Unicorrection
We’ve had a correction in Unicorn financing that has trickled throughout venture capital. A lot of people lost jobs, opportunity and wealth. You could say this began with the creation of a the secondary market for private equity, and the dust on Chris Sacca’s spurs. But the correction began with Fidelity’s very public markdown […]
The “Dry Bubble” We May Be In. What That Means.
The other day, Bill Gurley, who has to be on the Top 5 most successful and smartest VCs, had a few semi-cryptic tweets. Cryptic to non-VCs, at least: Wet bubbles (1999) are more fun than dry ones (2015). — Bill Gurley (@bgurley) June 10, 2015 At our recent LP meeting, an LP told me industry […]
Bottom-Fishing Acquisitions and Catching Falling Knives
As mentioned in my recent Curse of the Megaround post, some companies that find themselves flush with cash and under heavy pressure to grow, decide to embark on dubious acquisitions to help shore up the growth story. As one reader it put it, you can summarize your megaround post with the simple phrase “much money makes […]
The Curse of the Megaround
With what everyone seems reluctant to call a bubble in late-stage, private financing in full swing, I thought I’d do a quick post to drill into a concept I presented in my 2015 predictions post, something I call the curse of the megaround. We will do that by examining the forces, and the winners and losers, […]
It Ain’t Easy Making Money in Open Source: Thoughts on the Hortonworks S-1
It took me a week or so to get to it, but in this post, I’ll take a dive into the Hortonworks S-1 filing in support of a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of their stock. While Hadoop and big data are unarguably huge trends driving the industry and while the future of Hadoop looks very bright indeed, […]
A Look at the Zendesk S-1 (IPO)
I thought I’d take a quick read of the Zendesk S-1 today, so here are my real-time notes on so doing. Before diving in, let me provide a quick pointer to David Cummings’ summary of the same. My notes: 40,000 customers in 140 countries 2012 revenues of $38.2M 2013 revenues of $72.0M, 88% growth 41% […]
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 […]
