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Archive for December, 2013

Gerbsman Partners – Final Update to the Bidding Process, Procedures for the Sale of certain Assets and Intellectual Property of Spinal Restoration, Inc.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Final Update to the Bidding Process, Procedures for the Sale of certain Assets and Intellectual Property of Spinal Restoration, Inc.

Further to Gerbsman Partners e-mail of December 8, 2013 and December 3, 2013 regarding the sale of certain assets of Spinal Restoration, Inc., I attach the draft legal documents and wire transfer information below, that we will be requesting of bidders for certain Assets and Intellectual Property of Spinal Restoration, Inc.  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 agreement.  Any and all of the assets of Spinal Restoration, Inc. will be sold on an ‘as is, where is’ basis and will be subject to “The Bidding Process for Interested Buyers”, outlined below.

I would also encourage all interested parties to have their counsel speak with Erik S. Romberg, Esq., counsel to Spinal Restoration, Inc.

For additional information please contact Erik S. Romberg Esq, 512 320 9278
erikromberg@andrewskurth.com

Please review in detail, the “Bidding Process for Interested Buyers” below.

The key dates and terms include:

The Bidding Process for Interested Buyers

Interested and qualified parties will be expected 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 Spinal Restoration 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 Spinal Restoration Assets. Sealed bids must be submitted so that it is actually received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Friday, January 10, 2014 at 3:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Spinal Restorations’ office, located at 9600 Great Hills Trail Ste. West 150 Austin, Tx. 78759. Please also email steve@gerbsmanpartners.com with any bid.

Bids should identify those assets being tendered for in a specific and identifiable way.

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 Spinal Restoration, Inc.).  The winning bidder will be notified within 3 business days of the Bid Deadline. Unsuccessful bidders will have their deposit returned to them within 3 business days of notification that they are the unsuccessful bidder.

Spinal Restoration reserves the right to, in its sole discretion, accept or reject any bid, or withdraw any or all of the 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.

Spinal Restoration will require the successful bidder to close within a 7 day period. Any or all of the assets of Spinal Restoration 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 Spinal Restoration Assets shall be the sole responsibility of the successful bidder and shall be paid to Spinal Restoration at the closing of each transaction.

For additional information, please see below and/or contact:

Steven R. Gerbsman
steve@gerbsmanpartners.com

Kenneth Hardesty
ken@gerbsmanpartners.com

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Happy Holiday, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and New Year

Posted in Uncategorized on December 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

May you and your family be blessed with health, happiness and safety during this holiday season and new year.

Also, parents and grandparents, put on your “bucket list” to take you children and grandchildren to the Circus.

“The Big Apple Circus” in NYC puts on an outstanding show and is great entertainment and fun for all ages.

Enjoy and Share and always love family

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Social Media Engagement: The Surprising Facts About How Much Time People Spend On The Major Social Networks by Emily Adler – Business Insider

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Social Media Engagement: The Surprising Facts About How Much Time People Spend On The Major Social Networks

Social Engagement Index Desktop Smartphone

BII

We tend to talk about social networks in terms of size, because audience reach is one of social media’s biggest advantages. That’s why Facebook gets so much attention. With 1.2 billion monthly active users, it’s a beast.But as audiences adopt newer social networks, and people’s social activity becomes increasingly fragmented, other measures of social network activity become more important, especially for businesses trying to determine where to best allocate time and resources. How much time users spend on each social network and how engaged and interactive they are with content there are increasingly important ways of evaluating the sites.

In a new report, BI Intelligence calculates an Engagement Index for top major social networks and compares their performance in terms of time-spend terms per-user, on desktop and mobile. We also look at how the different top activities on social media — photo-sharing, status updates, etc. — are indexing in terms of activity, and which sites drive the highest volume in each category. This report complements our popular reports on social media demographics and global audience sizes.

Here are our findings:

  • Social is now the top Internet activity: Americans spend an average of 37 minutes daily on social media, a higher time-spend than any other major Internet activity, including email.
  • Social-mobile rules: 60% or so of social media time is spent not on desktop computers but on smartphones and tablets.
  • Facebook has a monster lead in engagement: Facebook is a terrific absorber of audiences’ time and attention, 114 billion minutes a month in the U.S. alone, on desktop PCs and smartphones. By comparison, Instagram commands 8 billion minutes a month, and Twitter just 5.3 billion.
  • Facebook attracts roughly seven times the engagement that Twitter does, when looking at both smartphone and PC usage, in per-user terms.
  • Snapchat is a smaller network than WhatsApp, but outpaces it in terms of time-spend per user.
  • Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn have made major successful pushes in 2013 to increase engagement on their mobile sites and apps. The new race in social media is not for audience per se, but for multi-device engagement.
  • Multi-device social media: Our analysis is based on BI Intelligence’s social media Engagement Index, which compares the effectiveness of social networks in keeping individual users engaged across smartphones and desktop PCs (for an explanation of the Index, sign up for instant access to BI Intelligence). 

Here are our PC-smartphone Engagement Index scores for five platforms:

  1. Facebook, 50.7
  2. Instagram, 13.5
  3. Twitter, 7.4
  4. Snapchat, 6.6
  5. WhatsApp, 4.6

The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use. 

In full, the report:

For full access to the report on Social Engagement sign up for a free trial subscription today.

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Update to the Bidding Process, Procedures for the Sale of certain Assets and Intellectual Property of Spinal Restoration, Inc.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Update to the Bidding Process, Procedures for the Sale of certain Assets and Intellectual Property of Spinal Restoration, Inc.     
Further to Gerbsman Partners e-mail of December 8, 2013 and December 3, 2013 regarding the sale of certain assets of Spinal Restoration, Inc., I attach the draft legal documents and wire transfer information below, that we will be requesting of bidders for certain Assets and Intellectual Property of Spinal Restoration, Inc.  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 agreement.  Any and all of the assets of Spinal Restoration, Inc. will be sold on an ‘as is, where is’ basis and will be subject to “The Bidding Process for Interested Buyers”, outlined below.

I would also encourage all interested parties to have their counsel speak with Erik S. Romberg, Esq., counsel to Spinal Restoration, Inc.

For additional information please contact Erik S. Romberb Esq, 512 320 9278
erikromberg@andrewskurth.com

Account Name                  Andrews Kurth LLP – IOLTA Attorney Trust Acct

Account Address              600 Travis, Suite 4200

Account City, State           Houston, Texas 77002

Account Number              2000019291578

Bank Name                      Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Bank Address                  420 Montgomery St

Bank City, State               San Francisco, California 94104

Bank ABA Code              121000248

Swift Code                       WFBIUS6S

Attention                          Veronica Ramirez, 713.220.4205

Reference                        Spinal Restoration

Please review in detail, the “Bidding Process for Interested Buyers” below.

The key dates and terms include:

The Bidding Process for Interested Buyers

Interested and qualified parties will be expected 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 Spinal Restoration 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 Spinal Restoration Assets. Sealed bids must be submitted so that it is actually received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Friday, January 10, 2014 at 3:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Spinal Restorations’ office, located at 9600 Great Hills Trail Ste. West 150 Austin, Tx. 78759. Please also email steve@gerbsmanpartners.com with any bid.

Bids should identify those assets being tendered for in a specific and identifiable way.

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 Spinal Restoration, Inc.).  The winning bidder will be notified within 3 business days of the Bid Deadline. Unsuccessful bidders will have their deposit returned to them within 3 business days of notification that they are the unsuccessful bidder.

Spinal Restoration reserves the right to, in its sole discretion, accept or reject any bid, or withdraw any or all of the 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.

Spinal Restoration will require the successful bidder to close within a 7 day period. Any or all of the assets of Spinal Restoration 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 Spinal Restoration Assets shall be the sole responsibility of the successful bidder and shall be paid to Spinal Restoration at the closing of each transaction.

For additional information, please see below and/or contact:

Steven R. Gerbsman
steve@gerbsmanpartners.com  

Kenneth Hardesty
ken@gerbsmanpartners.com

Read Full Post »

Secret-Sharing App Whisper Is Nearing 3 Billion Monthly Pageviews Because It Does Something Facebook Can’t by Alyson Shontell, Business Insider

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Secret-Sharing App Whisper Is Nearing 3 Billion Monthly Pageviews Because It Does Something Facebook Can’t

whisper app michael heyward

Business Insider/Alyson Shontell

Michael Heyward, CEO of Whisper, in the Santa Monica office. The office is house with a pool, a giant trampoline, a basketball court and a gas fireplace (pictured).

If you open mobile app Whisper, it looks like a collection of Internet memes. Each entry is a picture with bold text on top, created in seconds by users.Unlike memes, Whisper’s photo messages aren’t often funny.

They’re thought-provoking and serious; the kind of secrets only best friends reveal to each other.

“That moment in the locker room when all your teammates are making fun of gays and you’re just sitting there like ‘glad you don’t know about me…'” one popular Whisper reads.

whisper

Whisper

A post on Whisper.

There are some light-hearted messages on Whisper too.

“Snow, the only time a girl gets excited over three inches,” is one example.

Reading Whisper is like “watching a trainwreck,” one user told Business Insider. It’s hard to pull your eyes away.

The two-year-old app is rapidly gaining popularity. Millions of people use Whisper and it is approaching 3 billion monthly pageviews. On average, people spend more than 20 minutes per day with Whisper, checking its content 8–10 times per day. Whisper has raised $25 million from early Snapchat investor Lightspeed and others.

The people who are spilling their guts on Whisper fall between ages 17 and 28. Heyward says fewer than 4% of his users are under the age of 18. The vast majority of its users — 70% — are women.

The reason Whisper gets so many people to share things they’d never say out loud is because everything is posted anonymously. In the past, anonymous social networks have been nasty places. Just look at the comments on YouTube, or at failed startups like Juicy Campus, which were sued by people defamed on their sites.

Michael Heyward, the app’s 26-year-old founder, has gone to great lengths to keep Whisper’s content respectful. He never wants anyone to read Whisper and feel like they need to shower. He has 92 people moderating content and comments in the Philippines in addition to the 32 people Whisper employs full-time.

whisper house

Business Insider/Alyson Shontell

The Whisper house sits in a residential neighborhood in Santa Monica, where 32 people work, occasionally sleep, and hack away at the app.

“You are who you are when no one else is looking,” Heyward told Business Insider at his Santa Monica headquarters in early December. “Anonymity is a really powerful tool. But we think about it like that Spiderman’ quote: ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ Think about all the things you can do with a hammer. You can build something great … or you can kill someone.”

Heyward occasionally teaches at USC. In a recent class, he asked students to raise their hands if they were virgins. No one did. Then he blindfolded them, turned off the lights, and asked the same question. Half of the hands went up. Think of the first scenario as Facebook and the second as Whisper.

Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter are social networks tied to identities. Because of that, people only share things they’re proud of, like engagements, articles, weddings, vacations and pregnancies. Heyward, who grew up in Los Angeles and went to the same high school as Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, says he’s innovating loneliness.

Anonymity is a really powerful tool. Think about all the things you can do with a hammer. You can build something great, or you can kill someone.

Heyward’s mission is to make sure people only use anonymity on Whisper to protect themselves and not to hurt someone else. The result is something that looks like an open-source diary, with supportive comments from people who understand the intense feelings being described.  Often, users will respond to one Whisper with another.

Not all of Whisper’s content is real. A few posts are dreamt up by imaginative users. But for the many that are, Whisper acts like a therapy group that connects people based on intimate, shared experiences. Some Whisper users say the app has saved their lives.

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