, much less grow. Although Sarbanes-Oxley rules are the main scapegoat, the decline began with the advent of online brokerages in 1996 and the subsequent imposition of new order-handling rules by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Weild said.

As a result the U.S. lags other global markets and this failure might have cost the nation as many as 22 million jobs over the last decade, the study says. Weild, in an online seminar coinciding with the report’s release, went so far as the call the situation a “national emergency.”

The solution, according to Weild and his co-author, Edward Kim, also a Grant Thornton capital markets adviser, is to recreate the feeder system of small-cap public companies. Their study has two sets of proposals.

The first, which Weild and Kim floated in an earlier paper and have since refined, calls for an alternative public market aimed at small companies that would roll back some of the changes wrought by the electronic marketplace and regulatory reform to enable brokerage firms to earn larger commissions and to require them to provide research coverage. In this market, research analysts would be permitted to work with and be compensated by investment banks.

The second group of proposals is intended to create a more robust market for private company stock to improve liquidity for later-stage companies until they are ready to go public. It’s similar to the first in seeking to provide incentives for traders and analysts but also takes aim at some of the complex rules that limit marketing of private-company shares and restrict the number of shareholders.

Whether Congress, bogged down with health care legislation, is going to address these matters anytime soon is an open question. The SEC also has its hands full, but is about to convene its annual forum on small business capital formation in Washington on Nov. 19. Last year’s forum recommended several changes to facilitate the exchange of private-company stock, including a proposed regulation to allow limited advertising. With the change of administrations, that proposed rule is still pending, but the meeting next week will take a fresh look at the situation and perhaps get the ball rolling on at least considering some of what Grant Thornton and others propose.

Art by Mike Lucas of Dow Jones

Advanced Power Projects Inc., which has a technology that makes power plants more efficient, has decided this week to shut its doors and will try to reopen next week as a new company, VentureWire reported.

Fremont, Calif.-based Advanced Power’s chief executive, Tom Mason, said in an interview that the company’s preferred shareholders didn’t like the direction in which the company was headed and therefore asked that it be shut down.

The company was founded in March 2008 with a $13 million Series A round led by Bay Partners and Sequoia Capital, and also including Redpoint Ventures and Aubrey K. McClendon, chief executive officer, chairman and co-founder of Chesapeake Energy Corp.

Read the rest of VentureWire’s story about Advanced Power’s closure and planned restart here.

Below is a list of other venture capital-backed companies in alphabetical order that have gone belly up this year, as reported by VentureWire. If you know of any other such companies that have closed their doors this year, please send us a tip at vcdispatch@dowjones.com.

Allux Medical Inc., Menlo Park, Calif. - For the past four years, it had been developing devices for treating upper airway and dermatological inflammatory diseases. But the company shut down after raising at least $13 million from Prospect Venture Partners, Three Arch Partners and Venrock, according to our records.

Archus Orthopedics Inc., Redmond, Wash. - The spinal device company quietly dissolved this summer. It was founded in July 2001 and was in clinical trials for a device for an alternative to spinal fusion surgery for the treatment of leg and back pain caused by moderate-to-severe degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis. Archus most recently raised a $35 million Series C round in January 2008 from Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., InterWest Partners, MPM Capital and Polaris Venture Partners.

Argolyn Bioscience Inc., Durham, N.C. - The peptide drug developer has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after preclinical studies did not show convincing enough data to move its lead pain drug forward. Argolyn received a $15.8 million commitment in Series A-1 funding in June 2007, a round that was voted Deal of the Year by industry group Southeast BIO. Intersouth Partners and Quaker BioVentures led the round, joined by Amgen Ventures.

Aspen Medtech Inc., Bellevue, Wash. - Unable to secure enough funds to continue operations, venture-backed medical device incubator Aspen Medtech Inc. shut down. Aspen Medtech was founded in mid-2007 with $1 million in funding from Prospect Venture Partners and Three Arch Partners. The company intended to launch one company in a medical device field to be determined.

Autonomic Networks Inc., Mountain View, Calif. - The company decided to shut its doors after failing to secure a new round of venture capital. Formerly known as Vernier Networks, the company started out in 2001 as a provider of network access control products that use computer equipment to manage the people and programs that have access to corporate networks. Under the new name the company made equipment that enables organizations to remain compliant with network security protocols. Investors included Allegis Capital, DCM, Foundation Capital, Masthead Venture Partners, Utah Ventures (now UV Partners), Venrock and Weber Capital.

BrightScale Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif. - The maker of chips used for video processing shut down after it “came to the end of [its] rope,” according to its main invesor, Adams Capital Management. In 2003, Adams Capital joined individual backers to invest $6.2 million in BrightScale, formerly known as Connex Technology.

Cogentus Pharmaceuticals Inc., Menlo Park, Calif. - The pharma filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after raising more than $80 million, including a $62.5 million round just over a year ago, from investors such as Apothecary Capital, Keffi Group, Prospect Venture Partners, Pinnacle Ventures and Ridgeback Capital. Cogent intended to conduct Phase III trials for a pill designed to provide protective cardiovascular benefits while reducing gastrointestinal side effects associated with anti-platelet therapy.

Coghead Inc., Redwood City, Calif. - With dwindling financial resources and an outstanding loan from Western Technology Investment, the Web application company shut down its operations and sold its intellectual property to one of its investors, SAP AG.  American Capital Strategies Ltd. and El Dorado Ventures had also invested in Coghead.

Cswitch Inc., Santa Clara, Calif. - The maker of communications semiconductors failed to raise enough funding to bring its chips into production and abandoned an effort to sell the company, so it shut down. Cswitch raised $41 million over two rounds from investors including ATA Ventures, Bay Partners, Charles River Ventures, GF Private Equity Group, Harris & Harris Group, Masters Capital, Micron Ventures and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co.

DiObex Inc., San Francisco - Its venture backers - which include Domain Associates, Inventages Venture Capital, FirstMark Capital, Sofinnova Ventures and others -  cut the company’s headcount to zero and planned to sell DiObex’s asset, a diabetes drug, after failing to raise capital on acceptable terms. Formed in 2003, raised about $30 million.

Dynogen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Waltham, Mass. - A planned merger with a special purpose acquisition company sputtered last year, and its lead drug candidate later failed in clinical trials, leading to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Dynogen raised about $67 million from a group that included Atlas Venture, Abingworth Management, HealthCare Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Pappas Ventures and SV Life Sciences.

Elephant Pharmacy Inc., Berkeley, Calif. - “Burdened with obligations” too big for the company to carry on, the operator of health and wellness stores shut its doors and is liquidating under Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The company had raised at least $49 million from Tudor Investment’s Rapter Global fund, JPMorgan Chase’s Bay Area Equity Fund., CVS Corp., David Hadley of D.F. Hadley & Co., and Arthur Rubinfield, former executive vice president of Starbucks Corp.

GreenFuel Technologies Corp., Cambridge, Mass. - Building an algae greenhouse designed to use carbon dioxide emissions from a cement plant to create biofuel, GreenFuel went out of business in May after it failed to obtain financing for a test project with Aurantia SA, a Spanish renewable-energy firm. The company raised $33 million in total in four rounds of venture capital funding from Access Industries, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Polaris Venture Partners.

Hammerhead Systems Inc., Mountain View, Calif. - Big customers, a top-flight engineering staff and $110 million in venture backing was not enough to save Hammerhead, a data-switching company that closed its doors. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in May. Investors included Apex Venture Partners, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, Foundation Capital, Lighthouse Capital Partners, Mayfield Fund, FirstMark Capital and Silver Creek Ventures.

Innovative Spinal Technologies Inc., Mansfield, Mass. - The spinal-surgery device maker reportedly shut its doors and filed for bankruptcy after seven years in operation. It had raised nearly $75 million in funding from investors including GE Healthcare, JPMorgan Partners, MPM Capital, OrbiMed Advisors and Oxford Finance.

Kadoink Inc., San Francisco - After failing to secure a second round of financing,  the provider of a mobile content delivery and advertising platform discontinued its service. It raised a $7 million Series A round in November 2007 from Sutter Hill Ventures and angel investors.  It also had a $2 million loan from Hercules Technology Growth Capital.

LucidEra Inc., San Mateo, Calif. - Following the company’s closure in June, LucidEra, an on-demand business intelligence company, sold some of its technology assets to Pentaho Corp., a maker of open-source business intelligence software. LucidEra raised a $7 million Series A in 2005, the year it was founded, from Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners. Crosslink Capital came in to lead a $15.6 million Series B round in August 2007.

LV Sensors Inc., Emeryville, Calif. - A maker of semiconductors, LV Sensors Inc. closed its doors in the spring after failing to raise a new round of capital. LV Sensors raised $27 million in two rounds of venture capital from Mayfield Fund, Panorama Capital and U.S. Venture Partners. LV Sensors was designing micro-electromechanical devices that were to be used as wireless sensors in automobiles.

ManiaTV Inc., Los Angeles - The company was originally founded to produce Internet TV shows at a substantially lower cost than traditional TV. Under the watch of its venture backers, ManiaTV shifted its focus away from content and towards building technology platforms for ad networks and user-generated content. But after raising $26 million in venture capital, the company’s assets found their way into the hands of its lender and shut down in March. Drew Massey, who founded the company, bought the assets and restarted the company under the same name with a renewed focus on its original business plan.

MetaRAM Inc., San Jose - Boasting some high-profile executives and investors, the semiconductor company shut down in July. The company’s technology was designed to reduce the costs of servers and workstations by up to 90%. MetaRAM raised at least $8 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures and Storm Ventures.

Nanochip Inc., Fremont, Calif. - Early in September, the memory circuits maker set out to raise the $70 million it would need to finish development of its initial chips and bring them into production. On the advice of its investment banker, it gave up in October and officially shut its doors in May. Nanochip had raised $47.4 million in venture capital from investors including JK&B Capital, Intel Capital and Merrill Lynch. New Enterprise Associates also held a stake, but the firm had not invested in Nanochip since the company’s 2004 Series B round.

NebuAd Inc., Redwood City, Calif. - The online behavorial tracking start-up, which drew Congressional scrutiny over its privacy policy, revealed in court filings that it shut down. NubuAd’s “deep packet inspection” tracking technology delivered advertising tied to consumers’ interests through partnerships with Internet service providers. The company’s demise was a blow to Menlo Ventures and Sierra Ventures, which bet more than $30 million on NebuAd.

Nevis Networks Inc., Mountain View, Calif. - The company, which made a range of products that protect local-area networks (LANs) from unauthorized users, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Nevis had 165 employees in its heyday, and more than $32 million in backing from some of the venture industry’s top firms: BlueRun Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and NewPath Ventures.

nTag Interactive Corp., Boston - After seven years of trying to modernize the corporate conference industry with digital name tags that can communicate with each other wirelessly, nTag filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Pilot House Ventures and Sevin Rosen Funds had invested more than $20 million in the company starting in 2004.

OmniSonics Medical Technologies Inc., Wilmington, Mass. - The developer of an ultrasound technology that breaks up blood clots filed to liquidate under Chapter 7 bankruptcy in March. The company had raised more than $90 million from investors including Domain Associates, General Electric Pension Trust, Nomura Phase4 Ventures and Prism VentureWorks.

OQO Inc., San Francisco - Known for its sophisticated pocket-sized PCs, the company faced cash problems and tried to find a buyer but came up short. The company raised about $50 million in venture funding from investors including Paladin Capital Group, Azure Capital Partners, AsiaTech Management and Motorola Ventures. OQO, which was founded in 2000, tried to differentiate itself by offering the full power of a laptop computer in a size that would fit in a jacket pocket.

Ortega InfoSystems Inc., Fremont, Calif. - The company, which provided remote viewing of security facilities through a Web browser, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Previous investors included Harbinger Venture Management and Sycamore Ventures, which provided Ortega with at least $20 million. The last reported funding for the company was an $11.8 million Series C round in December 2002.

Pegasus Biologics Inc., St. Paul, Minn. - In May, the company ceased operations after unsuccessful fund-raising efforts and went into a sealed bid auction process for its assets. In July, it agreed to sell the assets to Synovis Life Science Technologies Inc. for $12.1 million in cash. The purchase price is less than the roughly $38 million in equity and debt raised by Pegasus. Previous investors in the company included Affinity Capital Management, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Life Science Angels, Onset Ventures and Three Arch Partners.

ProQuo Inc., San Diego - The start-up offered to filter out people’s junk mail, but instead it went into the junk heap in July. ProQuo had raised $15 million over two rounds from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mission Ventures. Founded in 2006, ProQuo provided a service designed to help consumers remove their names from thousands of marketing lists, data brokers and other organizations that send unsolicited postal mail, while continuing to receive the offers they want.

PulseWave RF Inc. - After nearly two years in product-launch delays, PulseWave RF’s first product - power amplifier chips for cellular base stations - was released at the high point of the 2008 economic collapse. Though it landed early customers, it was not able to get the large deals its venture investors were hoping for. With $12 million still in the bank - thanks to the $26 million raised from investors Austin Ventures, Bay Partners and Oak Investment Partners - PulseWave RF ceased operations in January. Founder David Kelly bought the assets from the lender and has restarted the company as PWRF Inc.

Recordant Inc., Alpharetta, Ga. - In February, after a number of customer contracts fell through, the provider of sales analytics technology went bankrupt. Marc Wallenstein, one of its first four employees and its vice president of sales, decided to buy the company’s intellectual property and restart the company as Say It Again LLC. Recordant Recordant took in $12 million in venture capital from Aurora Funds, FirstMark Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners.

SafePage Corp., Menlo Park, Calif. - Backed by Canaan Partners and founded in early 2008, SafePage was looking to build a “secure personal portal” that would give people quick access to their private Web sites. The eventual plan was to provide access to this data using online “widgets.” It went straight from stealth mode to the start-up graveyard.

SiCortex Inc., Maynard, Mass. - A high-performance computing company backed by around $68 million in venture capital, SiCortex shut down after failing to raise adequate funding, making the decision to sell its assets and intellectual property. SiCortex raised about $68 million from Flagship Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners, Prism Ventures, JK&B Capital and Chevron Technology Ventures.

Silicon Navigator Corp., Cupertino, Calif. - Venture investors decided to pull the plug on this company, founded in 2003 as a provider of electronic design automation software for chipmakers. Silicon Navigator filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in January. Investors included Cadence Design Systems Inc., Intel Capital and ITU Ventures.

Sotto Wireless Inc., Bellevue, Wash. - The stealthy wireless service provider, whose executives and investors are linked to pioneering telecom company McCaw Cellular Communications Inc., failed to make enough traction and shut down operations. It raised roughly $14 million from Ignition Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

SplashCast Corp., Portland, Ore. - The company, which lets people watch television shows within social networking sites, was unable to raise new funding and decided to shut down. In March 2008, SplashCast announced $4 million in Series A financing led by Australian media and advertising veteran Mark Bayliss with participation from angel group Emergent Growth Fund.

TallyGenicom LP, Chantilly, Va. - Printing products company Printronix Inc. tapped its owner Vector Capital for about $10 million in additional equity as part of a deal to buy competitor TallyGenicom assets out of bankruptcy. TallyGenicom, which was backed by Arsenal Capital Partners and founded in 2003, filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware.

TeachFirst Inc., Seattle - After a promising beginning, the educational training company fell on hard times and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively putting an end to an eight-year-old company backed by several small funds and angel investors. The company had active contracts with at least 34 schools or school districts nationwide in 12 states.

TeeBeeDee Inc., San Francisco - The social networking Web site for people over age 40 went dark in July after the company to failed to find a suitable business model. Monitor Ventures and Shasta Ventures had invested $4.8 million in Series A financing. TeeBeeDee at its peak was receiving less than 200,000 monthly unique visitors and nine million page views, but the site would need to be five to 10 times bigger than that to be sustainable, it said.

Therative Inc., Livermore, Calif. - In a sign that the aesthetics device market is sagging in the recession, Therative, which sold an acne treatment since 2006, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ceased operations. Targeting the direct-to-consumer market, Therative was founded in 2005 and had raised more than $14 million in venture capital, according to VentureWire archives, most recently taking a $9 million Series C in mid-2007 led by Bessemer Venture Partners and joined by Band of Angels, Foundation Capital and RWI Ventures.

Tipjoy Inc., Cambridge, Mass. - To the dismay of this start-up, the Internet seems to be full of lousy tippers. The company, which launched in early 2008 to become the Internet’s tip jar for digital content, shut down its operations after running out of funds. Tipjoy’s goal was to create an easy way for consumers to give money for good digital content. Users simply added a Tipjoy widget to their site, which enabled consumers of that content to contribute money. Tipjoy took a 3% cut of the payment amount. The company raised $1 million in Series A financing from Accelerator Group, Betaworks, David Shen Ventures LLC,  and individual investors including former Google Inc. executive Chris Sacca.

Trusera Inc., Seattle - The operator of a health Web site that had teetered on the brink of closure since March, tipped over the edge in May. Trusera was backed with $2 million in funding from investors including Benaroya Capital; Erik Blachford, former CEO of Expedia Inc.; Christopher Ackerley, partner at Ackerley Partners; Kim Rachmeler, vice president at Amazon.com Inc.; and Craig Tall, vice chair of corporate development at Washington Mutual Inc.

Ugobe Inc., Eagle, Idaho - The maker of the Pleo robotic dinosaur - a lifelike, interactive toy that drew generous media coverage and many fans - filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April.  Ugobe’s investors included First Round Capital, Frontier Management Group, Hyield Venture Capital, and Maxima Capital. They invested at least $24 million in the company.

Ultreo Inc., Redmond, Wash. - The company, which made a battery-powered toothbrush that used ultrasound waveguide and sonic bristles, has shut down after failing to find an interested investor or buyer. Ultreo raised a total of $28.1 million in venture capital, including an $11.3 million round in May 2007, VentureWire records show. Its venture investors included Polaris Venture Partners.

Verified Pass Identity Inc., New York - The provider of faster airport security lines for approved travelers, which did business as Clear, has closed its doors less than a year after raising $44.4 million in venture capital. Spark Capital led a $44 million Series F in the company last summer. Prior to that, the company had raised $38.7 million. Its other investors include Baker Capital, GE Security, Lehman Brothers, Lockheed Martin, Syncom Venture Partners and Steven Brill, the company’s founder and former chief executive.

Woven Systems Inc., Santa Clara, Calif. - The maker of a 10-gigabit Ethernet switch shut down after failing to raise a new round of financing. In August, it sold some assets and intellectual property to Fortinet Inc. Woven Systems $35 million across two rounds of funding from Goldman Sachs & Co., Mohr Davidow Ventures and Palomar Ventures.

Yoomba Inc., Menlo Park, Calif. - One of a number of VoIP technology makers to shut down. Yoomba offered a service that allowed people to send and receive phone calls and IM conversations from their email programs. Yoomba, originally from Israel, was backed by Global Catalyst Partners and U.S. Venture Partners

Thanks to the database of Dow Jones VentureSource, here’s a quick look at the 10 largest disclosed deals that have closed in 2009:

At a time when VCs have struggled to sell their portfolio companies or bring them public, Accel is the backer of two companies - mobile advertising company AdMob Inc. and games developer Playfish Ltd. - that announced today they have been acquired for more than $1 billion.

Even more impressive: Accel is bringing home killer returns after only a year or two of investing in these companies.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Accel, a tech investor best known for its early bets on companies like Facebook Inc., JBoss Inc. and MetroPCS Communications Inc., first invested in AdMob in 2007 by leading a $15 million round that included Sequoia Capital. It followed that up by participating in a $28 million round in 2008 with Sequoia, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Northgate Capital Group. Now those investors will get $750 million in stock from Google Inc. Only Amazon.com Inc.’s buy of Zappos.com Inc. for $847 million is a larger acquisition of a venture-backed company this year; that deal, announced in July, closed last week.

With Playfish, Accel invested a total of $8.4 million: about $1 million in 2008 and then more than $7 million a few months later when it co-led a $17 million round with Index Ventures. Electronic Arts Inc. is paying $275 million upfront for Playfish, plus $25 million in equity retention arrangements and up to $100 million of additional cash if the company reaches certain milestones by the end of 2011.

You might also remember three other big acquisitions of companies on Accel’s tab recently: In August, SpringSource Global Inc. sold to VMWare Inc. for $420 million barely two years after taking its first round of venture capital; research and development company BBN Technologies Inc. agreed in September to sell to Raytheon Co. for $350 million; and wireless networking company WiChorus agreed last month to sell to Tellabs Inc. for $180 million in cash after raising $43 million from Accel and others.

It looks like Partner Jim Breyer was right on the money when he told us after the BBN Technologies sale: “[T]here’s no question that there has been a significant increase in large technology and media companies expressing an interest in making acquisitions.”

Accel isn’t the only Silicon Valley investor cleaning up this year. Menlo Park, Calif., rivals Benchmark Capital and Sequoia Capital are also piling on the big exits.

Benchmark was an investor in SpringSource, as well as Pure Digital Technologies, acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. for $590 million in stock, and OpenTable Inc., which held one of this year’s most successful IPOs.

Sequoia invested in AdMob, Pure Digital and Zappos, the three largest venture-backed tech acquisitions of the year.

Art by Mike Lucas

Biotech Bridge - The depressed public markets have encouraged biotech start-ups and their investors to forge alliances with big companies. But such deals, while often providing needed resources and allowing companies to keep their options open for future deals, can sometime backfire. Favorable terms and careful management are key. VentureWire analyzes this growing trend here.

Wake-Up Call - Later today, Grant Thornton is hosting a free Webcast to discuss a new study asserting that market-structure changes over the past 10 years have caused a long-term secular decline in the number of publicly listed companies in the U.S. The study, called “A Wake-Up Call for America,” is a bit broader in scope than the Grant Thornton report, “Why are IPOs in the ICU” issued a year ago. (You can find an updated copy of that report here, and our coverage of it, here.) Today’s Webcast is at 12:30 p.m. EST. To register, click on this link, choose “new student registration,” and then enter company pass code 710004. Locate the Webcast title and use course code 11738.

Another Option - Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often fight over a key provision in the term sheet:  the option pool. The inclusion of options, used to compensate and incentivize future employees, can drive down the pre-money valuation of the company. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures discusses how the two sides can come together when negotiating a deal.

End Of Fund-Raising Season - If you’re raising venture capital, better get your meetings scheduled now. With the holidays upon us, it’s usually very difficult to raise capital between Nov. 15 and Jan. 7, says Mark Suster of GRP Partners as part of his blog series “Raising Venture Capital.” “[T]rying to get enough of the partners to be at a full partners meeting during  Thanksgiving week or in December is very difficult,” Suster writes. “Because almost all VC’s know this, many are reluctant to even start the process with you.”

The well-funded start-up is holding a one-week competition for developers, offering six winners between $500 and $5,000 for the best apps, plus prominent placement on the site’s applications directory. The judges for the “Ning Appathon” will be Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen, Wired Editor Chris Anderson and tech blogger Robert Scoble.

In September, Ning began allowing its members to use applications created by third-party developers like Hulu and WordPress. The move provided a needed counter to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social networks that already enabled such features. Roughly 20% of the active social networks created by Ning members have at least one application. And on average, each network installs more than two apps. But Ning would be happy to boost those numbers.

This type of contest is nothing new in the technology space. Large tech companies like Google often hold conferences to lure developers and entice them into building the latest software that is compatible with their technology. But they are increasingly important to Internet platforms like social networks, where apps can quickly go viral and draw users back to a site over and over. Facebook, quick to recognize this, has been pushing its own platform with fbFund, a venture fund backed by Accel Partners and Founders Fund, which invests in third party developers and also holds a summer incubator program for them.

The Ning app platform, currently hosting about 100 apps, is one of two steps the company has recently taken to provide new revenue streams. Last month, Ning also launched a virtual gifts service. The service lets creators of Ning social networks choose pre-made virtual goods or create their own. When people purchase those gifts, Ning takes half of proceeds, the other half going to the creator of the social network. Ning has not announced plans to monetize the third-party developer platform, but has said that it could eventually do so.

The push for revenue comes not long after Ning raised $15 million in Series E funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners at a valuation of $750 million in July, placing the company in the stratosphere of large venture-backed Internet and social media companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, RockYou and Slide.

The Ning Appathon kicked off last night and will run for a week. All entries must be submitted here by 10 p.m. PT on Nov. 12.

So said general partners and consultants who spoke as panelists during the Dow Jones Limited Partner Summit West this week in San Mateo, Calif.

“The path to riches is a lot less clear than it was,” said Stephen Holmes, general partner at InterWest Partners. “With increased fear, people want to know where are we now and that requires enhanced communications.”

General partners across the board find themselves stepping up their communications with limited partners as well as the frequency of face-to-face meetings.

“I know who we haven’t [visited] in four months [or] six months,” said Jennifer James, director of marketing and communications at San Francisco-based Alta Partners. “We’re really getting out there and talking to people about the portfolio. Never before have our LPs been more interested in talking to us than they are now.”

Investors also want a greater degree of data on portfolio companies than they typically have received in the past, including metrics around cash flows, revenue and leverage, according to Craig Mitchell, director of LP Capital Advisors, a Sacramento, Calif.-based private equity consultant.

“LPs get a lot of information and not a lot of data,” said Mitchell. “We have sophisticated LPs out there that do a lot of their own analysis. [Often], what you get is a brochure that feels more spoon-fed. That is probably a lot different from what [GPs] dish out at the investment committee meeting.”

LP Capital Advisors tracks more than 10,000 portfolio companies in its database and solicits raw data on the companies from its general partners so it can run analyses for its clients.

“It’s important to realize that most LPs don’t view their portfolio as a portfolio of funds or fund managers, they view it as a portfolio of investments,” said Mitchell. “We spend a lot of time figuring out [what] is their exposure [to certain sectors or strategies]. During the banking crisis, we spent a lot of time helping clients figuring out what their exposure was to banking.”

The panelists added that LPs also have to do their share to let their GPs know where there is room for improvement.

“If you’re harboring some concerns and not telling me about it it’s hard for me to address it,” said Holmes. “Short of my being able to cut checks and give back distributions, I’d like to be able to address as many of my LP concerns as possible.”

Art by Mike Lucas

It Can’t Rain All The Time - With news of Frazier Technology winding down, TechFlash’s John Cook takes a look at the venture capital climate in Seattle. He reports that although the VC community is smaller than in Boston or the Bay Area, it’s still got a strong pulse.

Who Is John Galt? - Or perhaps the question is “Where is John Galt and why aren’t we rewarding him?” While espousing the theories and values of Ayn Rand in a piece for Forbes magazine, entrepreneur Sramana Mitra calls out VCs and the current capitalist structure for rewarding investors over inventors. Mitra notes that in venture capital, “the decade-long scam of taking limited partners for a ride, raising big funds, extracting large management fees to the tune of millions annually and then returning negative on the investment” is in the midst of a self-correction.

Gore On Greentech And Greenbacks - In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Kleiner Perkins Partner and Former Vice President Al Gore says he believes subsidies for companies developing electric cars and green technologies (some of which are backed by Kleiner Perkins) is just good policy.”There’s a worldwide race in the automotive sector to dominate the global marketplace for electric vehicles. It’s responsible in my view to take steps similar to what other nations have done.”

Anything For A Buck - TechCrunch has been following up on the “not-so-ethical ways” gaming start-ups have been generating revenue. Today they’ve got video of Zynga founder Mark Pincus discussing controlling his own “destiny,” in part by “doing every horrible thing in the book to…get revenues right away.” Pincus has since said he intends to make sure any new games from his company don’t have scammy offers. TechCrunch also puts Offerpal, which just replaced its CEO, under the microscope. The full series is here.

“Facebook is what people are up to. MySpace is what people are in to,” Miller said during a keynote at the ad:tech conference in New York.

While both sites originally competed as similar offerings, Miller seems to be making an effort to differentiate the two properties. “It’s going not only in the right direction but in an interesting direction,” Miller said.

The sentiments are a bit more positive than Miller’s admission last month at the Web 2.0 Summit that MySpace has failed to innovate fast enough, which caused it to lose traffic. Numbers released by Web analytics firm Compete.com show a dismal slide for the company. According to the Compete numbers, MySpace’s unique visitors in the U.S. dropped to 50.2 million in September from 55.6 million unique in August. It has nearly shed off 20% of its U.S. traffic since June.

In his mission to revamp the site, Miller said he sees MySpace as a place where people can discuss and discover common interests, like music, as opposed to Facebook where people mostly keep tabs on the daily doings of those they know. As for the prospects for Twitter, Miller sounded skeptical, pointing out that the company’s user growth has flattened and the site has not been a “youth phenomenon.” However, Miller has previously praised the potential of real-time search and Twitter’s role in that development.

Miller said he has three core interests in formulating a digital strategy for News Corp. (which owns The Wall Street Journal) - real-time, mobile and socialization. He pointed out that people are willing to pay for the portability of content on digital readers and smartphones, while they’re less inclined to pay for subscriptions to access content on a PC. He sees a bundled subscription package that includes PC and mobile access as a potential revenue model for News Corp.’s digital properties.

“I envision a day when most news consumption is through mobile readers,” Miller said. “The same for TV and movies.”

Miller’s talk came a day after News Corp. announced its digital division lost revenue during a difficult ad economy. However, Miller is bullish on the next year, expecting double-digit growth in digital ad spend. He also expects the industry to move from an ad network model to an ad exchange model. “It turns into a real time bidding situation,” he said.

Miller is a digital media veteran. From 2002 to 2006, he served as chairman and CEO of AOL, brought in to architect an industry-defining turnaround. He restructured the company’s core business lines, focused the company on online advertising, including completing the 2004 acquisition of Advertising.com. He most recently served as a venture capitalist, co-founding Velocity Interactive Group, where he worked with a portfolio of digital media start-ups. He remains a partner at the firm, now called Fuse Capital.

When asked for advice for young digital media entrepreneurs, Miller said. “Do what you love. Don’t think about the quick flip.”