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Archive for the ‘Board Of Intellectual Capital’ Category

Successful “Date Certain M&A” of Medical Device company, its Assets and Intellectual Property

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , on July 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Steven R. Gerbsman, Principal of Gerbsman Partners, Kenneth Hardesty and Dennis Sholl, members of Gerbsman Partners Board of Intellectual Capital, announced today their success in maximizing stakeholder value for a venture capital backed, medical device company company focused on a unique stent delivery platform that has applications in treating coronary, neuro and peripheral artery disease.

Gerbsman Partners provided Crisis Management and Investment Banking leadership, facilitated the sale of the business unit’s assets and its associated Intellectual Property. Due to market conditions, the board of directors made the strategic decision to maximize the value of the business unit and Intellectual Property.

Gerbsman Partners provided leadership to the company with:

  • Crisis Management and medical device domain expertise in developing the strategic action plans for maximizing value of the business unit, Intellectual Property and assets;
  • Proven domain expertise in maximizing the value of the business unit and Intellectual Property through a Gerbsman Partners targeted and proprietary “Date Certain M&A Process”;
  • The ability to “Manage the Process” among potential Acquirers, Lawyers, Creditors Management and Advisors;
  • The proven ability to “Drive” toward successful closure for all parties at interest.

About Gerbsman Partners

Gerbsman Partners focuses on maximizing enterprise value for stakeholders and shareholders in under-performing, under-capitalized and under-valued companies and their Intellectual Property. Since 2001, Gerbsman Partners has been involved in maximizing value for 61 Technology, Life Science and Medical Device companies and their Intellectual Property and has restructured/terminated over $790 million of real estate executory contracts and equipment lease/sub-debt obligations. Since inception in 1980, Gerbsman Partners has been involved in over $2.3 billion of financings, restructurings and M&A transactions.

Gerbsman Partners has offices and strategic alliances in Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Alexandria, VA, San Francisco, Europe and Israel.

For additional information please visit www.gerbsmanpartners.com or
Gerbsman Partners blog.

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Green-tech projects in CA get stimulus funds

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , on July 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from SF Gate.

“The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday awarded $92 million in stimulus funds for research projects that could change the way the country uses and stores energy, with $22 million going to California companies and universities.

The money represents the Obama administration’s latest round of investments in green technology. The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has already funded loans for several green Bay Area companies, such as Solyndra of Fremont and Tesla Motors of Palo Alto.

“By driving energy innovation, we can take the lead in high-tech energy manufacturing and export these products to the world,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Eleven projects in California received funding on Monday. Many focus on more energy-efficient cooling systems or better ways to store energy on a large scale – one of the clean tech industry’s holy grails.

Although most of the awards went to Southern California companies and labs, two Bay Area projects received funding. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley – which Chu used to run – won $1.6 million to develop flow batteries, a type of rechargeable battery in which reactive chemicals are pumped through the battery’s cells whenever energy is needed. And Primus Power of Alameda won $2 million to develop electrodes for flow batteries.”

Read more here.

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Google Secretly Invested $100+ Million In Zynga, Preparing To Launch Google Games

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, FaceBook, google, internet, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some news from Techcrunch.

“Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The company has raised somewhere around half a billion dollars in venture capital in the last year alone, including $150 million from Softbank Capital last month and $180 million late last year from Digital Sky Technologies, Tiger Global, Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The Softbank announcement was never officially confirmed by the company, however, and the Google investment was likely part of that deal as well.

The investment part of the deal closed a month ago or so. A larger strategic partnership is still in process.

The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures, say our sources, and it’s a highly strategic deal. Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see PayPal being replaced with Google Checkout as the primary payment option. Zynga is supposedly PayPal’s biggest single customer, and Google is always looking for ways to make Google Checkout relevant.

And there’s more. These same sources are saying that Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 will be a stunning $350 million, half of which is operating profit. Zynga is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011, say our sources. This blows previous estimates out of the water.

Zynga continues to work on high level strategic business development deals. The reason these deals are so attractive to companies like Yahoo and now Google is this – Zynga allows them to rebuild the massive social graph, currently controlled by Facebook. For whatever reason people love to play these games and get passionately addicted to them, coming back day after day. That’s helped Facebook become what it is today. Google, Yahoo and others want some of that magic to rub off on them, too.”

Read the full post here.

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The Key to Greentech IPOs: Government Backing

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interesting article on Cleantech/ Greentech IPO´s from Earth2Tech.

“Electric car maker Tesla Motors officially delivered the biggest venture backed IPO of the quarter, raising $226 million, according to numbers out this week from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. What made the public debut different from some of the other venture-backed IPOs that happened this quarter? Well, among a variety of things, last summer Tesla managed to score a coveted $465 million in loans from the Department of Energy.

The link with Uncle Sam likely helped allay investors fears over supporting a risky company that has yet to make a profit and doesn’t plan on making any profits for the next two years. Tesla isn’t the only greentech IPO hopeful backed by the government. In fact, a large number of the greentech companies that have been gunning for the public market, or have recently gone public, have significant government support.

Take lithium ion battery maker A123Systems. The venture-backed company raised $371 million in its public debut in 2009, which was the largest IPO of the year, and represented about a third of the overall IPO market that year in terms of dollars raised. A123 secured a sizable $249 million grant from the Department of Energy last summer.

Before Tesla, the venture-backed greentech IPO hopeful of the hour was solar panel maker Solyndra, which hosted a speech by President Obama in May. Last year the company won a whopping $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, and that loan guarantee translated into a loan from the U.S. Treasury. However, despite the government support, investors’ appetites for solar, and Solyndra’s, IPO just wasn’t there and Solyndra ended up ditching its IPO plans last month, in lieu of raising funding from its current investors.

This week, shortly after Tesla’s IPO, an investor behind another venture-backed and government-supported electric car maker suggested it will also one day go public. That would be Fisker Automotive, and Ray Lane, the Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist and former Oracle executive, said this week that “Certainly we would plan to sell shares in the public market once the Karma is on the road and we have visibility into the revenue plan.” In April Fisker closed a $528.7 million loan agreement that will be used to help the startup launch its luxury plug-in hybrid model and set up manufacturing in Delaware for a line of lower-cost plug-in hybrids.

Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks, which has been planning an IPO for the last six months, might not have direct government support, but the close to $4 billion in funds for smart grid projects from the U.S. stimulus package has been a major boon to its utility customers. The Silver Spring folks told me in an email last year that the funding “will go a long way toward accelerating and broadening deployment of the critical smart grid infrastructure.” Silver Spring is working with stimulus award winners Florida Power & Light, Oklahoma Gas and Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, PHI Holdings (including PEPCO, Atlantic City and PEPCO DC) and Modesto Irrigation District.

Other rumored greentech IPO hopefuls (here’s Earth2Tech’s 10 Greentech IPO Picks) that have some sort of government support include solar thermal developer BrightSource Energy and Smith Electric Vehicles. BrightSource received a commitment earlier this year from the Department of Energy for a $1.37 billion loan guarantee to build out BrightSource’s Ivanpah solar project, which is set to be the first new solar thermal power plant built in California’s deserts in 20 years. Smith Electric Vehicles won a $10 million DOE battery grant last summer, and added $22 million under the same program in March.

Of course, not all of the greentech IPO candidates are under the wing of the U.S. government. Biofuel developer Amyris is planning a $100 million IPO without direct government support. But the odds are if you see a greentech startup hit the Nasdaq it’s got Uncle Sam in its corner.

The reality says a couple things about the greentech industry and the IPO market in general. First the IPO market for venture-backed startups is actually relatively weak right now. A significant amount of companies have actually pulled their IPOs in recent weeks and that extra bit of confidence via government support can help push these plans onto the public markets (Solyndra as the exception).

Another issue is that many of the government loans, grants and loan guarantees given to these greentech startups come attached with a cost-sharing requirement over a certain time frame. To unlock the full extent of the government funding companies like Tesla and Solyndra have to raise their own matching funding, by a certain date, and many are turning to the public markets for that.”

Read the whole article here.

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Could consumer ignorance hurt mobile advertising?

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, internet, Investments, Market research, Mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Phone Usage, Strategy, Technology, Wireless, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

By Tony Fish – member of Gerbsman Partners Board of Intellectual and principal at AMF Ventures. Visit his blog at: http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com

Summary

Virtually unlimited mobile usage tariffs means that advertising is perceived as free from the users perspective, as there is no additional cost of bandwidth to the user.  These tariffs have lead to an unprecedented growth in mobile applications and the emergence of  a new eco-system. However,  “all you can eat” pricing models for mobile have become increasingly risky with the advent of new devices and operating systems from Apple and Google.  With the prospect of a return to a pay per something, users may change their view of “free” advertising and this could lead to a change in behaviour, as they will be un-willing to pay for the bandwidth for the advert.  Whilst this may seam ridiculous to anyone who understands, explaining to the user they have the wrong perception or that this is not the reason for a significant monthly bill, could be difficult.  This viewpoint therefore opens the debate; “Could some selfish business decisions be destroying the mobile eco-system that has just been created and what scenarios are worth considering?”

Unlimited Growth

We have all benefitted from the introduction of unlimited mobile tariffs.  Voice, SMS and data usage has exploded.  Economically it made sense to the operator as they had spare capacity and in reality “unlimited” has caps but these caps are set so high that a user was unlikely to reach them.

Mobiles (smart phones) have evolved and today, web site and applications (inc games) for mobile are now built with an advertising model in mind and with this has come the download requirements of, in some simple cases, banner ads to some thing complex such as video and multimedia.  With network improvement, the ability to deliver a near web experience, advances in connection management and now the iPad, users can find it easy to get close to, or pass their “unlimited” data caps.

Mobile applications driven by adverts work and the application method of delivery made up for a number of early shortfalls in network constraints and mobile web browser capability. However, due to the improved experience and performance of the mobile there are now less reasons for a Brand to have a specific mobile version.  However, in this move adverts are also served in full form from the web to the mobile.  This transition will become more important as Apple looks to force applications to use their own iAd serving technology and analytics.  These forced change are likely to speed up the migration from mobile specific application to webapp – just adding a web address and icon to the mobile desktop and also removes the dependence on apps stores as the controlling point.

So what has changed?

Apple launched OS4 with a 7th temple, which is the ability to deliver a fabulous advertising experience as “most of it sucks”.  The move is to deliver emotion and interactivity as this will help the developer community who want to build advertising revenues in exchange for free apps.  This advertising experience does come at a cost – bandwidth. OS4 also introduces background processing (multitasking), “yippee!” says the developer. However this means that the phone can hack thought the battery really quickly and chat to the network constantly.  Pushed updates become streaming.

Changes to the OS and how much data phones require for a great experience mean that the unlimited data package become very attractive to the user and advertiser as they don’t care about bandwidth, developers love it as they can deliver the real time applications and services they want for mobile. However, for the operators who are already struggling with capacity, this becomes a real headache and introduces value chain conflicts.

Implications

If the operators choose, and the evidence is currently pointing to this fact, to remove from the market unlimited packages, or such a high cap it is perceived as unlimited and lean back towards some form of pay-by-how-much-you-eat model then there could be some significant changes to the market as the users, device and applications guys try to reduce a swing to a doom loop scenario.

Here’s the crunch.  For those reading this we can find arguments why all of the above is not a concern, however, the issue may not be the reality of the situation we find ourselves in, but from the user perception, it could be very real.  If the user believes that there is a cost, irrespective of reality; they may change behaviour!

The simple newspaper headline that reads “Your paying for advertising” is difficult to counter with the argument that informs a user how big an advert is in bytes and that there is a trade for free services.  If the reason for adverts is interactivity and engagement then a technical explanation may not be that useful or that someone is exploiting your data to sell you more.

Behavioural or targeted adverting depends at some level on understanding the user which is an output from the analysis their data – My Digital Footprint.  If users find that the real monetary cost of sharing that data is too high, it kills the input.  If users find that the real monetary cost of engaging with ads is too high, it kills the value.

Given that eco-systems require trusted players who can balance risk and reward together and be reliant on complex inter-dependences; mobile is no different.  However, it would appear that some of the players are trying to play for themselves rather than the community.

Scenarios to ponder over coffee

  1. Restrictive – in this scenario the user decides to restrict their use and applications to focus on a few that are a priority and will not experiment or discover.  This could have a significant impact on social media tools and applications.
  2. Blockers – in this scenario the user decides that they are unwilling to pay for the bandwidth and introduces a blocker service to prevent their costly bandwidth being used.  This in turn destroys the fee advertising model and an outcome could be that the user ends up paying for applications.
  3. Selective – in this scenario the operator decides to become selective about which handsets can have unlimited (capped) data plans and which handsets are forced to have a PAYG data pricing model.  This forces users into a choice and device manufactures start to work with the operators to produce devices in tune with the network to gain a competitive advantage.
  4. Side-Load – in this scenario PAYG could lead to more applications being downloaded by sideloading on the PC or by WiFi. If so, developers could be affected in ways that are hard to predict. But it may affect apps being advertised on the device.
  5. Doom loop – in this scenario the operator changes the pricing and this in turn creates all the dis-benefits for the advertisers, device guys, applications developers and users.  Mobile slows and mobile operator valuations dive.
  6. Intelligence – in this scenario the middleware and platform companies work with the operators and seek out methods and processes to compress, reduce, focus, profile and select data and services that should use the limited wireless network, that is expensive.  Can data/ ads be cashed locally on the device and selected as needed or side load them using wifi or other alternative networks, or put on hold until bandwidth cost is not an issue.
  7. Advertising pays for the bandwidth – a somewhat difficult scenario to comprehend, but in this scenario the advertiser takes on the cost of the bandwidth.  However this is full of complex conflicts such as – I want to deliver the best ad, but it costs to much.
  8. No change – in reality – this is not a scenario.

Reality check

Those reading this know that ‘most’ mobile advertising is very bandwidth lean, as it a blend of:-

i)  an invitation with the consumer to interact, normally in the form of a banner. The reality being that for most consumers most of the time, this is likely to be negligible in terms of cost across a month.

ii)  a landing page, which they land on if they click on a banner – again negligible.

iii)  call to action at the landing page, which unless it involves rich media (eg video), is also likely to be small in terms of bandwidth

We know that users respond differently to ads and services on a mobile to the web but it is possible that the Apple OS4 interruption of advertising will be heavier on bandwidth, however, over 50% of iPhone ads are viewed over WiFi (2010) probably driven by speed as opposed to cost reasons. One could postulate that this trend would therefore be accelerated with the re-introduction of pay-as-you-go pricing!

All that said, users are users and their perception is how we need to live our business life – from their view point not ours.  Reflecting on the original question; “could consumer ignorance hurt mobile advertising?”, one could say this is the wrong question and it should be “is the mobile eco-system strong enough to defend itself against selfish desires of certain key players?”

If you would like to chat about the opportunities that digital footprint data brings, especially from the perspective of mobile and real time feedback, please contact me at tony.fish@amfventures.com. The book is free on line at http://www.mydigitalfootprint.com/ or you can buy it direct from the publisher at the web site. There is also a summary and a eReader/ Kindle version.

We hope that our Viewpoint improves awareness, raises questions and promotes deliberation over coffee. We will respond to e-mail, text, twitter or blog comments. http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com

Kind regards,

Tony Fish

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