Private Equity
Most of us swore we’d never fall under the dot-com spell again after the bubble burst, but the irrational exuberance has returned for a number of Internet startups, not the least of which is Twitter. Now Nielsen Online research analyst David Martin has taken a hard look at the company and his conclusions should have Twitter’s VC backers worried. “Currently, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent,” Martin writes in his report. “For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.”
2 min read · 29 April 2009
The NVCA came out with its “four pillar” strategy to revive the liquidity market (read IPO market) for venture-backed companies today (see Dan's post). Whether you agree with the recommendations or not, I think there is no room for debate about whether the lack of VC-backed IPOs is a systemic problem vs. a recessionary one. With just six VC-backed IPOs last year, Venture Capital Journal asked a Ph.D. economist last November to look at the hard IPO data to determine what a “normal” year would have looked like. The number she came up with: 50.
3 min read · 29 April 2009
For a few FoFs, while pledges were still forthcoming, slower paces make more sense
3 min read · 27 April 2009
4 min read · 27 April 2009
8 min read · 27 April 2009
Investors of Aldus have concerns, questions after alleged kickbacks
3 min read · 13 April 2009
3 min read · 13 April 2009
4 min read · 13 April 2009
We’ve got a great cover story in this month’s Venture Capital Journal. Written by Lee Bruno, who was covering cleantech before it was known as cleantech, the story is full of practical advice about how VCs can help their portfolio companies access government stimulus dollars. Lee is going to moderate a panel on that very topic at VCJ’s “Financing the Cleantech Vision” event in Palo Alto on June 25. Speakers include Steve Westly, former California Controller, Chuck McDermott of RockPort Capital, Mark Nydam of PCG Asset Management, Anup Jacob of Virgin Green Fund and lots more. I’ve got a special bonus for you if you are one of the next 10 people who register for the event: I will shoot you a PDF of Lee’s cover story and send you a hard copy of the magazine. Click here for all the details.
1 min read · 03 April 2009
When Q1 deal data are finalized later this month, they are sure to show a significant slowdown. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. I met this morning with VC Richard Yen, who told me that his firm, Saban Capital Group, has offered three term sheets so far this year only to be outbid on all three of them. “There’s been a flight to quality,” says Yen, a director in the digital media group of Saban, a Los Angeles-based firm backed by billionaire media mogul Haim Saban. “There are only a few things we’ve gotten excited about, but when we have there have been a lot of people sniffing around,” Yen says. Saban offered term sheets for a Series A round for a mobile company run by a successful repeat entrepreneur who was seeded by a Sand Hill Road firm; a Series A round for a direct response marketing company (a la Cash4Gold) run by an entrepreneur with 20 years in the direct response business; and a seed round for an entertainment website run by a “high-profile personality.”
2 min read · 01 April 2009
