Saturday, January 19, 2008

Slide at $550 Million?... Am I Missing Something?

So Kara Swisher broke the news on Slide's $50 million investment from Fidelity and T. Rowe Price for 9%, which values the company at $550 million.

More from Kara, "Slip-Sliding Into a Fortune"

From VentureBeat, "Widget-maker Slide raises $50 million at $550 million valuation"

As Matt Marshall from VentureBeat states, I don't know Slide's revenues, but I never heard it being significant or wildly successful enough to earn such a valuation.

So maybe we are already into bubble territory. Are we really getting crazy stupid? Or is it because these large institutional investors desperately need to put their money to work? I didn't even know that T. Rowe Price had a private equity arm since it's known as a mutual fund. Because of the sub-prime crisis, various private equity deals have been dropped over the past several months, so maybe they are throwing money at earlier stage deals they wouldn't have touched a year ago? And what's $25 million to a multi-billion dollar fund? It would be interesting to learn more about how this deal came down and listen to the negotiations on Slide's valuation.

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