A bunch of changes over at Battery Ventures: Mark Sherman and Battery have “come to the mutual conclusion” that Sherman will leave the firm once the new investment period of Battery VIII is concluded. That apparently will be at the end of Q1 2010, which means that new blue books might be out before year-end (seems a bit fast to me -- considering that the firm raised $1 billion in 07/08 -- but this is straight from a firm spokeswoman). Sherman had been part of the firm’s push into India, but that now will be scaled back significantly. Battery will no longer build a team in Mumbai, instead focusing on India investments out of Silicon Valley. Guatam Patel, currently Battery’s sole employee in Mumbai, will leave to “seek other opportunities.” That move also is expected to occur at the end of Q1 2010.
2 min read · 03 September 2009
Three months ago, Steve Gillmor wrote that "it's time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter." Sam Diaz piled on last week, calling RSS a Web 1.0 application whose time has passed. And things got even worse today, when news leaked that former Feedburner chief Dick Costello has agreed to join Twitter as chief operating officer. All of this made me wonder whatever happened to RSS Investors, a venture capital firm formed in 2005 to focus exclusvely on real simple syndication. What I learned was that RSS Investors is even deader than RSS.
2 min read · 02 September 2009
Need a desk in New York City? Check out the 100 Park Avenue offices of Sun Capital Partners, which are beginning to look like the bleachers at a Tampa Bay Rays game. The latest to leave is Kevin Feinblum, a principal who had been with the firm since 2003. He previously had been with Lehman Brothers. No official word yet on Feinblum's destination, but multiple sources tell peHUB that he has agreed to join Advent International (presumably in Boston, since Advent doesn't have a New York office). Feinblum's departure comes just a month after fellow New York principal David Blechman quit to join Tower Three Partners, and within the same year that Sun canned half of its New York staff as part of firm-wide layoffs. That's quite a lot of empty seats, particularly for a firm that still has not cut its bloated fund size (as of last check).
1 min read · 02 September 2009
Law firm Weil Gotshal today sent out a white paper for clients that are providing additional capital to portfolio companies, either to address liquidity issues or as part of debt restructurings. You can download it here, or read it after the jump...
1 min read · 02 September 2009
Greystripe, a San Francisco-based rich media ad platform for mobile, has raised $2 million in additional Series C funding from Peacock Equity Fund, a VC unit of NBC Universal. The two companies had a prior strategic relationship, although the equity funding is structured separately. Worth noting that existing shareholder Steamboat Ventures is a Walt Disney Co. affiliate, which means that Greystripe has effectively raised capital from the parent companies of both NBC and ABC. I asked CEO Michael Chang if this meant Viacom was next on the list, but he laughed it off. What Chang did say, however, is that Greystripe has no plans to follow in the footsteps of rival AdMob, which last week bought mediation company AdWhirl. "I'm still scratching my head over that deal, because
2 min read · 02 September 2009
The British Venture Capital and Private Equity Association and state-backed technology fund NESTA today released a study questioning the way UK taxpayer money is used to support startup businesses. It found that six government-backed VC programs created jobs between 1995 and 2008, but that the effect had been small in relation to the amount of money committed: Many of the problems arise from the structure and limitations of government-backed schemes established in the UK to date. Too often they have been too small, too regionally focused, poorly managed, or unable to provide enough capital or effective follow-on funding. You can download the full report here, or read it after the jump:
1 min read · 02 September 2009
This week's edition of the Laundry Room Chronicles is about eBay's agreement to sell a 65% stake of Skype to a group of private investors, at an enterprise value of $2.75 billion. Buyers include Silver Lake Partners, Canada Pension Plan, Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. Also worth noting that this deal would be the year's largest leveraged buyout of a U.S.-based company (based on eBay's headquarters), or the third-largest buyout of a foreign company (based on Skype's Luxembourg headquarters). The sale is not financing-contingent, but does have debt lined up from JP Morgan, Barclays and RBC.
1 min read · 01 September 2009
The big news this morning is that eBay has agreed to sell a 65% stake in Internet calling company Skype to a group of private investors, at an enterprise value of $2.75 billion. The buyers include Silver Lake Partners, Canada Pension Plan, Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Here’s my question: Does this mean that Index and Andreessen Horowitz are no longer venture capital firms? This might sound like an academic question, but I mean it as a follow-up to Alan Patricof’s op-ed from Sunday’s NY Times. For the uninitiated, Patricof and former regulator Eric Dinallo argued that venture capital firms should be excluded from proposed requirements to register as investment advisors. They argued that VC firms do not pose the types of systemic risks that the rules are designed to guard against, and that imposition of such requirements could damage venture capital firms from a cost perspective. It’s also a case that the NVCA has been making on Capitol Hill. I agree with Patricof and the NVCA, that venture capital does not pose systemic risk. It is true that the economy would be severely harmed if most VC firms went belly-up tomorrow, but there is no
2 min read · 01 September 2009
Global M&A volume for August was approximately $93 billion, according to Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). This includes around $7.2 billion of private equity volume, which is a marked decrease from the $13.22 billion in July. The percentage of PE as part of the M&A whole, however, only dropped from 8.4% to 7.7 percent. Private equity volume last August was $13.5 billion, compared to $148 billion of global M&A. You can download the full spreadsheet by clicking here.
1 min read · 01 September 2009
Jeffrey Barnes this morning was asked to resign as a general partner with Oxford Bioscience Partners, after the firm learned that he had not complied with policies governing personal securities trading. An OBP spokesman says that he did so with immediate effect, and that it is not expected to have a "material effect" on portfolio performance or firm operations. The spokesman adds that Barnes' transgression involved personally trading in publicly-held OBP portfolio companies without the knowledge of his fellow partners. Barnes originally joined the Boston-based venture capital firm in 1999, after having spent time in the healthcare M&A trenches with both Robbie Stephens and Needham & Co. Before that, he was co-founder and CEO of cardiovascular device company Biosyss Corp. He was one of five general partners on the firm's $150 million fifth fund, which closed
2 min read · 31 August 2009
