Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini announced today that the startup founded five years ago has finally made it to profitability. The site has seen a lot of changes since then. It began as one of the original Web 2.0 personalized homepages, became a distributed widget platform, changed CEOs (when founder Tariq Krim stepped down in 2008 to start Jolicloud), then started appealing to enterprises, brands, and advertisers with intranet offerings and social media dashboards.

I chatted with Mini today, who says that the company is profitable on a net income basis. He won’t go into details on revenues, but the company has 40 employees and two offices. Just to cover salaries, it’s got to be pulling in a few million dollars a year. Mini did break down the revenues by product line, however:

Netvibes for Enterprise: 50%
Netvibes Premium Dashboards: 40%
Widget Distribution: 10%

The enterprise version, which accounts for half of the company’s revenues, lets employees customize their intranet homepage with a mixture of company and personal widgets. Think iGoogle for businesses. The dashboards are more for advertising and PR agencies, who can use them to push media on an opt-in basis to interested consumers. Netvibes also recently launched a Dashboarding Guide, which is a “dashboard of dashboards,” says Mini. It pulls together different monitoring and analytics tools (such as Google Trends, Compete, Yelp, Hootsuite, and Trendrr) all into one dashboard.

The consumer-oriented homepage now has 3.5 million visitors a month, and Netvibes continues to improve that experience with its new realtime stream reader Wasabi, but that the paying customers are businesses.

Earlier today, two men were spotted having coffee in Palo Alto, CA. Except these weren’t just any two men. They were the CEOs of perhaps the two most important and powerful companies in Silicon Valley right now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Big deal, you might think. After all, Schmidt used to be on Apple’s board. But ever since he stepped down (and actually before he did), the growing animosity between the two formerly close companies has been apparent.

So what does their coffee date mean? Well, obviously, only Jobs and Schmidt know for sure. Gizmodo, which scored the pictures, also has accounts that they were discussing technology. It’s a better sign than if they were screaming at one another, I suppose. But, as with anything Apple, you should never discount the possibility that this entire thing was staged so that someone would see them and snap a picture that would produce a thousand blog posts.

Few companies (if any) handle their image better than Apple. So the fact that these images exist immediately raised the notion in my head that Apple wants them to exist. Remember, these pictures come after weeks of Apple getting dragged through the mud as a big bully for moves such as suing HTC over mobile patents, a move which everyone realizes is actually a suit over Google’s Android operating system infringing on those patents. And then, of course, there’s what Steve Jobs supposedly said about Google at an Apple Town Hall meeting.

So anyway, regardless of the circumstances behind the meeting, the meeting itself is interesting given the current state of affairs between Apple and Google. And when I see these pictures, I can’t help but think I’ve seen this scene before — in several movies. I’m just not sure which one today’s meeting more closely resembles. (Warning: A few movie spoilers ahead.)

Movie 1: Heat

Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat, is one of my favorite movies. In it, there’s a scene in which Al Pacino’s cop character, Vincent Hanna, pulls over Robert De Niro’s criminal character, Neil McCauley, and says, “What do you say I buy you a cup of coffee?” McCauley agrees, and the two enemies lay aside their differences for a few minutes to share some coffee at a local diner. The resulting talk is brilliant. It’s just two guys sharing their hardships brought about by their professions. They even note that in another life, they could probably be friends, but in this life, the next time they meet, they’ll probably have to kill one another.

Movie 2: 500 Days Of Summer

This movie springs to mind because I’ve used it before to talk about the break up of Apple and Google. In the film, after the breakup occurs, Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) meet up in a park after having not seen each other for some time. It’s awkward as Summer is now married, and Tom is still alone. There’s clearly no hope for them to get back together, but the meeting ultimately ends up being a good one because they can both move on.

Movie 3: The Princess Bride

This reference was brought up almost immediately in the Gizmodo comments and by Digital Daily. In the movie, Westley (Cary Elwes) sits down to share a drink with Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) — but one of their drinks is poisoned. In the ensuing battle of wits, Vizzini believes he has tricked Westley (known to him only as the “Man In Black”) into drinking the poison, but little does he know that both cups were actually poisoned — and Westley is immune. It is Westley who gets the last laugh.

Movie 4: Scarface

Pacino again. In this movie, his character, Tony Montana, goes to meet with Alex Sosa, a Bolivian drug lord — and Tony’s main enemy. Sosa ends up helping Tony by revealing that one of his colleagues, Omar, is an informant. Omar is killed and Tony strikes a huge deal for 2,000 kilos of cocaine.

Movie 5: Batman Begins

In this film, a young Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) recklessly goes to meet with his enemy, crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). Falcone points a gun at Wayne and threatens to kill him. Years later, Wayne, as Batman, gets him back.

Movie 6: Lost

Okay, not a movie, but Lost might as well be one. The current plot of the final season revolves heavily around Jacob vs. The Man In Black (yes, just like The Princess Bride). At the end of last season, the two sit side-by-side on the beach and the Man In Black says to Jacob, “do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?” Jacob replies, “Yes.” But neither kills the other, they just sit there, and reflect.

Movie 7: The Seventh Seal

In this movie, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) routinely meets up with Death (Bengt Ekerot) to play a game of chess. If Block can defeat his rival in the game, he won’t die. Death gets his man, in the end.

So that’s seven examples of would-be rivals taking a break from their fighting to meet up for some face time. There must be dozens others. Interestingly, in none of these situations do both sides end up making amends permanently. And actually, I’m having a hard time coming up with any example of a film where two sides patch things up over coffee. Not that movies are real-life, of course — but art does imitate life. That doesn’t speak well for Apple and Google.

First, the job description. Even a decade ago everyone thought PR was just about the worst job around. Forbes did a roundup called “Five Crappiest Tech Jobs,” and “PR account executive for a dot com startup” was on the list. Other winners included “porn sifter for filtering company” and “packer for dogdoo.com” (a site that actually sold dog excrement online):

PR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE FOR A DOT-COM STARTUP—Here’s the perfect job for people who want the worst of all worlds. For starters, everyone hates flacks. Journalists hate them because they think they’re incompetent whores. Businesspeople hate them because they think they’re incompetent whores. And flacks hate themselves because deep down inside they suspect that they might be incompetent whores. But what’s particularly bad about doing publicity for Internet startups is that everyone in the media has already heard every story with every angle about every product and every service a thousand times and never wants to hear from another PR firm as long as they live. But flacks can’t explain this problem to their nitwit 23-year-old CEO clients because the CEOs have all persuaded themselves that their generic success story is the stuff of legend. Flacks get personally abused by clients, insulted by journalists, stiffed out of their fees by customers, ridiculed by colleagues, and humiliated by their superiors. One flack for a major software company says her boss got so upset that he ordered her to attend charm school. Another had to go shopping for underwear for a skivvy-less journalist. How uncouth. All in all, being a dot-com flack is exactly like being a whore, except the hours are worse.

Second, this video (in fact created by TechCrunch Europe Contributing Editor Steve O’Hear) which recreates a conversation between a PR professional and a blogger or journalists. We have this same conversation oh, five or more times per day:

Transcript:

PR Pro: Hi I’m just checking you got the email I sent.

Blogger: When did you send it?

PR Pro: Five minutes ago.

Blogger: Oh. I get a lot of email.

PR Pro: Shall I send it again?

Blogger: No. What did it say?

PR Pro: I’d love to tell you, but you’ll have to agree to the embargo first.

Blogger: Ok whatever, I agree, now tell me more.

PR Pro: Can you email back first saying you agree to the embargo?

Blogger: I get a lot of email.

PR Pro: Please.

Blogger: Look, I honor the fucking embargo. Now tell me more.

PR Pro: A Silicon Valley based startup is going to announce a new revolutionary software as a service for social media companies targeting B2B. It will change the way social media marketing is done forever. Are you interested in a briefing with the company’s CEO.

Blogger: No, I don’t cover B2B.

PR Pro: But I thought you wrote about social media.

Blogger: I do, but not B2B.

PR Pro: But it is revolutionary.

Blogger: So are all the others.

PR Pro: Really?

Blogger: Yes. Look, when every new social media service is revolutionary it is no longer news.

PR Pro: I didn’t know that, but we are working on an API.

Blogger: I’m not interested.

PR Pro: Oh.

Blogger: Sorry.

PR Pro: Can I still email you the details?

Blogger: If you must.

PR Pro: And you’ll honor the embargo?

Blogger: Yes, I’ll honor the embargo. In fact I’ll make you a better offer.

PR Pro: Oh.

Blogger: I will honor the embargo for the rest of my working life. As I have no intention of writing about your new revolutionary software as a service for social media companies that will change the way social media marketing is done forever. So, yes, I’ll honor the fucking embargo.

PR Pro: I can’t thank you enough.

Blogger: It’s nothing. Really.

Our past rants:

The PR Roadblock On The Road To Blissful Blogging
One PR Firm’s Lack Of Ethics: Reverb Caught Astroturfing The App Store
The Reality Of PR: Smile, Dial, Name Drop, Pray.
Meet Lois Whitman, The Poster Child For Everything Wrong With PR
Death To The Embargo
The Last Has Fallen. The Embargo Is Dead.

When we split the atom, Einstein remarked that everything changed but our way of thinking. You could make the same argument about acquisitions and option pools.

As Mark Suster recently noted, employees will never see a big payday at most startups unless the company shoots for the moon. This is probably why investors’ case for a company to sell early focuses exclusively on the founder: in most early-stage acquisitions, the liquidation preferences and deal-sweeteners only work for investors and founders.

Back when some companies sold at $50 million and others went public at $250 million, we could all agree that this was just how the cookie crumbled. But now that we live in a world where early-stage acquisitions are the only outcome to which most startups aspire, we have to re-allocate this smaller cookie.

The elephant in the room is that that founders and CEOs take almost all of it for themselves. I’ve looked at three or four deals recently as an adviser; in every case, the founder or CEO was taking more than half the company for himself, and leaving 10% for everyone else. Why aren’t we surprised when three months later that company can’t hire enough engineers?

Even when the company succeeds, the big-shot with the big payday may regret it. The difference between $10 million and $20 million in practical terms — whom you can date, where you can go, what you drive — is zero. But if you give an extra $10 million to the folks who fought shoulder to shoulder with you, everyone will feel better about what you accomplished together. You want your startup to end like Trading Places, with Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and their butler sipping drinks on the beach.

This has always been true, but now that more startups are being bought, it has become less common. Consider the proceeds of a $50-million acquisition for a 100-person company that has raised $14 million with a typical liquidation preference:

• Because of the liquidation preference, the investors get $14 million right off the top. The remaining $36 million is divided according to equity ownership.
• Investors own 50%, and get $18 million, split between two firms
• The two founders own 33%, and split $12 million
• The 3-person executive team, including a CEO if one was hired, owns 10%, and splits $3.6 million. The team gets another $3 million as a severance payment or an earn-out, to sweeten the acquisition offer.
• The remaining 95 employees split 7%, each earning $27,000. Unlike the founders, the employees have to wait until their grants vest, working at a company no longer of their choosing for two years.

Now consider what would happen if the same company raises another $10 million, expands the employee option pool to hire more executives and to support 300 people. It is worth $250 million at the time of a public offering.

• There is no liquidation preference, severance payment or earn out. Everyone is paid according to the number of shares he owns.
• Investors by now own 60%, or $167 million, split between three firms
• The two founders own 20%, and split $50 million
• The executive team still gets 10%, but now splits it among 5 people. Each executive gets $5 million.
• The remaining 290 employees own 10%, with the first 100 employees hired getting the lion’s share, of say $200,000 each.

The point is not that this is a better outcome for all. Any fool would take the higher price if he knew he could get it, but you don’t know when or whether you ever will. The point is that employees at least stand a chance at a nice gain when a company is built to last, whereas founders benefit disproportionately from a quick flip.

So in a world of more quick flips, we need to increase the size of options pools, eliminate liquidation preferences – which just get picked up in subsequent rounds of financing by new investors, who screw the old ones — and provide better acceleration for everyone.

Otherwise, nobody will want to work for a startup. But the reverse is happening. VCs want their pound of flesh, and entrepreneurs do too. In fact, the 20% of company ownership that was once considered the standard allocation for executives and other employees is now more likely to be at 10%.

If we’re all a little less greedy now, we’ll build bigger companies later and everyone will make more money, and feel better about it too.

Some VCs are getting an early Valentine’s Day gift fromTheFunded, the site where CEOs rate venture capitalists and their firms. Below you will find the top-ranked individual VCs, as determined by their ratings in 2009. What makes this ranking particularly useful to entrepreneurs is that it is ratings by other CEOs, often CEOs who have had direct dealings with the VCs they are rating.

While this is still a popularity contest of sorts (for instance, the rankings are not based on individual investment returns), presumably CEOs are smart enough to take investment performance into account. But they also take into account their own personal experiences with the individual VCs.  These are the VCs who CEOs love the most, and not just because they are nice but because they help CEOs do their jobs, which is to build great businesses.  Topping the list is Terry McGuire, co-Founder of Polaris Ventures and a big life sciences investor. Mark Suster of GRP Partners is No. 2.  David Sze of Greylock comes in at No. 7.  Brook H. Byers of  Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers is No. 10.  Kleiner’s star investor John Doerr is No.11  Michael Moritz from Sequoia is No. 32..

Anyone who is on this list is well-liked and respected by CEOs.   A total of 84 individual VCs (and some angel investors) made the cut out of 17,834 investment pros listed in TheFunded’s directory. To get on the list, each VC had to have at least an average rating of 4 out of 5 and have at least five separate reviews from CEO members of the Funded. (There are 13,480 CEO members). No more than one of the five ratings can be negative (a score of 3 or less).  Other VC that made the list include Howard Morgan (No. 28) and Josh Kopelman (No. 39) of First Round Capital, Bill Tai (No. 29) and George Zachary (no. 64) of Charles River Ventures, Roelof Botha of Sequoia (No. 50), Fred Wilson (No. 60) of Union Square Ventures, and angels Mike Maples, Jr. (No. 43)  and Ron Conway (No. 61).

You can compare this list to the most active VC firms of 2009 to get a sense of the overlap between these rankings and which firms are doing the most deals.  Some other insights that TheFunded shared with us: there was a lot of turnover in VC firms in 2009.  When TheFunded sent emails to all the investment pros in its directory, 38 percent either bounced back or replied with an automated message saying they’ve left their firms.  None of those people are on this list.  And about one or two firms a week became inactive, or 9 percent of the 4,005 firms listed in its directory.

TheFunded.com is offering two free tickets to the Future of Funding event on February 18th in San Mateo, where many of the top-ranked venture capitalists will be attending an awards ceremony. The tickets will go to the two best comments about the state of venture capital (as determined by us or TheFunded’s Adeo Ressi).

Top-Ranked VCs by TheFunded

1. Terrance G. McGuire, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 5 by 5 CEOs
2. Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners, rated 4.8571 by 7 CEOs
3. Andy Fillat, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.8333 by 6 CEOs
4. Dan Rua, Managing Partner at Inflexion Partners, rated 4.8 by 5 CEOs
5. Paul H. Klingenstein, Managing Partner at Aberdare Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 9 CEOs
6. Stuart Ellman, Managing Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.6667 by 6 CEOs
7. David Sze, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.6429 by 14 CEOs
8. Ross A. Jaffe, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.6364 by 11 CEOs
9. Steven D. Arnold, Managing General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners, rated 4.625 by 8 CEOs
10. Brook H. Byers, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.6 by 10 CEOs
11. John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, rated 4.5714 by 14 CEOs
12. Philip Gianos, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.5714 by 7 CEOs
13. James D. Robinson III, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.5556 by 9 CEOs
14. Richard W. Levandov, General Partner at Masthead Venture Partners, rated 4.5455 by 11 CEOs
15. Phil Black, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.5 by 12 CEOs
16. Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4.5 by 6 CEOs
17. Jed Katz, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners, rated 4.4737 by 19 CEOs
18. William J. Link, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.4444 by 9 CEOs
19. Jon Callaghan, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.4167 by 12 CEOs
20. Joerg Ueberla, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
21. Tom Bogan, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
22. Maria Cirino, Managing Director at 406 Ventures, rated 4.4 by 5 CEOs
23. Mark S. Menell, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 12 CEOs
24. Doug Pepper, General Partner at InterWest Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
25. Michael T. Fitzgerald, General Partner at Commonwealth Capital Ventures, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
26. Bijan Salehizadeh, M.D., General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4.3333 by 9 CEOs
27. Nicolas El Baze, Partner at Partech International, rated 4.3333 by 6 CEOs
28. Howard Morgan, Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.3077 by 13 CEOs
29. Bill Tai, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4.2857 by 14 CEOs
30. David Ladd, Managing Director at Mayfield Fund, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs
31. Frank Boehnke, General Partner at Wellington Partners, rated 4.2857 by 7 CEOs
32. Michael Moritz, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.2778 by 18 CEOs
33. Peter Sinclair, Managing Member at Leapfrog Ventures, rated 4.2727 by 11 CEOs
34. Donald B. Milder, Managing Director at Versant Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
35. John Burke, General Partner at True Ventures, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
36. Bill Kaiser, Partner at Greylock Partners, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
37. Bill Elmore, General Partner at Foundation Capital, rated 4.25 by 8 CEOs
38. Mark Hatfield, Partner at Fairhaven Capital, rated 4.2222 by 9 CEOs
39. Joshua Kopelman, Managing Partner at First Round Capital, rated 4.2 by 30 CEOs
40. Lon H.H. Chow, General Partner at Apex Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
41. Dave Fachetti, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
42. Edward L. Cahill, Partner at HLM Venture Partners, rated 4.2 by 5 CEOs
43. Mike Maples Jr., General Partner at Maples Investments, rated 4.1818 by 22 CEOs
44. David Stern, Venture Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners, rated 4.1818 by 11 CEOs
45. Curtis Feeny, Managing Director at Voyager Capital, rated 4.1667 by 12 CEOs
46. John W. Jarve, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
47. Shawn T. Carolan, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
48. Bob Spinner, Managing Director at Sigma Partners, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
49. Stuart MacFarlane, Managing Director at Momentum Venture Management, rated 4.1667 by 6 CEOs
50. Roelof Botha, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4.1538 by 26 CEOs
51. Anthony P. Lee, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
52. William D. Porteous, General Partner at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
53. Michael Kim, Partner at Rustic Canyon Ventures, rated 4.1538 by 13 CEOs
54. Brent Ahrens, General Partner at Canaan Partners, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs
55. Eric Wiesen, Principal at RRE Ventures, rated 4.1429 by 7 CEOs
56. Alex Mendez, General Partner at Storm Ventures, Inc., rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs
57. Richard A. D’Amore, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4.125 by 8 CEOs
58. Jonathan Ebinger, Partner at BlueRun Ventures, rated 4.1111 by 9 CEOs
59. Gus Tai, General Partner at Trinity Ventures, rated 4.1 by 10 CEOs
60. Fred Wilson, Partner at Union Square Ventures, rated 4.0952 by 21 CEOs
61. Ron Conway, General Partner at SV Angel, rated 4.0909 by 11 CEOs
62. Hodong Nam, General Partner at Altos Ventures, rated 4.0833 by 12 CEOs
63. Gilman Louie, Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, rated 4.0769 by 13 CEOs
64. George Zachary, Partner at Charles River Ventures, rated 4 by 16 CEOs
65. Paul Maeder, General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
66. Warren J. Packard, Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
67. Bryan Schreier, Partner at Sequoia Capital, rated 4 by 9 CEOs
68. Brian Pokomy, Associate at SV Angel, rated 4 by 8 CEOs
69. Byron Deeter, Venture Principal at Bessemer Venture Partners, rated 4 by 8 CEOs
70. Kevin Spain, Principal at Emergence Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
71. Thatcher Bell, Principle at Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
72. Kirk Holland, General Partner at Vista Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
73. Jonathan Seelig, Managing Director at Globespan Capital Partners, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
74. Andrew L. Zalasin, General Partner/CFO at RRE Ventures, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
75. Bruce K. Taragin, Partner at Blumberg Capital, rated 4 by 7 CEOs
76. Frederick J. Dotzler, Managing Director at De Novo Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
77. Max Niederhofer, Associate at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
78. Gil Dibner, Principal at Genesis Partners, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
79. Ryan Ziegler, Investment Manager at Edison Venture Fund, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
80. Bob Pavey, General Partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, rated 4 by 6 CEOs
81. Philippe Herbert, Partner at Banexi Ventures Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
82. Eric Hjerpe, Partner at Atlas Venture, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
83. Angelo J. Santinelli, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, rated 4 by 5 CEOs
84. David Min, Principal at Steamboat Ventures, rated 4 by 5 CEOs

Photo credit: Flickr/le vent le cri