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Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

Microsoft buys systems management start-up for $60M

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, Investments, Market research, Microsoft, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is some tidbits around MSFT aquistion of Opalis Software Inc. from Computer World.

“Microsoft Corp. has acquired systems management vendor Opalis Software Inc. for about $60 million, according to an analyst report.

Brenon Daly, an analyst at The 451 Group, blogged earlier this week about the deal, citing unnamed financial and industry sources.

The VC-backed Mississauga, Ontario, start-up was making about $10 million annually from sales of software for automating IT processes, according to Daly. It also partnered with Microsoft in the spring (download PDF), integrating its software into Microsoft’s System Center management platform.

Daly’s report was echoed by blogs and tweets.

Through a spokeswoman, Microsoft said it is not commenting on rumors and speculation. Opalis, meanwhile, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Opalis’ CEO, Todd DeLaughter, was previously general manager of Hewlett-Packard Co.’s OpenView systems management division.

Daly said the Opalis acquisition would be the fourth in this market in the past two years. HP bought Opsware for $54 million in 2007, while BMC Software Inc. acquired RealOps for $53 million. CA Inc. bought Optinuity last year. One key difference, he said, is that Opalis’ revenue appeared to be higher than its counterparts’ at the time of acquisition.”

Read the full article here.

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This Year’s Top 10 Largest Venture Funding Deals

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, FaceBook, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a interesting article from WSJ Online.

“Twitter Inc.’s $100 million funding round drew considerable attention for its massive size, but it’s not the largest venture deal so far this year. That round actually tied for the fourth largest, according to data compiled from Dow Jones VentureSource.

Here’s a list of the Top 10 venture capital rounds through the third quarter. The deals are impressive considering the cloud hanging over the venture industry. Besides Twitter and another dot-commer, Facebook Inc., these companies range from massive clean-technology projects and health-care plays to wireless equipment makers and, in one case, a waste-collection service.

#1 Solyndra Inc., Fremont, Calif. – $286 million

The solar panel maker is on the federal government’s hot-list, receiving a $535 million loan guarantee in September to build a second manufacturing plant and create hundreds of jobs. That loan encouraged venture firms to invest at least another $198 million in Solyndra. (The company announced that amount in September though a spokesman told VentureWire the round’s total was even higher.) Argonaut Private Equity, an investment vehicle for Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, led the round. Others participating in the round weren’t disclosed, although Solyndra’s investors include CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, RockPort Capital Partners, U.S. Venture Partners and Virgin Green Fund, which together have invested more than $600 million. Solyndra plans to finish building its plant in Fremont by the end of next year and ship its first product in early 2011.

#2 Clovis Oncology Inc., Boulder, Colo. – $146 million

In May, Domain Associates, New Enterprise Associates and others bet $146 million that former executives of cancer-drug company Pharmion Corp., which sold for $2.9 billion last year, will repeat that success with newly formed Clovis Oncology. Also participating were Pharmion investors Aberdare Ventures, Abingworth Management, ProQuest Investments and Versant Ventures, and newcomer Frazier Healthcare Ventures. Like Pharmion – which raised $145 million in venture capital and convertible debt before going public in 2003 – Clovis will acquire cancer therapies, develop them through to regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe, and market them.

#3 Small Bone Innovations Inc., New York – $108 million

The orthopedic device company, founded in 2004, has developed a portfolio of products for thumb, hand, wrist, elbow, foot and ankle surgeries. The STAR Ankle total joint replacement system, one of Small Bone’s flagship products, received Food and Drug Administration clearance in May. The $108 million Series D round, which closed in April, included new investors The Family Office of Bahrain, Goldman Sachs & Co., Khazanah Nasional Brhd. and Malaysian Technology Development Corp. and existing investors 3i Group, Axiom Venture Partners, NGN Capital, TGap Ventures and Trevi Health Ventures. Executives told VentureWire they expect Small Bone to reach profitability in 12 months, and unlike many medical device companies which become acquisition targets, could grow into a full-fledged company in its own right.

#4 (Tied) A123 Systems Inc., Watertown, Mass. – $100 million

The electric-car battery maker’s initial public offering last month captured investors’ imagination – and wallets – with a vision of a future where power is stored intelligently and deployed efficiently in a world of lower carbon emission. Before the IPO, A123 Systems gathered $100 million in Series F funding in June from investors Gururaj Deshpande, General Electric Co., North Bridge Venture Partners and Qualcomm Inc. A123 also received a $249.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy grant, the second-biggest awarded as part of a $2.4 billion program to start up a domestic battery industry. The company, which has a deal to supply Chrysler Group LLC with batteries for planned electric vehicles and hybrids, is said to be in the late stages of negotiations for another DOE loan worth as much as $235 million.

#4. (Tied) Facebook Inc., Palo Alto, Calif. – $100 million

Facebook recently reached an important milestone for an Internet company, becoming cash-flow positive as it also grabbed its 300 millionth member. Will an IPO be coming soon? Executives won’t say, but the company’s investors are counting on a spectacular exit at some point given how much money they’ve invested over the years. One of the newest investors is Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian Internet investor that put $100 million into Facebook in July while also paying another $100 million to buy out shares of any selling employees.

#4 (Tied) Open Range Communications Inc., Greenwood Village, Colo. – $100 million

One Equity Partners committed $100 million to Open Range at the start of the year to help it roll out wireless broadband and Internet services in rural America by the end of the year. The deal followed a $267 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Utilities Program. Founded in 2004, Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Open Range hopes to reach more than six million Americans in 546 underserved and rural communities across the U.S. lacking access to traditional DSL or cable broadband service providers. Open Range plans to use WiMAX technology to enable access to its planned wireless service with a simple plug-in device.

#4 (Tied) Twitter Inc., San Francisco – $100 million

At a $1 billion valuation, Twitter’s $100 million fourth round proved the Web messaging company is here to stay, at least longer than some thought. The funding came from some unlikely sources, including T. Rowe Price Group, better known for its retirement funds than venture capital investing, Morgan Stanley, which invested from its asset management business, and Insight Venture Partners, a growth-equity investor that doesn’t typically put money in pre-revenue companies. Other investors in Twitter include Benchmark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures, which didn’t reinvest in the latest round reportedly because the deal priced the firm out. Now the pressure will be on for Twitter to live up to the hype.”

Read the full article here.

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Venture Capital Fund Raising Hits A Six Year Low

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Investments, National Venture Capital Association, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is some not-so-exciting news from Businessinsider.

“The third quarter was rough for VCs, with 17 firms raising just $1.6 billion. That’s the fewest firms to raise money since 1994, and it’s the smallest amount of money raised since Q1 2003, says the NVCA and Thomson Reuters.

It’s an 81% drop from a year ago, and a second quarter of declines.

There were three big raises–Andreessen Horowitz with $58.5 million, Vinod Khosla’s fund raised $750 million, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson raised $196 million. Without those funds, it would be a nightmare.”

Read the full article here.

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Adobe to Buy Omniture for $1.8 Billion, Expanding Beyond Design

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , on September 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Adobe´s innovation through aquisition continues, next in line is Omniture. On a larger scale, this indicates a growing market optimism that the time is right for investments. This article is by way of Bloomberg.

“Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) — Adobe Systems Inc., the world’s biggest maker of graphic-design software, agreed to buy Omniture Inc. for $1.8 billion, expanding into programs that track the performance of Web sites and online advertising campaigns.

Adobe will pay $21.50 a share for Omniture, 24 percent more than the closing price yesterday. Adobe fell as much as 4.9 percent in extended trading after announcing the acquisition and forecasting sales that missed some analysts’ estimates.

Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen is pushing Adobe into new businesses at a time when customers are pulling back on purchases of the company’s design software. Omniture gives Adobe a steady source of revenue and may mean investors will focus less on periodic upgrades to products such as Adobe Creative Suite, said Michael Olson, a Minneapolis-based analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co.

“Adobe is trying to diversify beyond being just a maker of development tools,” Olson said. “Any time you do a big acquisition, the acquirer’s shares are down because of the element of risk that some investors aren’t comfortable with.”

Others offering opinion on the topic include: Barrons, Zikkir, Econsultancy, Seeking Alpha.

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The Spend-And-Borrow Economy

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, tagged , , , on August 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Ponzi schemes have a way of ending unhappily.

Here is a article from Forbes.

“In the last few months the world economy has been saved from a near-depression. That feat has been achieved by a range of extraordinary government stimulus measures: In the U.S. and in China, and to a lesser extent in Europe, Japan and other countries, governments have pumped liquidity, slashed policy rates, cut taxes, primed demand and ring-fenced and back-stopped the financial system. All of this has worked, but at a cost. Governments have been spending and borrowing like never before. The question now is: how do they stop?

This is not a simple problem. Restore normality too soon and the risk is that a weak recovery will double dip into a second and deeper recession. Restore it too late and inflation will already be ingrained.

Consider how much has been committed and how much has been spent. In the U.S. alone, when you add up the government’s liquidity support measures, its re-capitalizations of banks, its guarantees of bad assets, its extension of deposit insurance and guarantees of unsecured bank debt, at least $12 trillion has been committed, and a quarter of that has already been spent. Along with the rise in spending there has also been a very large fiscal stimulus, pushing the federal budget deficit to 13% of gross domestic product this year. (Next year, on current plans, the deficit will fall back but still amount to 10% of GDP.)

Not all the measures adopted appear on the budgetary bottom line. As well as monetary easing and fiscal stimulus, the U.S. and other governments have resorted to unconventional measures to ease monetary conditions. In the U.S., Japan and the U.K., real interest rates have been pushed down to zero, and governments have resorted to buying long-dated securities, the goal of which–only partially achieved–was to hold down long-term interest rates.”

Read the full article here.

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