Private Equity
Turning to some good news in the world of venture capital, I'd like to point out Walt Mossberg's review in the Wall Street Journal today of ZumoDrive, an online storage service that you can access from any device, including your iPhone -- it's a good place to store big files like your iTunes library and your videos and just about any other piece of data you want. ZumoDrive is named to evoke the idea of large capacity -- like what a Sumo wrestler has -- and its creators are three young men who left safe, secure jobs at Amazon and Microsoft because they yearned to start their own company. They were backed first by Y Combinator and now by Tandem Entrepreneurs. I met them by accident and wrote about them over a year ago for the San Francisco Chronicle. With help from the folks at Tandem, they were working day and night to perfect ZumoDrive,
2 min read · 04 December 2009
Former Canopy Financial president Jeremy Blackburn has now been charged with wire fraud by federal authorities in Chicago, who claim that he allegedly diverted more than $2 million of a $60 million investment in Canopy last summer for "personal expenses and luxury items," including an attempt to use a false bank statement to get a mortgage on a new home in Malibu. Blackburn appeared in federal court in Chicago yesterday and is free on $1 million unsecured bond. A committee of outside directors that excludes the founders of Canopy is working with authorities on the case. As part of the Series D round raised last summer from Spectrum Equity, Foundation Capital and another investor, Canopy agreed to provide audited financial statements and said that Blackburn and two other co-founders would sell up to 10 percent of their shares. Blackburn sold shares for $1.6 million, according to federal authorities, and Individual B, identified as Canopy's chief technology officer, sold $975,000 worth of shares.Tony Banas, who held the CTO position at Canopy, has not been charged in the case. An FBI affidavit (see below) also describes interactions between Canopy and KPMG, whose letterhead was allegedly used to provide a falsified audit to investors. KPMG never did audit Canopy's financials, but it did provide a SAS 70 audit and had e-mailed a sample of an independent audit and other documents to Canopy's chief administrative officer, who forwarded the documents to Individual B, the FBI said.
2 min read · 03 December 2009
Former chief technology officer Tony Banas is not a defendant in this suit and remains on the board of directors, according to the SEC's complaint, which was filed this week in federal court in Chicago. Canopy and Jeremy Blackburn, Canopy's former president and chief operating officer, are defendants, however, and are accused of engaging in a fraudulent scheme to raise $75 million from investors. The complaint describes false financial statements and a false KPMG audit, along with false bank statements and inaccurate monthly operating reports. Blackburn is also accused of misappropriating $1.17 million of investor funds for personal use. He allegedly sent the false KPMG audit and false financial statements to former CEO Vikram Kashyap, who has claimed to know nothing about the fraud, and asked Banas in e-mail messages to lie about the existence of the KPMG audit.
2 min read · 03 December 2009
Michael Kelly, the California attorney who's prosecuting the lawsuit against PG&E and Wellington Energy (the installer) for faulty smart meters, released data today from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing that summer temperatures this year were not hotter than in 2008. The data is for Bakersfield, California, where Kelly's client -- Pete Flores -- lives, and is intended to refute PG&E's claim that people with smart meters who complained about high utility bills were using extra energy to keep themselves cool. "We plan to run their excuses down, one by one, scientifically and factually," Kelly said.
2 min read · 02 December 2009
This is open enrollment season for healthcare plans, and Canopy's customers are scrambling to find a replacement for Canopy's software to get them through it, according to Red Gillen, an analyst at Celent who follows the banking industry. Canopy's customers had been very happy with the software until reports broke last week that Canopy had falsified financial statements, Gillen said. They're telling him they did their due diligence on Canopy and -- like a lot of other people, apparently -- were taken by surprise. In a report published in January, another Celent analyst, Bart Narter, rated Canopy's technology as the best in the industry -- better than several older, larger competitors' -- and he said today he stands by that recommendation.
2 min read · 01 December 2009
The beleaguered startup filed a petition for Chapter 11 last Wednesday -- the day before Thanksgiving -- in federal bankruptcy court in Chicago. Below are two of the court documents: The bankruptcy petition, whose long list of creditors includes Thomson Reuters, publisher of peHUB; and a 22-page declaration from Canopy's general counsel, Dan Stevenson, who offers some explanation of why the company filed. Lots of questions are unanswered though.
1 min read · 01 December 2009
Already -- and they barely exist yet. That's not to say there won't be important smart grid applications and successful companies, Khosla said at the GreenBeat conference earlier this month. But it sounds like there may be some dogs too. Here he is ranting against people who believe that smart grids and $30,000 electric cars will solve pollution in China and other environmental ills. In his opinion, clean tech companies should do two things -- dramatically cut prices for consumers ("the only thing that will change their behavior"), and be "technology neutral", as in not follow tech fads. Khosla also never loses an opportunity to tout his own clean tech investments -- including Calera, which converts carbon dioxide into water and cement. "I'd guess today that there's a reasonable probability -- in excess of 50% -- that the cleanest way to generate power is with coal, not solar."
1 min read · 01 December 2009
Todd Dean, president of Keiretsu's Pacific Northwest chapter, will fly to Denver to meet with Keiretsu members on Thursday about continuing with the angel group, founder and CEO Randy Williams said today. "We are not shutting down Denver," Williams said. "Steve (Murchie) is stepping aside, and Todd will come in to ascertain whether the members want to be part of the northwest network of chapters. We care about the membership in Denver. They have to build the community -- the community is smaller, and they have to help."
2 min read · 30 November 2009
The SEC has "investigated every angel group they know of" out of concern that the groups may be operating as unregistered broker-dealers, according to Steve Murchie, president of the Denver Keiretsu Forum. Murchie's chapter (UPDATE: and the rest of the Keiretsu Forum) got a "no-action" letter from the SEC last year -- meaning the group had not, in the SEC's opinion, violated any federal securities laws -- but SEC scrutiny adds to the pressure on angel groups to find a workable business model, Murchie said, particularly as individual angel investors pull back after they look at what the global financial crisis has done to their portfolios. Denver Keiretsu Forum itself plans to shut down next month, after being unable to get enough members to become self-supporting (the group lost money in 2007 and 2009 -- losses that Murchie will have to personally absorb).
2 min read · 30 November 2009
Two executives of Canopy Financial have left the company in the wake of accusations of financial fraud, a Canopy spokesman confirmed today. President and chief operating officer Jeremy Blackburn has resigned, and chief technology officer Tony Banas has been placed on administrative leave. So far, peHUB has been unable to reach either one of them for comment. CEO Vikram Kashyap released a statement yesterday through his attorney, saying that he had "no prior knowledge whatsoever of any fraud regarding Canopy's financial statements" and that he "relied on financial and legal professionals in accepting the authenticity of the company's financials." Although Kashyap has stepped down as CEO of Canopy, he said he will remain as chairman to help hold any fraudsters accountable. The spokesman also said that Canopy has informed its customers and investors of the fraud allegations and continues
1 min read · 25 November 2009
