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Archive for the ‘Investments’ Category

Facebook, music services work in harmony

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, FaceBook, internet, Investments, Market research, mobile 2.0, Social Networks, Technology, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate.

“Facebook members have listened to more than 1.5 billion songs in the six weeks since the social network rolled out its latest Open Graph applications platform.

And the online music services that have hitched their wagon to Facebook are flourishing, according to stats posted on the company’s developers blog.

“As a result, some of our biggest music developers have more than doubled their active users, while earlier-stage startups and services starting with a smaller base have seen anywhere between a 2-10x increase in active users,” Facebook’s Casey Maloney Rosales Muller wrote. “It’s still early, but these results show that the Open Graph can be a powerful discovery mechanism for users and drive significant growth for developers.”

One big winner so far is Spotify, the online music service that just expanded to the United States in the summer. Since announcing it was plugging into the beta Open Graph protocol at the F8 developers’ conference Sept. 22, Spotify has gained more than 4 million new users.

And Earbits, the company that also powers SFGate Radio, has recorded a 1,350 percent increase in the number of users who become fans of bands they’re hearing, he said.

Meanwhile, MOG has grown 246 percent, Rdio has seen a 30-fold increase, Slacker reports an 11-fold increase and Deezer has added 10,000 users.

Ticketing sites Eventbrite, Ticketmaster and Ticketfly have also reported $2 to $6 in direct ticket sales for each link shared within Facebook.

And all this has happened before Facebook has had a chance to roll out Open Graph and new Timeline user profiles to a wider portion of its audience of 800 million users. The Palo Alto company says those rollouts are coming soon.”

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Groupon shares jump in public market debut

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, FaceBook, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, IPO news, tagged , , , , , on November 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate

“Groupon, the company that pioneered online group discounts, saw its stock climb by nearly a third in its public debut Friday, showing strong demand for an Internet company whose business model is considered unsustainable by some analysts.

Groupon’s stock jumped $6.40, or 32 percent, to $26.40 in late morning Friday after trading began at about 10:45 a.m. Earlier, the stock was trading as high as $31.14. Big fluctuations are common for companies that have just gone public as investors gauge what to do with the stock.

The stock is trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol “GRPN.”

Chicago-based Groupon Inc. sends out frequent emails to subscribers offering a chance to buy discount deals for anything from laser hair removal to weekend getaways. The company takes a cut of what people pay and gives the rest to the merchant.

Though it’s spawned many copycats after its 2008 launch, Groupon has the advantage of being first. This has meant brand recognition and investor demand, as evidenced by its sizzling public debut.

Groupon is selling 5.5 percent of its available shares. Though not unprecedented, the amount is below that of many prominent tech companies, such as Google Inc. and more recently LinkedIn Corp., in recent years.

On Thursday, the company priced its IPO at $20 per share. That was above its expected range of $16 to $18. It gave Groupon a market value of $12.7 billion, above only Google’s among tech companies. With Friday’s stock price jump, Groupon’s value rose to $16.76 billion.

Another Internet darling, professional networking service LinkedIn, saw its stock soar to $122.70 on its opening day in May after pricing at $45. Since then, the stock has settled lower but was still trading at $80 late Friday morning.

Groupon’s shares rose amid a decline in the broader market. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 183.91, or 1.5 percent, to 11,860.56.”

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Huawei eyes cloud buys, but politics keep it away from U.S. startups

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, internet, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Super computing, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , on November 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“Huawei is planning to boost its cloud computing offerings on the software side through acquisitions, but thanks to the uncertain politics related to the Chinese government, U.S. startups may not be in the running. The Chinese telecom gear maker has had its eye on the data center market for some time, and cloud computing is a hot opportunity in China(sub req’d) where the client-server computing paradigm didn’t have much chance to become entrenched.

Reuters reports that Li Sanqi, chief technology officer of Huawei’s IT hardware product line, said:

“I feel that we will have acquisitions in the cloud and ICT (information and communications technology) arenas. We are searching, but we’ll be careful in the United States for political reasons.”

His caution is well founded, as the United States has taken steps recently to prevent Huawei from selling gear that could be used in public safety equipment, and in February blocked it from acquiring the assets of a networking hardware startup called 3Leaf systems. The government prevented the deal at the recommendation of The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which exists to prevent sensitive technology from being acquired by foreign companies. The U.S. government has long been suspicious of Huawei’s ties to the Chinese government.

Huawei has repeatedly denied or downplayed those ties. However, fears of China’s hacking skills and technological advancements remain a large concern in the United States. For this reason, Huawei says it will look for startup companies in Canada, China and Israel, which means the myriad U.S. cloud software startups will have to find buyers a little closer to home.”

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10/24 – Update to the Bidding Process – Procedures for the sale of certain assets of Alure Medical, Inc. – wire transfer information

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Distressed Intellectual Property, Distressed IP, Gerbsman Partners, Inetellectual Property, Intellectual capital, Investments, Life Science, Medical Device, Venture Capital, Venturebeat, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati on October 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Update to the Bidding Process – Procedures for the sale of certain assets of Alure Medical, Inc. -wire transfer information

Further to Gerbsman Partners e-mail of October 15, 2011 and October 2, 2011 regarding the sale of certain assets of Alure Medical, Inc., I attach the draft legal documents and wire transfer information that we will be requesting of bidders for certain assets of Alure Medical, 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 Alure Medical, Inc. will be sold on an “as is, where is” basis.  I would also encourage all interested parties to have their counsel speak with James Huie Esq., counsel to Alure Medical, Inc.

For additional information please contact James Huie, Esq., of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati counsel to Alure Medical, Inc.  He can be reached at 650 565 3981  and/or at    jhuie@wsgr.com

Following an initial round of due diligence, interested parties will be invited to participate with a sealed bid, for the acquisition of the Alure Medical Assets. Sealed bids must be submitted so that the bid is actually received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Alure Medical’s office, located at 3637 Westwind Boulevard, Suite B, Santa Rosa, California 95403.  Please also email – steve@gerbsmanpartners.com – with any bid.

Interested parties who wish to participate in the Bidding Process must also wire transfer a $ 200,000 refundable deposit to Wilson, Sonsini’s trust account- see attached.

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
Interested and qualified parties will be expected to sign a Confidential Disclosure Agreement (attached hereto as Appendix A) to have access to key members of management and intellectual capital teams and the due diligence “war room” documentation (“Due Diligence Access”), and the Alure Video. 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 had an opportunity to inspect and examine the Alure Medical 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 orcompleteness 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 Alure Medical Assets. Each sealed bid must be submitted so that it is received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 2:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Alure Medical’s office, located at 3637 Westwind Boulevard, Suite B, Santa Rosa, California 95403. Please also email steve@gerbsmanpartners.com with any bid.

Bids should identify those assets being tendered for in a specific and identifiable way. In particular, please identify separately certain equipment or other fixed assets.

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.  All bids must be accompanied by a refundable deposit in the amount of$200,000 (payable to Alure Medical, Inc.).  The deposit should be wired to Alure Medical’s attorneys Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati.  The winning bidder will be notified within 3 business days of the Bid Deadline. The deposit will be held in trust by Alure Medical’s counsel.  Unsuccessful bidders will have their deposit returned to them within 3 business days of notification that they are an unsuccessful bidder.

Alure Medical 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.

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

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

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

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

James Skelton
(949) 466-7303
Jim@gerbsmanpartnes.com

James Huie, Esq.
(650) 565-3981
Jhuie@wsgr.com

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VC funding dips, and seed investments nosedive

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Distressed Intellectual Property, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, IPO news, Market research, National Venture Capital Association, NVCA, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PWC, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

It’s no secret that the larger economy has hit a rough patch in recent months. Although Silicon Valley has — in general – fared better than many other parts of the world, the venture capital industry is not immune to the negative effects of the macro-economic slowdown.

In the third quarter of 2011, venture capital investment activity fell 12 percent in terms of dollars and 14 percent in terms of deals compared to the previous quarter, according to the latest edition of the MoneyTree Report assembled by accounting giant Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).VCs invested $6.9 billion in 876 deals during the July through September timeframe in 2011, the MoneyTree report says, a notable decline from the $7.9 billion invested in 1,015 deals during the second quarter of 2011.


To be fair, the industry is still up compared to last year. For the first three quarters of 2011, VCs invested $21.2 billion, which is 20 percent more than VCs invested in the first three quarters of 2010. And 2010 saw an even bigger drop between the second and third quarters of the year. But VC funding is not exactly predictable according to the time of year — in 2009, for instance, the third quarter of the year was stronger than the second.

The VC industry is not as predictably cyclical as others because it generally takes its cues from a fluctuating variety of places: the worldwide economy, the entrepreneurial environment, the stock market’s appetite for IPOs, and larger companies’ appetite for acquisitions. It’s a complicated mix, but at the moment, it seems venture capitalists may be nervous about the larger environment of financial unrest, and the IPO window that opened earlier this year seems to be closing.

Seed funding takes a hit

Seed funding — which has recently been the hotshot of the industry as more angel and individual investors have become active in funding the startup scene — took a major hit in the third quarter of 2011. Seed stage investments fell a whopping 56 percent in terms of dollars quarter-over-quarter, and 41 percent year-over-year, to $179 million. It’s not just the total amount of seed investment that’s fallen, it’s also the amount of money per deal: The average seed deal in the third quarter was worth $2 million, a 43 percent drop from the average seed deal in the second quarter of 2011, which was $3.3 million.

And late stage deals have started to see major declines as well. Later stage startup investments decreased 20 percent in dollars and 30 percent in deals in the third quarter compared to the second, MoneyTree reported. Middle, or expansion, stage deals were relatively robust: Expansion stage dollars increased two percent quarter-over-quarter and 43 percent year-over-year, with $2.5 billion going into 260 deals.

Software is still strong

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. The software space has held up fairly well, receiving the highest level of funding for all industries during the third quarter with $2 billion invested from venture capitalists. That’s a 23-percent increase in dollars from the second quarter, and according to MoneyTree, the highest quarterly investment in the sector in nearly a decade, since the fourth quarter of 2001.

The web industry had a relatively soft quarter, as investments in Internet-specific companies fell 33 percent quarter-over-quarter during the third quarter to $1.6 billion. But it’s not exactly time to cry for Internet startups; the third quarter had a very tough act to follow, because Internet-specific VC deals hit a 10-year high in the second quarter of 2011.

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