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Update to the Bidding Process – Procedures for the sale of certain assets of Applied Spine Technologies, Inc.

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Distressed Intellectual Property, Distressed IP, Gerbsman Partners, Inetellectual Property, Intellectual capital, Investments, Life Science, Strategy, Technology, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Update to the Bidding Process – Procedures for the sale of certain assets of Applied Spine Technologies, Inc.

Further to Gerbsman Partners e-mail of September 22, 2010 and September 14, 2010 regarding the sale of certain assets of Applied Spine Technologies, Inc., I attach the draft legal documents and wire transfer information that we will be requesting of bidders for certain assets of Applied Spine Technologies, 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 agreements.  Any and all of the assets of Applied Spine Technologies, Inc. will be sold on an “as is, where is” basis.  I would also encourage all interested parties to have their counsel speak with Merton Gollaher, Esq., counsel to Applied Spine Technologies, Inc.

For additional information please contact Merton Gollaher, Esq., of Wiggin and Dana LLP counsel to Applied Spine Technologies, Inc. He can be reached at 203 498 4362  and/or at mgollaher@wiggin.com

Following an initial round of due diligence, interested parties will be invited to participate with a sealed bid, for the acquisition of the Applied Spine Assets. Sealed bids must be submitted so that the bid is actually received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Friday, October 15, 2010 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Applied Spine’s office, located at 30 Cold Spring Road, Rocky Hill, CT 60607.  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

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 Applied Spine Technologies 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 Applied Spine Technologies Assets. Sealed bids must be submitted so that it is actually received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Friday, October 15, 2010 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (the “Bid Deadline”) at Applied Spine Technologies’ office, located at 30 Cold Spring Rd, Rocky Hill, CT 06067.  Please also email  <mailto: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.  The attached Applied Spine fixed asset list may not be complete and bidders interested in the Applied Spine equipment must submit a separate bid for such 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 check in the amount of $100,000 (payable to Applied Spine Technologies, Inc.).  The deposit should be wired to Applied Spine’s attorneys Wiggin and Dana LLP.  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.

Applied Spine Technologies 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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AOL, in reinvention strategy, buying TechCrunch

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, Intellectual capital, internet, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from SF Gate.

“AOL Inc. bolstered its strategy to reinvent itself as a major source of online content Tuesday by buying San Francisco’s TechCrunch Inc., which operates a popular and influential network of technology news blogs.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Bloomberg News, citing two sources who were familiar with the terms, said AOL agreed to pay $25 million.

TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington, a lawyer who has become an influential technology writer, agreed to remain with the company for at least three years as his company joins an AOL stable that includes the popular consumer electronics blog Engadget.

AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong joined Arrington onstage during the second day of TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference at the San Francisco Design Center to publicly announce the deal Tuesday.

“I flew out here because the company I’m most interested in is TechCrunch,” Armstrong said in a tongue-in-cheek exchange with Arrington. “I’d love it if you let me partner TechCrunch with AOL to see if we can build a very substantial company together.”

“Yes is the answer,” Arrington replied before he and other TechCrunch executives signed the acquisition papers as the audience watched.

TechCrunch becomes part of AOL’s overall strategy to recover from its failed corporate marriage to Time Warner by reinventing itself as a major source of online news, information and entertainment and to make that content available on all Web-connected devices.

AOL already includes online sites and services such as FanHouse, Joystiq, Switched, MapQuest and Moviefone. The New York firm cut another deal earlier Tuesday to buy video distribution services 5min Media, which has a library of 200,000 fashion, cooking and fitness videos.

Seeking future brands

AOL also is investing in a network of hyperlocal news sites through its Patch Media subsidiary, which already covers about 150 communities. Last week, AOL launched Patch U, a network of partnerships between Patch publications and leading journalism departments at universities including Stanford, UC Berkeley, University of Southern California, Northwestern and Missouri.

“There is one thing that remains constant across all of the major platforms on the Web, and that’s content,” Armstrong said last week at a business conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs & Co. “So our specific strategy for content is to invest in the future brands for the digital space for mobile, for the Internet, for the plasma screen, and you’re going to see us continue to make more moves down that pathway.”

Many consumers may still think of AOL as being America Online, the company that rose to prominence selling dial-up access to the Internet. America Online eventually merged with media conglomerate Time Warner but spun off in December.

“Today’s news has kind of reminded people that AOL is actually not dead and buried,” said Eric Talley, co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy.

Database of investors

The acquisition of TechCrunch, which has about 40 employees, contractors and contributors, “is not a gigantic deal,” but it does give AOL a well-known brand within the tech community, Talley said. AOL also gains the potentially valuable CrunchBase online database of company and investor information.

“That data could be the source of all types of future services that AOL is interested in getting into,” Talley said.

TechCrunch becomes part of the AOL Technology Network with Engadget, which according to online measurement service comScore was the top tech blog in August with about 7.3 million unique visitors.”

Read more here. 

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Zynga Moves 1 Petabyte Of Data Daily; Adds 1,000 Servers A Week

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, FaceBook, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from TechCrunch.

“We all know that social gaming giant Zynga is one of the fastest growing tech companies of all time and has turned games like FarmVille into a mainstream phenomenon. And via international expansion and deals with Facebook and Google, Zynga has continued its path to domination of the social gaming market. We have an idea of the company’s revenue and other gaming statistics, but there is some data involving the backend of the platform that has not been revealed. Today, Zynga’s CTO Cadir Lee is speaking at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference about the gaming giant’s infrastructure, business and challenges.

Lee offers the following statistics:

  • 10 percent of the world’s internet population (approximately 215 million monthly users) has played a Zynga game.
  • The company adds as many as 1,000 servers every week to accommodate growing traffic.
  • Zynga’s properties move a whopping 1 petabyte of data daily, and the company operates its own data centers; using a hybrid private/public cloud infrastructure.
  • Zynga’s technology supports 3 billion neighbor connections on games like Frontierville and Farmville.

The company itself has been steadily adding employees, through both acquisitions and new hires, and now counts more than 1,200 full time employees and includes 13 game studios.”

Read more here.

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Android phones look to expand app offerings

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, mobile 2.0, Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from SF Gate.

“Pinger Inc., a San Jose developer of mobile applications, can get twice as much in sales from programs for Apple devices than for phones powered by Android software. That’s not stopping it from creating its first Android app.

“Even if the revenue generation might be less, we think it’s still going to be significant,” said Joe Sipher, chief product and marketing officer at Pinger, which makes text-messaging and other programs. “Our users are saying, ‘Gosh, I switched to an Android phone. Can you put your Textfree app on Android?’ ”

Pinger and other programmers don’t want to miss out on the $40 billion that Booz & Co. estimates will come from sales of apps by 2014, much of it from Google Inc.‘s Android platform. Android unseated Research In Motion Ltd.‘s mobile operating system as the top U.S. smart phone software last quarter, making developers more willing to put up with its drawbacks, including higher app-creation costs and an online marketplace some users consider harder to navigate than Apple’s App Store.

PopCap Games Inc., maker of the Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies games, doesn’t have any titles in the Android Market. But by mid-2011, the Seattle company expects to release games simultaneously for iPhone and Android handsets.

“Even though we are not making any money on Android right now, we have pretty high hopes for it,” said Andrew Stein, PopCap’s director of mobile business development. “There’s really no reason why users shouldn’t consume and buy content to the same extent on an Android phone as they are on an iPhone.”

Android phones like Motorola Inc.’s Droid X and HTC Corp.’s Droid Incredible are gaining devotees. Stein expects the revenue generated from Android games to approach that of PopCap’s iPhone versions by the end of 2011.

Apple way ahead

A wide variety of apps – as well as the availability of the most popular ones for games, location, texting and content – is critical to luring phone buyers. Android lags behind Apple by that measure. Apple has more than 250,000 apps available, compared with about 70,000 for Android.

Like Apple, Google takes a 30 percent cut of revenue from apps sold in its marketplace.

“We want to reduce friction and remove the barriers that make it difficult for developers to make great apps available to users – across as many devices, geographies and carriers as possible,” said Randall Sarafa, a Google spokesman.

Google may be taking steps to remedy some of the problems that make Android apps less lucrative to developers.

Apple iTunes users can do one-click shopping because iTunes saves their information. While Android buyers can do the same if they sign up for Google Checkout, that service doesn’t have as many users.

Android Market also lacks features for in-app purchases, which some developers of Apple apps use to sell new game levels or virtual products, said Tim Chang, a venture capitalist at Norwest Venture Partners, whose investments includes Ngmoco of San Francisco, which makes games for the iPhone.

Google is in talks with eBay’s PayPal to add its payment service, three people familiar with the matter said last month. That may ease the process. Google may also offer tools that let developers sell subscriptions and virtual goods from within apps, Andy Rubin, Google’s vice president of engineering, said in June.

For now, producing programs for Android isn’t as lucrative. Loopt Inc., the maker of an app for locating your friends on a map, and Zecter Inc., which offers the ZumoDrive file storage service, said they make less from the sales of their Android apps than they do from their iPhone versions. Neither of the Mountain View companies would specify the difference.

Developers hesitant

“There’s no question Android has a lot more phones out than six months ago, but that’s very different from saying Android is a more appealing platform for developers,” said Sam Altman, chief executive officer at Loopt.

ZumoDrive makes money by getting people to download the free program and then upgrade to a paid version. Thirty percent more iPhone customers do that, said CEO David Zhao.

Besides generating fewer downloads of paid apps, fewer people click on ads in Android programs, according to data from Smaato Inc., a Redwood City mobile-ad firm. In July, the iPhone had a click-through score of 140 in the United States, compared with 103 for Android, Smaato said.

Plus, the market share Gartner Inc. measures for Android – 34 percent in the United States last quarter – doesn’t mean there are that many customers for apps, said Pinger’s Sipher. Some Android phones don’t have the ability to access Google’s app store and the proliferation of models means some programs won’t work on some phones.

App creators have to contend with various versions of Android and differences in screen resolution and keyboards. That makes it more expensive to test programs and can force developers to design for the lowest common denominator, said Bill Predmore, president of POP, which builds mobile applications and ads for such clients as Google, Microsoft Corp. and Target Corp.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/01/BU381F6GOA.DTL&type=tech#ixzz0yLeTxmEa

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HP tops Dell’s offer in bid to buy 3Par

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, internet, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , on August 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from SF Gate.

“Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest PC-maker, has offered to buy Fremont’s 3Par Inc. for about $1.6 billion, topping Dell‘s bid for the maker of data-center equipment and software.

The bid of $24 a share in cash is 33 percent higher than Dell’s offer, HP said Monday in a statement. Dell offered $18 a share in cash, or about $1.15 billion, for 3Par on Aug. 16.

HP and Dell are using acquisitions to challenge Cisco Systems and IBM in the market for data-center products and services, which generate higher profits than desktop and laptop computers. 3Par sells hardware and software that make it easier and cheaper for companies to store information. Its stock rose past HP’s offer, signaling that some investors expect a bidding contest.

“One of the growth areas in technology is in the enterprise storage space,” said Joel Levington, managing director of corporate credit at Brookfield Investment Management Inc. in New York. “3Par’s products fit well in there. It’s an easy way to gain product breadth.”

HP said on a conference call that it has been working on the proposed acquisition since before the departure of Mark Hurd, who stepped down as HP’s chief executive officer on Aug. 6 after an investigation found he filed inaccurate expense reports to conceal a personal relationship with a marketing contractor.

The offer is HP’s second bid for 3Par, Dave Donatelli, who heads HP’s storage and server division, said Monday. The PC-maker has been in talks with 3Par for “some period of time,” he said, declining to comment further.

David Frink, a Dell spokesman, declined to comment. John D’Avolio, a spokesman for 3Par, didn’t immediately comment.

HP’s offer values the unprofitable 3Par at almost 2 1/2 times its worth before Dell’s bid, and at more than eight times its sales of $194.3 million in the year ended March 31. 3Par’s revenue rose 5.2 percent from 2009, and it has about 670 employees.

“It’s a very exorbitant price,” Levington said. It probably doesn’t make economic sense for Dell to counter, he said.”

Read more here. 

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