Motley Fool Holdings Inc. this week announced it raised $25 million in venture financing. Good for The Fool.
But pulling back the curtain, there’s more than just a simple round of financing here. The deal points to creative ways in which venture firms are finding liquidity other than the standard acquisitions, IPOs and secondary sales.
I like to think of myself as an aficionado of business disruption.
When confronted with an abuse of power, an injustice or a scam I’ve developed a really effective technique: I blog, tweet and whine about it passionately for as long as possible.
I would argue that the shut-down of September 2008 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw.
Many are speculating that the year two thousand and nine represents a fundamental turning point for the venture capital industry. Some are arguing that the industry is in dire straits after years of poor performance. Others have argued that the math simply does not work for the industry’s current size.
As eBay Inc. looks to offload Skype, the executives who sold the Internet telecom firm to eBay have formed the hub of a European network of investors and executives that they hope will rival and even exceed the one in Silicon Valley.
International Business Machines Corp. is on a mission to expand its partnerships in Brazil in response to the country’s growing information-technology market.
David Hornik–a partner at August Capital Management LLC, which boasts raising the year’s biggest venture capital fund with its $650 million balanced-stage fund–weighs in on the challenges facing the VC industry, including what Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson has called “The Venture Capital Math Problem.”
The big news out this week in the venture capital market is the launch of Andreessen Horowitz, a new $300 million venture capital fund co-founded by Marc Andreeseen, a tech visionary who founded Netscape Communications, the startup that triggered the Internet tsunami. Raising $300 million for a first time fund is an incredible achievement in today’s depressed capital-starved economy. How did Andreessen and his long-time business partner and co-investor Ben Horowitz pull it off?
Retailers aren’t likely to resume spending on their IT infrastructure again until at least 2010, according to NCR Chairman and CEO William Nuti.
In an interview Friday afternoon with Tech Trader Daily, Nuti said that demand for the company’s point-of-sale retail terminals remains “slow around the world.”
Being able to secure venture-capital financing in the recession is something of an achievement. But getting that money now appears to be coming at a cost.
According to a new survey from law firm Fenwick & West, the terms of venture financing in the first quarter of 2009 were heavily dominated by “down” rounds–industry jargon for saying that companies are getting much lower valuations than they previously commanded.
After a decade of experimentation, companies have yet to find a reliable way to burnish their brands online. Former Madison Avenue hotshot Matt Freeman aims to change all that.
The competitive edge of the United States economy has eroded sharply over the last decade, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group. The report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that the United States ranked sixth among 40 countries and regions, based on 16 indicators of innovation and competitiveness.
It’s easy to write about what the government or other people should do with our/their money. It’s harder to come up with a course of action that I can undertake on my own that possibly, somehow could make a difference. My first inclination is always to try to look “for the next big thing.” But the next big thing is just that–next. It’s not now. Its Venture Capital. It’s not self-funding, renewal capital.
The numbers are startling; one technology IPO last quarter, only six in 2008. Is innovation dead? Did Google/Microsoft/Cisco consume all the promising start-ups? Did Sarbanes-Oxley render IPOs too hard and costly? Yes, if you believe columnist, conference and collective wisdom. They’re wrong.
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