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Archive for June, 2010

Shares of Motricity slip in market debut and other tough IPO news

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some hard IPO news from Techflash.

“Something remarkable happened last week. A Seattle area technology company actually completed an initial public offering.

Bellevue-based Moricity raised $50 million through a public offering, marking the second technology company from the state to go public in the past eight months. That’s the good news.

Now, here’s the bad news. Motricity had to slash its offering price in order to complete the deal, drastically reducing the money it raised from the initial $250 million it had projected. Even worse, shares of the mobile software company have been falling in the past two days of trading, now at about $9.05.

And Motricity isn’t the only publicly-traded company encountering troubles in the public markets. Omeros, the Seattle biotech company which went public last October, has lost 30 percent of its value since the IPO.

Going back further, Clearwire — the Kirkland mobile broadband provider that first priced shares in March 2007 — has lost 69 percent of its value since it started trading.

What does this all mean?

For one thing, there’s certainly some chatter that the IPO isn’t necessarily the best outcome for most tech companies anymore. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote on his blog this weekend that he preferred a sale to an IPO in most situations.

“The cost is just too high and the benefits are just too low for most companies these days,” Wilson wrote.

Meanwhile, TechCrunch followed that up with a story titled “The Poor, Pilloried Tech IPO” in which Erick Schonfeld writes that the best and fastest growing tech companies (LinkedIn, Facebook and Skype) are avoiding the public marketplace.

There’s a bigger problem going on here for the venture capitalists, which historically have relied on IPOs to produce some of their biggest returns.

As we’ve reported before, the Seattle VCs have missed out on these results. The pipeline right now for prospective IPO candidates from Washington is pretty dry. (Bellevue-based Intelius has filed to go public with the SEC but has not updated the S-1 since last October).

And even when a Washington company does break out of the mold and goes public, they have not had connections to the Seattle VC community.

(Interestingly, of the three Washington tech companies that have gone public in the past three years, only Omeros boasts a Seattle venture firm (Arch Venture Partners) among its top backers).

The lack of IPOs speaks to an issue that we’ve discussed in the past, and was a topic of discussion at last week’s TechFlash Town Hall on venture capital and bootstrapping.”

Read the whole article here.

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Tech firms making S.F. new home

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Economy, internet, Investments, Market research, mobile 2.0, Social Networks, Technology, Web 2.0, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a SF gate story that talks about high-tech growth.

“The technology industry is playing the white knight of San Francisco’s struggling office market, as startups and growing companies ink deals and scour the market for space emptied out by the financial meltdown.

Many of the tenants are swelling homegrown businesses like Twitter, while others are relocating from Silicon Valley or outside the Bay Area. As of June 15, 83 technology companies were in the market, seeking 1.5 million square feet of space, up 51 percent since the financial crash in fall 2008, according to brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle, which regularly tracks the market.

To be sure, that demand alone won’t turn around a market facing more than 13 million square feet of total vacancy, according to a first-quarter research report from Cassidy Turley BT Commercial. But it’s a big step in the right direction for San Francisco’s office market and employment.

“The greatest areas of job growth in San Francisco and the drivers for economic activity across a whole host of related sectors will come from those innovative industries,” said Michael Cohen, director of the mayor’s office of economic development.

One of the largest potential deals in the market is Zynga, the maker of popular social-networking games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. The company is looking for anywhere from 150,000 square feet to 300,000 square feet of space, according to various industry sources, who asked to remain anonymous because disclosure of such information could affect their business.

Zynga was on the verge of signing a lease for approximately 140,000 square feet last fall, but that deal fell apart.

“Zynga doesn’t have an update on our expansion plans right now,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to a Chronicle inquiry.

Expansion

Twitter, the popular microblogging service, expanded its San Francisco space by nearly six times in the past year. It had been looking for still more space, as much as an additional 100,000 square feet, but that effort seems to have gone quiet, sources say.

An especially encouraging trend for San Francisco business boosters, who have long lamented the exodus of companies to surrounding regions, is the relocation of a handful of Silicon Valley firms to the city in recent months.

Industry blog TechCrunch and video-streaming site MetaCafe moved up from Palo Alto, while Webcasting service Ustream and tech-consulting firm Encover Inc. arrived from Mountain View. Mobile application company Booyah Inc., also of Palo Alto, recently signed a lease to shift its headquarters to San Francisco.

In addition, gaming companies like Playdom Inc. and Playfish opened satellite offices in San Francisco, and Yammer Inc. moved to the city from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, there are a handful of out-of-state, and even out-of-country, companies touring space in the market right now, sources say.

Real estate and technology observers believe San Francisco is becoming a more attractive place to start a company or move to for a variety of reasons, including: South of Market rents that are about half of Palo Alto’s right now, the desire to cluster near success stories like Zynga and Twitter and the broader shift to the Web 2.0 world.

As Internet companies become as focused on social media and entertainment as they are on underlying technology, they want to locate near a different set of partners, customers and talent pools, several executives said.

It’s all about layering

“Tech is still the core of what we do, but you’ve got to add layers on top of this,” said David Rice, chief operating officer of MetaCafe Inc.

The company’s new address, at 128 King St., with exposed brick and a view of AT&T Park that puts their previous business-park space to shame, made it easier to tap into marketing, media and advertising expertise in the city, he said.

Other companies’ leaders say they opted for San Francisco because that’s where today’s engineering talent wants to be as well.

When David Sacks, chief executive of Yammer, asked his developers whether they should relocate the microblogging service for businesses to Palo Alto or San Francisco, the latter won hands down. This represents a distinct shift from a decade earlier when he was chief operating officer of PayPal in Palo Alto.

“There’s a lot more engineering talent living in San Francisco now,” he said. “The balance of power may have shifted.”

Web 2.0 firms also don’t need the massive research and development facilities required by the computer manufacturers and chipmakers that gave rise to Silicon Valley.

“Companies like Twitter can have incredible reach with a relatively small workforce,” said Kelly Pretzer, director of new media for the mayor’s office of economic development. “San Francisco has been able to complement that development in the industry nicely.”

Read more here.

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Hope, Courage, Attitude, Desire – pls click on link and see how to overcome adversity

Posted in Uncategorized on June 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is hope, change, attitude, perseverance. Please watch and pass on.

http://wimp.com/watchingthis/

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Fannie-Freddie Fix at $160 Billion With $1 Trillion Worst Case

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Economy, tagged , , , , , , , on June 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good article from Bloomberg.

“The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three-quarters of all U.S. home loans, will be at least $160 billion and could grow to as much as $1 trillion after the biggest bailout in American history.

Fannie and Freddie, now 80 percent owned by U.S. taxpayers, already have drawn $145 billion from an unlimited line of government credit granted to ensure that home buyers can get loans while the private housing-finance industry is moribund. That surpasses the amount spent on rescues of American International Group Inc., General Motors Co. or Citigroup Inc., which have begun repaying their debts.

“It is the mother of all bailouts,” said Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, who is now a consultant to the mortgage-finance industry.

Fannie, based in Washington, and Freddie in McLean, Virginia, own or guarantee 53 percent of the nation’s $10.7 trillion in residential mortgages, according to a June 10 Federal Reserve report. Millions of bad loans issued during the housing bubble remain on their books, and delinquencies continue to rise. How deep in the hole Fannie and Freddie go depends on unemployment, interest rates and other drivers of home prices, according to the companies and economists who study them.

‘Worst-Case Scenario’

The Congressional Budget Office calculated in August 2009 that the companies would need $389 billion in federal subsidies through 2019, based on assumptions about delinquency rates of loans in their securities pools. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget estimated in February that aid could total as little as $160 billion if the economy strengthens.

If housing prices drop further, the companies may need more. Barclays Capital Inc. analysts put the price tag as high as $500 billion in a December report on mortgage-backed securities, assuming home prices decline another 20 percent and default rates triple.

Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Haverford, Pennsylvania, said that a 20 percent loss on the companies’ loans and guarantees, along the lines of other large market players such as Countrywide Financial Corp., now owned by Bank of America Corp., could cause even more damage.

“One trillion dollars is a reasonable worst-case scenario for the companies,” said Egan, whose firm warned customers away from municipal bond insurers in 2002 and downgraded Enron Corp. a month before its 2001 collapse.

Unfinished Business

A 20 percent decline in housing prices is possible, said David Rosenberg, chief economist for Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto. Rosenberg, whose forecasts are more pessimistic than those of other economists, predicts a 15 percent drop.

“Worst case is probably 25 percent,” he said.

The median price of a home in the U.S. was $173,100 in April, down 25 percent from the July 2006 peak, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Fannie and Freddie are deeply wired into the U.S. and global financial systems. Figuring out how to stanch the losses and turn them into sustainable businesses is the biggest piece of unfinished business as Congress negotiates a Wall Street overhaul that could reach President Barack Obama’s desk by July.

Neither political party wants to risk damaging the mortgage market, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and White House economic adviser under President George W. Bush.

“Republicans and Democrats love putting Americans in houses, and there’s no getting around that,” Holtz-Eakin said.

‘Safest Place’

With no solution in sight, the companies may need billions of dollars from the Treasury Department each quarter. The alternative — cutting the federal lifeline and letting the companies default on their debts — would produce global economic tremors akin to the U.S. decision to go off the gold standard in the 1930s, said Robert J. Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who helped create the S&P/Case-Shiller indexes of property values.

“People all over the world think, ‘Where is the safest place I could possibly put my money?’ and that’s the U.S.,” Shiller said in an interview. “We can’t let Fannie and Freddie go. We have to stand up for them.”

Congress created the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, in 1938 to expand home ownership by buying mortgages from banks and other lenders and bundling them into bonds for investors. It set up the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., Freddie Mac, in 1970 to compete with Fannie.”

Read the full article here.

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6/14 Update to the Bidding Process – Procedures for the sale of certain assets and Intellectual Property of Teranode Corporation

Posted in Uncategorized on June 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Update to the Bidding Process – Procedures for the sale of certain assets of Teranode Corporation

Further to Gerbsman Partners e-mail of June 2, 2010 and May 19, 2010 regarding the sale of certain assets of Teranode Corporation, I attach the legal documents, wire transfer information and escrow agreement for the refundable deposit that we will be requesting of bidders for certain assets of Teranode Corporation. All parties bidding on the assets are encouraged, to the greatest extent possible, to conform the terms of their bids to the terms and form of the attached agreements. Any and all of the assets of Teranode Corporation will be sold on an “as is, where is” basis. I would also encourage all interested parties to have their counsel speak with Stephen O’Neill, Esq., counsel to Teranode Corporation.

For additional information please contact Stephen O’Neill, Esq., of Murray & Murray counsel to Teranode Corporation He can be reached at 408 907 9200 and/or at soneill@murraylaw.com

Following an initial round of due diligence, interested parties will be invited to participate with a sealed bid, for the acquisition of the Teranode Assets. Sealed bids must be submitted so that the bid is actually received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Teranodes’ office, located 411 First Avenue S, Suite 700, Seattle WA 98104. Please also email steve@gerbsmanpartners.com with any bid.

For your convenience, I have restated the description of the Updated Bidding Process.

The key dates and terms include:

The Bidding Process for Interested Buyers

The Bidding Process for interested buyers Interested and qualified parties will be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement (attached hereto as Exhibit A) to have access to key members of the management and intellectual capital teams and the due diligence “war room” documentation (the “Due Diligence Access”). Each interested party, as a consequence of the Due Diligence Access granted to it, shall be deemed to acknowledge and represent (i) that it is bound by the bidding procedures described herein; (ii) that it has an opportunity to inspect and examine the Teranode Corporation’s Assets and to review all pertinent documents and information with respect thereto; (iii) that it is not relying upon any written or oral statements, representations, or warranties of Gerbsman Partners, or their respective staff, agents, or attorneys; and (iv) all such documents and reports have been provided solely for the convenience of the interested party, and Gerbsman Partners (and their respective, staff, agents, or attorneys) do not make any representations as to the accuracy or completeness of the same.

Following an initial round of due diligence, interested parties will be invited to participate with a sealed bid, for the acquisition of the Teranode Corporation’s Assets. A sealed bid must be submitted so that it is actually received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Wednesday June 23, 2010 at 3 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Teranode Corporation’s office, located at 411 First Avenue S, Suite 700, Seattle WA 98104 . Please also send an email to steve@gerbsmanpartner.com with your bid.

Bids should identify those assets being tendered for in a specific and identifiable way. The attached fixed asset list may not be complete and Bidders interested in any fixed assets must submit a separate bid for such assets, be specific as to the assets and any sale of the fixed assets or Intellectual Property of Teranode Corporation.

Any person or other entity making a bid must be prepared to provide independent confirmation that they possess the financial resources to complete the purchase where applicable. All bids must be accompanied by a refundable deposit check in the amount of $200,000 (payable to Teranode Corporation). The deposit should be wired to Teranode’s attorneys Murray & Murray, A Professional Corporation. The winning bidder will be notified within 3 business days of the Bid Deadline. The deposit will be held in trust by Company’s counsel. Unsuccessful bidders will have their deposit returned to them within three business days of notification that they are an unsuccessful bidder . Teranode Corporation reserves the right to, in its sole discretion, accept or reject any bid, or withdraw any or all assets from sale. Interested parties should understand that it is expected that the highest and best bid submitted will be chosen as the winning bidder and bidders may not have the opportunity to improve their bids after submission.

Teranode Corporation will require the successful bidder to close within a 7 day period. Any or all of the assets of Teranode Corporation will be sold on an “as is, where is” basis, with no representation or warranties whatsoever. All sales, transfer, and recording taxes, stamp taxes, or similar taxes, if any, relating to the sale of the Teranode Corporation’s Assets shall be the sole responsibility of the successful bidder and shall be paid to Teranode Corporation at the closing of each transaction.

For additional information, please do not contact the company directly, please contact:

Stephen O’Neill, Esq
(408) 907-9200
soneill@murraylaw.com

Steven R. Gerbsman
(415) 456-0628
steve@gerbsmanpartners.com

Dennis Sholl
(415) 457-9596
dennis@gerbsmanpartners.com

Merle McCreery
(303) 929-7628
mmgolf100@msn.com

Kenneth Hardesty
(408) 591-7528
ken@gerbsmanpartners.com

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