The bad news? While a few startup stars like Twitter and Slide can get venture cash on little or no revenue, the expiration date on your "it's [blank] with a social network layer" pitch may be well past. "There is going to be a shake-out here in the next year or two," Battery Ventures partner Roger Lee told the Financial Times. Mitchell Kertzman of Hummer Winblad was a little more succinct: "If you look at some of the valuations, you wonder what fantasy of revenues they're based on." The kinda good news? Google will help subsidize the cost of entry for early-stage online projects with infrastructure — you'll just have to use their Web Apps cloud and their Gears and Android clients developing browse and mobile applications, respectively. (Photo by Edward O'Connor)

Think you need capital to become a venture capitalist? Not at Battery Ventures. There, you just need a working knowledge of how Google works. "Google arguably is at the center of the online advertising ecosystem," Battery Ventures partner Roger Lee told the New York Times. "If you understand how Google works and how associated business models work, it gives you a great lens to understand other advertising companies," Lee said, explaining why he recruited former Google advertising exec Satya Patel to the firm. Sounds good. When does Scoble start?

Would Cambridge-founded social network Facebook have grown into its current role as tech media darling if it had stayed back east instead of seeking its fortune in California, wonders Boston.com? Answer, as supplied by Facebook investor Jim Breyer from Accel Partners: No. As in N-O. No effing way. Nada, etc. Why? Breyer elaborates: ""So many of the Facebook employees have come from top Internet companies like Yahoo, eBay, and Google that the culture that has been built at Facebook is fundamentally more consumer/Internet savvy than if it would've been built anywhere else on the planet." Sounds plausible to us! But bitterly jealous Battery Ventures partner Scott Tobin—who passed when Zuckerberg came to him for startup money— has a different take. "Folks in the Valley are incredibly ego-centric to a point of snobbery" he blithely claims. True enough. But, he goes on to say, passing on Facebook "may turn out to have been a mistake."

Last week, we wondered at the paranoid startup entrepreneur who didn't want anything — not his name, not his company's name, or any other identifying info — mentioned in a Mercury News piece on Battery Ventures' Roger Lee. No one stepped up to the plate, so we'll make our own guess-hay. And we're looking at young Alastair Rampell of Trialpay.

In the Merc article, all we know about the mystery man is that he is 25 years old and has close-cropped hair. His company is six months old, has an office in downtown Mountain View, and has in fact taken money from Battery Ventures.

As you can see from the photo above (or from this one), Rampell certainly favors the close-cropped hair. Rampell is listed as being 19 years old in this September 2000 article in BusinessWeek, which would put him at or about the right age. Trialpay went beta in July 2006 (making it about six months old, in those terms) and is indeed located in Mountain View. And TrialPay got $3.1 million from Battery Ventures in December.

A circumstantial case, but a case nonetheless. Got a better clue? Say so.

In this Mercury News profile of Battery Ventures' Roger Lee, we get this amusing tidbit: