Private Equity
The one-year-old startup -- which bills itself as "Twitter for the enterprise" -- launched last year at TechCrunch 50 and claims to be within a quarter of being profitable, just on the $5 million it's already raised from the Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures. Furthermore, most of its 40,000 customers still don't pay (Yammer's Phil Spitzer says "over 10%" of them do), and Yammer can't process all the customers that call the company and ask to pay. Why would customers ask to give Yammer money? Some of them are Fortune 500 companies, and Yammer has created some strong incentives to pay --
2 min read · 14 September 2009
Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer confirmed here at TechCrunch50 that his online personal finance company has agreed to be acquired for $170 million by Intuit. He was whisked away from the throngs shortly thereafter, but I managed to sneak a few minutes with Mark Goines, who was one of Mint.com's earlier investors. He told me that Mint management had no plans to sell the company when Intuit called and offered to buy it. After all, the company had launched only two years ago and earlier this year had raised $14 million in Series C funding at an increased valuation. Overall, the firm had raised around $31 million from groups like Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, First Round Capital, Shasta Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, Felicis Ventures and Hite Capital Goines, who once ran Intuit's TurboTax and Quicken business units, said Mint.com was the best of several startups he looked at that were offering personalized money management. He said the decision to sell was
2 min read · 14 September 2009
1 min read · 14 September 2009
Venture investment in India slid to $117 million in the first half of this year, down from $413 million last year -- a nearly 72 percent drop. The number of deals was down too, from 67 to 27, according to a survey by Venture Intelligence and the Global-India Venture Capital Association. Battery Ventures (which said this month it would close its Indian office) isn't the only U.S. firm pulling back, according to Naren Gupta, a longtime Silicon Valley tech executive who co-founded Nexus India Capital in Mumbai and Menlo Park's Sand Hill Road. More U.S. VCs and private equity investors have been leaving India over the last year than coming in, he says."The only difference with Battery is they announced it."
2 min read · 11 September 2009
Nokia today acquired "certain assets" of Plum, a tiny (10-person) software company that lets people create private social networks on iPhones and other devices. Various Web sites also use the software under their own brands. You'd think VCs would be shouting from the rooftops about any exit these days given the rough economy, but no. The investors -- Levensohn Venture and Vulcan -- aren't saying how much they invested or how much they got out of the deal, although they are of course "pleased." Nokia and Plum CEO Hans Peter Brondmo aren't talking much either.
2 min read · 11 September 2009
Psilos is launching a startup in California, SeeChange Health, to sell insurance plans for people with chronic but manageable diseases. If you take care of yourself according to medically accepted standards, you save money on premiums and the medical industry saves money on care. SeeChange's product is designed for individuals and small businesses, but the startup is a subsidiary of a holding company Psilos put together that combines an acquisition -- HNA Triveris, a 19-year-old New Jersey company that administers claims for employers who insure themselves -- with technology from other Psilos portfolio companies. Triveris has a robust electronic health record, according to Lisa Suennen at Psilos, and another Psilos company, HealthEdge, has a transaction processing system for managing insurance plans. The idea is to to use the technology to customize different health plans for the same employer, since employees are likely to have different and sometimes multiple chronic diseases.
2 min read · 11 September 2009
Sequoia is said to be getting aggressive about using new ways to invest very early in young companies, in an attempt to bridge the gap between small angel investments and traditional Series A rounds from VCs. The firm isn't talking about its plans -- which aren't launched, according to a source -- and did not return calls seeking comment. For what it's worth, Sequoia already advertises itself as doing seed stage rounds, investing between $100,000 and $1 million in startups in energy, financial services, healthcare services, internet, mobile, outsourcing services and technology.
2 min read · 10 September 2009
There were no companies from China on the list, which was issued yesterday by the Cleantech Group and The Guardian, and only three from India -- although maybe that's because the judges were almost all from North America and Europe, which got over 90 percent of the companies between them, over half in the U.S. Big sectors of cleantech were also under-represented. Over half of the companies are focused on generating or saving energy, while very few are working on transportation, recycling, agriculture or the environment.
1 min read · 10 September 2009
Foster City-based startup VitaPath is working on a cheek-swab test for women that detects the genetic mutation that causes spina bifida, a birth defect that strikes around 1% of babies born in the U.S. and is epidemic in some third-world countries. By the time it's detected in the fetus, it can't be cured, but women who take the test can prevent it by taking large doses of folic acid before they get pregnant, said CEO Bruce Cohen. Folic acid makes the defective gene function correctly. VitaPath's test is based on research done at UC Berkeley by Jasper Rine, a professor who studies the frequency and functions of mutations in genes that perform central metabolic functions. Some of these
2 min read · 10 September 2009
Had I not been researching Exigen Capital for a post on their new joint venture in South Africa to create back office software for the insurance industry, I might not have noticed this complaint. But it's a nasty one -- Exigen managing partner Greg Shenkman and his firm were sued in March by a former executive assistant, Iryna Kharchenko, who claims sexual harassment, sexual battery, wrongful termination, failure to pay overtime and several other problems stemming from her employment with Exigen, which lasted for five years, from 2004 until she was fired last December. Kharchenko claims the company did nothing when she complained about her treatment, but she didn't want to lose her job. Her termination came shortly after she filed a complaint asking for a right-to-sue with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Exigen has not responded to her charges but won a motion to compel arbitration, which is scheduled for January. However, Kharchenko's attorney, Scott Bonagofsky, last week appealed that order and expects a decision within 30 days -- he says his client, who is now unemployed, was forced to agree to arbitrate disputes in order to get hired and wants a jury trial.
3 min read · 09 September 2009
