Showing posts with label funding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funding. Show all posts

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.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

"VC Primer From An Entrepreneur's Pov"

Tom Evslin has a great series on fundraising from an entrepreneur's point of view. All three of his posts are below.

Since I wrote about my ViewPlus days in the post prior, I'm cracking up recalling some of our fundraising experiences. My co-founder Jimmy was pitching our startup in front of four general partners, and one of them asked, "Why should we invest in you guys versus your competitors?"

Jimmy looked at him sternly and emphatically replied, "Look, do you want to drive a BMW or a Hyundai?..." After that meeting, our funding was approved and we got a signed term sheet of $33 million. I was still laughing for a few days afterwards because of what Jimmy said in his typical animated manner.

VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV – Source of Funds

If you’re an experienced entrepreneur who’s had venture funding, skip these posts. If you’re a VC, please read on and tell me if I got anything wrong but remember that I’m writing from an entrepreneur’s point of view. If you’re an entrepreneur who hasn’t had VC funding – even a wannabe entrepreneur – read on. These posts are for you. (full post)

VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV – The Funds

Most venture firms are general partners running one or more funds whose money is supplied by limited partners (aka investors aka LPs). In a previous post, I talked about three other types of types of VC fund you might find yourself dealing with; but, in this post, we’ll concentrate on this type because, if you’re an entrepreneur raising VC money, you’re almost sure to deal with a firm like this. You need to understand how their funds work. (full post)

VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV – What About Angels?

Angel investors go where venture capitalists fear to tread. That’s an oversimplification but it’ll do for starters.

You’re a wannabe entrepreneur. You have a great idea. To go any further with your idea you need some money. Let’s say you’re gonna need to quit your day job but that you did build a prototype of your great idea on nights and weekends. You figure you need somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 to live on, to hire come contractors to do some programming, and to do a little bit of marketing. These being the days they are, you don’t think that hosting or Internet access bills will be significant until your service really grows and starts to bring in business on its own so you’re not worried about those bills. You already own all the computers you’ll need for a while and you’re planning to work at home so no office space to worry about. Your spouse is OK with all of this… sorta. (full post)