Skrenta:" Topix.net has added news channels to track any stories for 2,500 privately-held startups, scanned from the 10,000 sources we're crawling. The tracking channel was designed in association with Bob Karr's LinkSV.com, which maintains the database of private company profiles which we're using for the automated news scan. There is also a related channel which tracks press releases from any of the same 2,500 startups. "
topix.net/startups
topix.net/startups/pr
topix.net/vc

And it's free.