Private Equity
Intel invested in the company -- called Enjoyor Technology Group -- just a little over eight months ago and did not expect it to go public so soon, if at all, said Arvind Sodhani, Intel Capital's president. But Enjoyor went out today on the new Chinese Growth Enterprise Market at 20 Renminbi per share and closed at 36.40, an increase of 81%. Intel had invested 20 million Renminbi at 4 Renminbi per share and made a paper profit of 162 million Renminbi or $23.7 million -- over an 8X return. The IPO would not have been possible in the U.S. or Europe or even Hong Kong,
2 min read · 31 October 2009
I've talked to people at three companies lately who said they either avoided or feared outside investors, although one CEO -- 20-year-old Seth Priebatsch of Scvngr, a mobile game company -- did end up taking around $1 million from Highland Capital and says he's glad he did, because the connections and advice provided by Highland have been invaluable. Another of the companies -- a game design company in San Francisco -- was just incorporated, and its team is just starting to think about outside funding, but the third -- Groundspeak in Seattle, whose geocaching sport has between 2 million and 3 million players, around the world -- is about 10 years old and growing and has repeatedly turned away outside investment.
1 min read · 30 October 2009
Gurley's long, thoughtful essay on the state of venture capital, in which he described an industry that could shrink by half as Limited Partners -- hit by a declining stock market and poor returns from their investments in bloated VC funds -- pull back, was read and discussed for weeks, at peHUB and elsewhere, after he posted it on his blog last August. Everything that's happened since then convinces him he was right, Gurley told me today, and it's easy to find evidence to support his claims. Endowments are cutting back on their commitments to private equity, for instance, as Alex pointed out yesterday, and Stanford is trying to sell some of its commitments on the secondary market. But Gurley sees bright spots too.
2 min read · 30 October 2009
AltaRock received another $26.5 million in grants from the Department of Energy today for two new geothermal drilling projects -- despite claims that its drilling project in the California Geysers could cause earthquakes. The New York Times ran a story in June comparing Altarock's California project to a 2006 project in Basel, Switzerland, where an earthquake damaged buildings and frightened residents with a loud roaring noise. Aftershocks followed for several months. AltaRock -- which has raised over $30 million from Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, GreatPoint Ventures, Google.org and others to provide clean energy by extracting heat from rocks -- wasn't behind the Basel project and disputed the Times' claims. But the story prompted a review by the Department of Energy and the Bureau of Land Management, which said that although AltaRock could keep drilling, it couldn't fracture any rock in California until the agencies decided it was safe.
2 min read · 29 October 2009
... and 2007. Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters agree on this one -- although venture investments in cleantech have been climbing this year, they're down anywhere from 4% (Thomson Reuters) to nearly 39% (Dow Jones) compared to a year ago. Dow Jones tracks funding commitments, while Thomson Reuters tracks checks written. Like last year, solar got the most money, although that number has dropped by over 2/3 -- from $990 million (a little over the entire amount invested in clean tech third quarter) to $309 million. Also, 2/3 of that $309 million was in one deal -- Solyndra, which makes photovoltaic solar panels for businesses. The full break-down is below. Dow Jones reported $965 million invested in 50 deals by venture capital, private equity, corporate venture and at least one sovereign wealth fund.
1 min read · 29 October 2009
On Monday, Energy Secretary Chu announced $151 million in grants for 37 early stage clean tech projects in 17 states -- several of them venture-backed. Chu made the announcement at Google in Mountain View, where he was interviewed on-stage by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He also took a few questions from Google employees. Some of the questions were a bit esoteric, but it's worth listening to what Chu has to say about how he thinks the U.S. is going to switch to clean tech ("the scale of what has to be done is staggering"), what some of the obstacles are, and which technologies he thinks have promise. I've been looking for this video for two days and finally found it here, at ABC 7 News in San Francisco. Enjoy.
1 min read · 28 October 2009
ZeroIPO released exhaustive data today on third quarter venture capital and private equity activity in China. The results? Venture fundraising is down slightly from second quarter and venture investing rose, although neither are back to where they were at the end of last year. But IPOs for Chinese companies on both the Chinese and foreign stock exchanges surged. "The facts that Chinese economy took the lead to stabilize, IPOs on the main board market resumed and 28 enterprises received approval to launch IPOs on the GEM all points to an upcoming spring for the exit of VC institutions in China," the report said. Get the data after the jump.
1 min read · 28 October 2009
Cisco is buying the Web security company for $183 million in cash and retention incentives, which means all 150 employees will be moving to Cisco, said ScanSafe co-founder Roy Tuvey. He said ScanSafe had several offers from large technology companies, but probably wouldn't have acted on any of them had Cisco not come along. ScanSafe was looking for acquisitions itself -- the company hadn't spent any of the $10 million Series C round it raised late last year as a hedge against the downturn and as a "war chest" to buy companies. "We picked Cisco purely because it was Cisco," Tuvey said. "It was Cisco that made us do this."
2 min read · 27 October 2009
The Southern California angel group will announce an alliance with Intesa Sao Paolo, Italy's largest bank, and is starting a new angel network based in Milan, peHUB has learned. Maverick president John Dilts, who founded Maverick three years ago after leaving the Keiretsu Forum, said Maverick has been looking for ways to partner with large corporations that want faster access to startups, and the alliance with the bank should help. A lot of corporate venture arms got burned in the tech bubble and pulled back on investing in startups, he said, and now they've fallen behind.
2 min read · 27 October 2009
Y Combinator has extended the application deadline for its winter funding cycle (originally 10 P.M. tonight) by two days, so entrepreneurs can come up with ideas for software to build on top of Twitter. Y Combinator's Paul Graham and Twitter's Biz Stone thought of this on Saturday while they were chatting at Y Combinator's Startup School, according to Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston, and decided their idea was so good they had to act on it immediately. "Twitter wants to encourage startups to build stuff on top of Twitter, but they're so busy and there are so many people doing this, they need help figuring out who to pay attention to," Livingston said. "We in turn are thrilled to be able to fund a company doing something with Twitter because it's a new protocol. It's not a fad -- it's here to stay."
2 min read · 27 October 2009
