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Gerbsman Partners – Successful “Date Certain M&A” of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of digital marketing suites company, its Assets and Intellectual Property.

Posted in "Date Certain M&A Process", Distressed Intellectual Property, Distressed IP, Gerbsman Partners, Steven R. Gerbsman, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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San Francisco, October, 2013
Successful “Date Certain M&A” of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of digital marketing suites company, its Assets and Intellectual Property.
Steven R. Gerbsman, Principal of Gerbsman Partners, Kenneth Hardesty and James Skelton, members of Gerbsman Partners Board of Intellectual Capital, announced today their success in maximizing stakeholder value for a venture capital backed, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of digital marketing suites company, its Assets and Intellectual Property.

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:

1.  Crisis Management and technology/digital marketing domain expertise in developing the strategic action plans for maximizing value of the business unit, Intellectual Property and assets;
2.  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”;
3.  The ability to “Manage the Process” among potential Acquirers, Lawyers, Creditors Management, Advisors and the Receiver;
4.  Communicate with the Board of Directors, senior management, senior lender, creditors, vendors and all stakeholders in 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 79 Technology, Life Science, Medical Device, Solar and Digital Marketing companies and their Intellectual Property and has restructured/terminated over $810 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 San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington, DC, McLean, VA, Europe and Israel.

GERBSMAN PARTNERS
Phone: +1.415.456.0628, Cell: +1 415 505 4991
Email: steve@gerbsmanpartners.com
Web: www.gerbsmanpartners.com
BLOG of Intellectual Capital: blog.gerbsmanpartners.com

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Intuit to Acquire Demandforce for $424MM

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, Entrepreneurship, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Article from AboveTheCrowd.

This morning, Intuit announcedits agreement to acquire one of Benchmark’s portfolio companies, Demandforce, for $424mm. As with Instagram, Benchmark Capital is the largest institutional investor in Demandforce. Unlike Instagram, which is a consumer application and is extremely well known, Demandforce focuses on local professional businesses and has chosen to keep an intentionally low profile – a strategy that has served them well.

Great entrepreneurs often blaze their own trails, and the founder and CEO of Demandforce, Rick Berry, is no different. In a day and age of social media, where many companies project a persona much larger than reality, Demandforce chose instead to focus on its customers and its products. We never even announced Benchmark’s funding of the company, which I believe is unprecedented. The Demandforce team always felt that the attention should be focused on the customer rather than the company.

Demandforce’s customer mission has always been the same – to help small businesses thrive in an evolving and increasingly complex connected world. Today, they are the leading provider of interactive “front office” SAAS services to thousands and thousands of professional small business owners. The Demandforce product is a powerful web-based application that seamlessly integrates with existing workflow systems, works automatically, and delivers guaranteed results. Through this, Demandforce provides local businesses – like salons, auto shops, chiropractors, dentists, and veterinarians – with affordable and easy access to the tools and platforms that large enterprises use to communicate with customers, build a strong online reputation and leverage network marketing. It you have ever received an automated communication from your dentist, it was likely sent through Demandforce.

Demandforce’s success puts it at the forefront of the burgeoning “Local Internet” wave. The combination of Internet pervasiveness and smartphone penetration has led to a complete reconfiguration with regard to how local businesses interact with their customers. These local businesses have traditionally spent over $125B/year on traditional media, and this is only in the U.S. But the channels they have historically used, such as the newspaper and the yellow pages, are increasingly compromised. These business owners know they need new solutions, and these dollars will be reallocated to these exciting new platforms. Benchmark believes this “Local Internet” wave is many times larger than the “social” and “mobile” themes with which it is often contrasted. In addition to DemandForce, Benchmark is fortunate to have backed such “Local Internet” market leaders as OpenTable (OPEN), Zillow (Z), Yelp (YELP), Peixe Urbano, GrubHub, Uber, and Nextdoor.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with Rick Berry, Patrick Barry, Hoang Vuong, Mark Hale, Sam Osman and Annie Tsai at Demandforce. This is truly one of the best teams ever assembled. It was also a pleasure to work with Steve Kostyshen as well as Mike Maples of Floodgate and Peter Ziebelman of Palo Alto Venture Partners, all of whom preceded us in their investment, and all of whom are passionate fans of the company.

It is certainly thrilling to see a team of entrepreneurs reach a significant milestone such as this.  That said, it is equally bittersweet as it means we will no longer be working directly with them on this incredibly compelling mission. Our loss is unquestionably Brad Smith and Intuit’s gain. Combining the leading “front office” small business SAAS vendor with the iconic Silicon Valley small business company is an incredibly compelling combination.

Read more here.

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How the web has powered work for 20 years

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, FaceBook, Intellectual capital, internet, LinkedIn, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“2011 has been a year of milestone birthdays in tech. September saw Google become a teenager, email hit the big 40 in June, and even Twitter turned five back in March. Perhaps the most significant tech birthday this year, though, was the World Wide Web itself turning 20.

In 1991 British scientist Tim Berners-Lee posted a brief summary of the World Wide Web (or W3) project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, writing:

“The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the Web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome.”

It’s safe to say that Berners-Lee’s invitation to potential collaborators went fairly well. That initial web page has expanded to more than 19 billion pages (at the last count) and there are millions and millions of workers across the globe who rely on the World Wide Web to go about their daily lives. In those 20 years, the changes to the workplace that have taken place thanks to the Internet are nothing short of remarkable. Email is as good a place as any to start.

You’ve got mail

Try to explain the workplace B.E. (before email) to someone under 30, and you could be describing life in the 19th century for all the relevance it has to their working day. Back then, we lived in a world in which quaint technologies such as the fax machine prevailed. With the fax machine, it was not unusual to wait days for a reply.

Later, when Web-based email began to grow in popularity, it transformed communication in the workplace. You could now receive a response to a question within minutes, especially once broadband connections became more commonplace. You could send information and documents to colleagues around the world at the click of a button.

Email overload

But technology was now developing at a pace that seemed astonishing even to those who worked in the industry, and email, after a honeymoon period, hit problems. “Too intrusive,” said some. “Too much of it,” said others. “Not quick enough,” moaned the rest.

When consumer-based instant-messaging technologies infiltrated the workplace – AIM launched in 1997 and Yahoo! Messenger (then Pager) in 1998 – users were suddenly able to communicate with co-workers in real-time. Years later, these tools would often be integrated into a platform that also included voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), shared whiteboards, video conferencing and file transfer features.

It was around this time that social networks also began to establish a presence. Some of these are undoubtedly more consumer-focused, but there can also be no denying that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have had a massive impact on working life, too. The ability to communicate and share content with your extended network (and beyond) has transformed many of our traditional working practices. As well as enabling businesses to engage in two-way conversations with their customers, these social networks are now a central part of the recruitment process. Last year, I wrote a piece on how Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can enable you to find a team of peers without breaking the bank of recruitment agencies. You can tap into your workforce’s network and find like-minded, talented people to become part of your company.

Getting ready to collaborate

The net result of all the technological developments outlined above has been to change the very fabric of how we work. We now live in a collaboration economy. To share and communicate information, ideas and innovation has never been easier, or come more naturally to the workforce. The emergence of the Web has given rise to a global working village, with location and time zone utterly irrelevant. You can work as closely with someone in another country as you would with someone sitting opposite; work from home or on the move, and even send files from your mobile handset to someone on the other side of the world.

This has all been made possible by the World Wide Web. From Skype to smartphones and social networking to SaaS, it’s all underpinned by the internet and the changes to the workplace of 20 years ago are just extraordinary. With a global mobile worker population set to hit 1.19 billion by 2013, one can only wonder what the Internet will bring us next. Bring on the next 20 years!”

Read original post here.

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