Workday IPO – The company that Oracle won’t acquire?
The most interesting parts of the Workday S-1 may be the lengths they’ve gone to to thwart a hostile takeover. Here’s a quick summary of those items.
Facebook’s Next Business Model
VC Chris Dixon muses in a recent post that Facebook has yet to uncover a business model that will support its IPO valuation and drive future growth in that valuation. As he puts it: Facebook relies on an old internet business model: display ads. Display ads generally hurt the user experience, and are also not [...]
The Facebook IPO
So Facebook is about to do the expected. It filed for an IPO yesterday and the clock is now ticking on what will be one of the largest offerings in history. I don’t know how things will compare but Ford’s IPO in the 1950’s and UPS’s offering a few years ago might be bigger pound [...]
The New, New Bubble
The cover story in the current issue of FORTUNE deserves consideration. Normally I would include a link but the magazine appears to still be into selling ink on squashed tree. Steal a copy from your dentist’s office. Mark Zuckerberg is on the cover bursting a bubblegum wad in one of those slomo pics they used [...]
Founders: The Bubble Clock is Ticking
The incredible valuation of the LinkedIn IPO can only be interpreted as one signal: the Bubble Clock has started ticking. So long as it continues to run, we will live in a reality distortion where valuations are insanely high, capital is cheap, and smart businesses can leverage that to hyper growth. When it stops, we’re [...]
The Bubble Has Begun With the Most Expensive Stock In America
It’s official, the current Bubble has begun with LinkedIn’s IPO. It was declared the most expensive stock in America even before doubling which means its now clearly way past Bubble territory. Exciting stuff! LinkedIn’s PE is 62 times Apple’s, 50 times Google’s, but less than 4 times Salesforce.com’s. Wow, AAPL and GOOG look like Value [...]
A Big Day for LinkedIn
About 10 years ago, I did a swing through Silicon Valley while doing some research on early Social Networking companies, including a number of mostly-or-entirely defunct companies like Spoke, Visible Path, ZeroDegrees, Plaxo and others. During that trip I stopped by the offices of a (then-) small company called LinkedIn. I recall the meeting [...]
IPO Bound: SciQuest Roadshow Roars Ahead
It’s been a while since Ariba has had company in the public marketplace, as they are the only pure-play focused procurement vendor on the NASDAQ (other public companies such as Concur focus on auxiliary areas). In fact, you’d have…
The Public Markets and Venture Capital
Last week I wrote about the “VC shakeup” in response to a piece in HBR by the same name, in my response to a comment left by my friend Jason Lemkin I wrote: A big problem here is that the state of public markets makes IPOs extremely difficult and with M&A among already public companies [...]
