Private Equity
I had the pleasure of moderating a venture capital discussion for boutique investment bank Iron Capital Partners recently. It was a lively debate, since each of the participants came from a different aspect of the venture business (see video after the jump). There was one VC, two secondaries buyers, an I-banker and the head of an online exchange where accredited investors can buy or sell shares in private companies. One of the principal questions I asked was: If someone wants to get into VC today, where’s the best place to put his or her money? Should he invest in a primary VC fund or go with a secondary fund? Or should he avoid funds altogether and buy shares of Facebook on an online exchange such as Sharespost? This led to a very interesting discussion about the poor performance of venture as an asset class over the past 10 years and some interesting perspective about where it will go in the next decade.
2 min read · 05 November 2009
2 min read · 04 November 2009
1 min read · 02 November 2009
TRS of Texas likely to go after FoFs
1 min read · 02 November 2009
2 min read · 02 November 2009
The first nine months of this year mark the worst nine-month period for brand new VC investments in 15 years. This week’s Money Tree report showed that overall VC investment rose slightly from Q2 to Q3, but the picture is much bleaker if you focus on brand new deals, i.e. first-round financings. VCs invested a total of $2.19 billion in 462 first-round deals in the first nine months of this year (see chart below). To find another nine-month period equally as bad, you have to go back to the third quarter of 1994 to the first quarter of 1995, when VCs invested a total of $1.77 billion in 480 first rounds.
1 min read · 21 October 2009
4 min read · 19 October 2009
It isn’t often that you feel young at 51, but that’s one of the benefits of competing in the Senior Games. Just ask David Jones Jr., founder and chairman of Louisville-based Chrysalis Ventures, who came in 9th in the triathlon portion of the games in August. Jones was a relative kid compared to some of the other competitors, one of whom was 85. I caught up with Jones and we talked about his passion for health and fitness and how that ties into his investment strategy. Q: How’s your firm doing these days? A: We’ve had two good exits since the market cracked. We sold a company called HealthMedia in Ann Arbor to Johnson & Johnson for about 18 times our money in October of ‘08. And we’ve got another company called MedServe down in Houston that Stericycle, which is the leader in medical waste processing, is buying for $185 million. We did well on that one, too. It was a multiple of our invested capital.
3 min read · 15 October 2009
I was asked to put together a state-of-the-VC market presentation for a group of laypeople, so I thought I'd share it with peHUB readers. If you're not a VC expert, then these four slides should help you understand why the past two years have been miserable time for most VCs. Get them after the jump:
1 min read · 07 October 2009
2 min read · 05 October 2009
