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Posts Tagged ‘angel investments’

Cisco Acquires Cloud Management Company Cloupia For $125 Million

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, Entrepreneurship, internet, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Article from Techcrunch.

Cisco has announced it plans to acquire Cloupia for $125 million. The software company helps customers automate their data centers.

Cisco sees Cloupia’s infrastructure management software enhancing its Unified Computing System (UCS) and Nexus switching portfolio. Cisco expects Cloupia will help better manage the automation of compute, network and storage as well as virtual machine and operating system resources.

Cisco UCS is a converged infrastructure play. Cisco has made a big bet on providing converged infrastructures that consolidates compute, storage and networking into one box. IT wants to decrease its data center dependency. Vendors like Cisco, EMC and IBM see converged infrastructures as a way to sell their hardware into the enterprise.

Investing in these systems has its costs for IT. The systems are pricey and create a lock-in with one vendor.

Cisco wrote a blog post about the acquisition today. Here’s a snippet:

Cisco’s acquisition of Cloupia benefits Cisco’s Data Center strategy by providing single “pane-of-glass” management across Cisco and partner solutions including FlexPod, VSPEX, and Vblock. Cloupia’s products will integrate into the Cisco data center portfolio through UCS Manager, UCS Central, and Nexus 1000V, strengthening Cisco’s overall ecosystem strategy by providing open APIs for integration with a broad community of developers and partners.

The post is a window into Cisco’s data center strategy. Like other big enterprise software companies, Cisco partners with companies such as NetApp and VMware to sell its solutions through its extensive sales channels.

Read more here.

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500 Startups Accelerator Is Taking Applications For The First Time, And AngelList Is Helping Out

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Article from TechCrunch.

Dave McClure’s 500 Startups is looking for participants to join its next incubator program, which will run from October through January. And for the first time ever, it’s going to open the process up to allow anyone to apply. To help it get through the process, 500 Startups Accelerator will be using AngelList, making it the first incubator to leverage the platform for applications.

McClure told me that historically, the program has avoided having an open application process and instead has taken on Accelerator startups only through referrals. So far, that has worked out just fine for 500 Startups: It’s had four successful incubator programs, usually with 20 to 35 startups participating.

As a result, McClure & Co. have been able to avoid the frustrating, time-consuming process of reviewing applications. That said, McClure told me that, while referrals have helped it to find a ton of interesting startups — and avoid sorting through a lot of crap — he also recognized that he’s probably missed a few that might not have been part of his network.

That’s where AngelList comes in. The professional network for startups and investors will help 500 Startups vet applicants through a mix of algorithmic ranking and curation from mentors and others. The AngelList platform will help speed up the process by weeding out unqualified applicants. It will also allow 500 Startups to scale up the application process without having to manually review all the applications by hand.

Not everyone in the next class will come from AngelList — 500 Startups expects to choose between five and 10 startups through this process. It’s already picked a few to participate and is reviewing several others. But McClure said that it was important to open up the applications process in a way that would allow it to review companies that it might not have seen. That’s especially important because so much of 500 Startups’ focus is on startups that are somewhat non-typical, for instance those that are in international markets.

In addition to opening up the application process, 500 Startups is changing the terms of its investment for companies that have already raised some funding. Typically, it provides $50,000 for 5 percent of equity, with an option for up to $200,000 in later rounds. But companies that have raised at least $250,000 will be able to join the program for only 3 to 4 percent of equity.

The fifth 500 Startups Accelerator will begin in October, with Demo Days in late January or early February. Companies interested in applying can do so on AngelList at angel.co/500startups.

Read more here.

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Internet/Digital Media and Software Industries Silicon Valley and Seattle 2010

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Investments, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , on April 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from Fenwick and West.

“In 2002, Fenwick & West began publishing its Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey. The survey was published in response to dramatic changes in the venture capital financing environment resulting from the bursting of the “dot-com bubble”, and our belief that there was a need for an objective analysis of how the venture capital environment had changed. The survey was well received and we have continued to publish it – a copy of the most recent survey is available here.
We believe that in recent years there has been a significant change in the angel/seed financing environment primarily in the internet/digital media and software industries. We believe these changes are due to the following factors:

The nature of these industries is such that products can be developed and introduced to the market quicker and with less resources than other industries. The development of new technologies has further accelerated the speed, and reduced the resources needed, to introduce new products in these industries.

These industries have now been around for at least a decade, if not longer, and as such a generation of successful entrepreneurs having the expertise, financial resources and interest is now available to assist and finance the current generation of entrepreneurs.
Venture capital has become harder to obtain, with venture capital investment in the U.S. overall declining from $29.9 billion in 2007 to $26.2 billion in 2010, and with investment in venture funds by limited partners declining even more precipitously, with $11.6 billion invested in 2010, the lowest amount since 2003, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

As a result of these factors we believe that there have been the following changes in the angel/seed financing environment:

  • There has been a shift in the composition of investors, from largely friends and family, wealthy individuals and a few organized groups, to a larger percentage of professional angels, seed funds and venture capital funds willing to invest smaller amounts of capital.
  • The amounts raised in angel/seed financings have increased, and can exceed $1 million. Investors in these financings also have deeper pockets with the ability to participate in later rounds.
  • The terms of these financings have become more sophisticated and arms length, as investors are more likely to be true third parties investing larger sums, with an interest in being more active in the oversight of their investment.

In light of the increasing importance of angel/seed financings, and a desire to make objective information about such financings available to the community at large, we undertook a survey of 52 internet/digital media and software industry companies that obtained angel/seed financing[1] in 2010 in the Silicon Valley and Seattle markets.”

Read more here.

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By the Numbers: Seed Funding Is the New Black

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , on October 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“If Angelgate didn’t prove it, then the following data will; there’s a tinge of mania when it come to early- and seed-stage funding. The latest data from CB Insights, a market research firm that tracks the venture capital industry, shows that seed investments — primarily in Internet startups — increased from a mere one percent of all deals during the third quarter of 2009 to a whopping 11 percent of total venture investment deals during that period in 2010.

The sharp increase in seed-stage investments is the sole reason the total number of venture investments jumped during the third quarter of 2010 even though overall funding dropped. Nearly $5.4 billion was invested in 715 deals during that time frame, CB Insights’ data reveals. All that essentially made for one hot summer.

Here is some salient data from CB Insights’ latest report covering the July – September time frame:

  • Nearly $1.253 billion was invested in 233 Internet related deals. Series A media deal size was at an all time high of $3.4 million, once again proving that early stage investing is going through a frothy phase.
  • San Francisco saw 36 Internet deals that brought in $131 million, while New York City saw 31 Internet deals garner $126 million. In comparison, Mountain View, Calif., San Mateo, Calif. and Palo Alto, Calif. saw 21 deals focused on the Internet and they brought in a total of $174 million.
  • Early-stage investing is dominating the New York area and accounted for nearly 63 percent of all deals. New York can thank folks like Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson for bringing investment dollars to area startups.
  • Massachusetts saw a year-over-year decline in amount VCs invested during the third quarter of this year: $466 million was invested in 87 deals versus 73 deals which garnered $596 million during the third quarter of 2009.”

Read the complete article here.

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Warren Buffett, American Railroad Barron

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Economy, Investments, Market research, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interrestig article on Warren Buffet from Deal Zone.

“Following in the greatest of capitalist traditions, the Oracle of Omaha announced plans to buy up the shares he doesn’t already own in one of the country’s biggest railroads, Burlington Northern Santa Fe. And in an egalitarian, if unexpected, move, he said he would split his Class B stock to the tune of 50-to-1, making it possible for just about anyone to own Berkshire Hathaway’s traditionally lofty shares.

The railroad purchase is a bet on the future of America, Buffett said, and it’s his biggest acquisition ever. It values the railroad at $34 billion, and the price of $100 a share is a premium of nearly 32 percent. The premium vaults the railroad into the top spot by market cap, surpassing Union Pacific.

Buffett also owns stakes in other railroads, so it will be interesting to see if his move stirs any antitrust comments from Washington. Idiomatically, there is something profoundly rural in the Americana of Buffett’s latest bet; much more so than Berkshire Hathaway’s mainstay insurance business.”

Read the full article here.

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