The Daily Start-Up: Today We Salute You, Entrepreneur

By Scott Austin

This morning’s roundup of the latest venture capital news and analysis across the Web:

Art by Mike Lucas

Today we tip our caps to the entrepreneur - that brave soul who works 16-hour days with no job security, always scheming, always fretting about failure, but driven by a burning desire to build a real business. Thanks to a grassroots campaign spearheaded by the Grasshopper Group to give entrepreneurs their own day, President Obama declared today National Entrepeneurs’ Day. “All Americans can play a role in increasing the prevalence and success of new start-ups,” President Obama said. And don’t forget the upcoming “Small Business Saturday” on Nov. 27, the day after Black Friday, to support small businesses.

R.I.P. Peter Rip. Dan Primack of Fortune reports that the longtime venture capitalist passed away after a 10-year battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Rip is well-known in the venture community and was a regular blogger, not to mention a partner at Crosslink Ventures where he focused on digital media, Internet and business services.

Are venture-backed mobile start-ups Boku, GetJar and Jumptap acquisition targets? Mark Lowenstein,a wireless industry analyst, thinks so, predicting who may buy these start-ups and some major mobile companies including Research in Motion.

Rumors are a-flyin’ in the sector of group buying. We’ve been hearing that Google is snooping around Groupon, and now Kara Swisher of All Things Digital reports that Google is in talks to buy the local-deals site for well above the $2 billion to $3 billion that Yahoo offered the company earlier this year. Our sister blog Deal Journal explains why Google would be interested in Groupon, noting that Google has been trying since 2006 to let local businesses offer coupons through its Web services. Meanwhile, Owen Thomas of VentureBeat notes a “rumor” that Amazon.com is in discussions to invest $100 million in Groupon rival LivingSocial. This is all making us feel a bit itchy.

Even NBC’s “The Office” is jumping on the social-media bandwagon. In last night’s episode, Ryan starts up a dot-com company called WUPHF.com that lets users send a message (or a wuphf, prounced “woof!”) to a friend’s home phone, cell phone, email, Facebook, Twitter and desktop all at the same time. Ryan convinces a few of his co-workers to invest, and then makes the pitch to the rest of the office for a second round of investment. When a co-worker asks what Ryan would do with the money, he replies: “The first lesson about Silicon Valley is you only think about the user experience; you actually don’t think about the money - ever.” Watch the episode below, or check out the site, WUPHF.com, which includes a hilarious financial projections chart.