Great Party, Troubled Market
Last night I attended Highland Capital Partners’ 20th anniversary party, which commandeered the entire Boston Science Museum. Quite the bash, including a 3-on-3 basketball tournament for Highland portfolio companies (won by O Beverages), the Celtics championship trophy (I touched it), Celtics cheerleaders (I didn’t touch them), CEOs, limited partners, local politicians and former Melrose Place star Andrew Shue. Perhaps the best VC event I’ve ever been to in Boston, even though it wasn’t for area VCs (only one I saw was Howard Anderson, and he’s quite explicitly not a VC anymore). Very ebullient crowd on the surface, but things were pretty different when it came to one-on-one conversations. These were all off-the-record, but it's fair to say that I heard things that sound like a step beyond the tip of a glacier. Not just general credit concerns, but deals that have collapsed at the last minute due to pulled financing, new funds that can’t close because of cancelled commitments, LPs trying to quickly reduce asset class
