Private Equity
You’re just as skeptical as we are about the merits of a VC or PE firm adding a celebrity to its roster. In this week’s poll, 27% of peHUB readers said celebrity hires produce real ROI for VC and/or PE firms, but 73% said such hires are little more than publicity stunts. “I think this collision of pop culture and VC produces great PR and thus probably some great deal flow, but actual returns? Hard to see the direct connection,” wrote Lisa Suennen, founding partner of venture firm Psilos Group Managers and a peHUB contributor. “I did write about this very topic recently on VentureValkyrie when MC Hammer joined up with venture incubator NewME.” Three others who wrote extended comments said the real benefit of bringing on a big name is that it helps with
2 min read · 01 July 2011
About 150 of you turned out last night for the peHUB Chicago Shindig at Glascott’s Saloon on North Halsted St. Besides beer, the drink of choice was a gin and tonic, says peHUB Editor Jon Marino, who helped tend bar (and is standing on top of it in the following slideshow). On the food front, we hear the egg rolls were particularly popular. As part of the Shindig, attendees donated a thousand bucks to the Boys and Girls Club of Metropolitan Chicago. Thanks for your generosity. Also, a big thanks to the folks over at Golub Capital for sponsoring the event. We’ll see you at the next Shindig in San Francisco in October, which will be the night before our Venture Alpha conference on Oct. 20. In the following slideshow, click on any photo to make it larger. (Slideshow photos shot for peHUB by Sara Collins of Peanut Gallery Photography.)
1 min read · 30 June 2011
4 min read · 30 June 2011
2 min read · 30 June 2011
Five venture capital firms are going to wake up stinking rich on Wednesday, thanks to the successful IPO of Pandora, which operates an Internet music sharing service. As a group, the five firms own 105.6 million shares, which are worth $1.69 billion at the IPO price of $16 per share. And they're not the only ones. The Hearst Corp. is sitting pretty, too, as are Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren and several other insiders. Of course, this is all theoretical, since the VCs and Pandora's officers and directors are locked up from selling any shares for 180 days. Assuming the stock holds steady when the lock up ends in six months, here's how Pandora's top 10 largest shareholders will make out.
3 min read · 15 June 2011
4 min read · 14 June 2011
VCs are largely avoiding work today, judging by what they’re sharing on Twitter. The most shared link is a page that allows Facebook users to join a beta test of Turntable.fm, a new music-sharing service, according to peHUB’s new Tweetminster-powered service, which tracks trends on Twitter. The second most popular item being shared right now is a link to a Twitter broadcast by a Brazilian band called Sorriso Maroto. For the remaining top 10 most shared links, click on the “Read more” button below. As I noted on Friday, we’re not making our Tweetminster service live yet because we want to give the company’s algorithm more time to identify experts and analyze their tweets to identify key trends. If you’d like to check out the service and share your feedback with us, please let me know and I will shoot you a password. I’m at Lawrence.Aragon@ThomsonReuters.com or you can DM on Twitter @laragon.
2 min read · 06 June 2011
We’re trying out a new service run by Tweetminster that tracks content shared on Twitter by experts in various fields. In our case those experts are focused primarily on venture capital, technology and entrepreneurship. Long term, we hope to track content shared by private equity pros, but there just aren’t that many PE experts on Twitter at this moment. We’re not making the Tweetminster service live just yet. We want to give the company’s algorithm more time to identify experts and analyze their tweets to identify key trends. If you’d like to check out the service and share your feedback with us, please let me know and I will shoot you a password. I’m at Lawrence.Aragon@ThomsonReuters.com or you can DM on Twitter @laragon. In the meantime, here are the top 5 most popular links being shared by our experts right now. Let us know what you think. 1. Spark, Lightbank And Yuri Milner Get In On OnSwipe’s $5M ‘Series Awesome’ (TechCrunch) 2. Slideshow: Top 10 Winners in pre-IPO Cash-Out at Groupon (peHUB) 3. Windows 8: The Beginning of the End of Windows (MobileOpportunity blog) 4. Let's Not Get Too Cocky About the Bubble (TechCrunch) 5. Pandora Sets IPO Terms; VC Shares Are Potentially Worth Over $950M (peHUB)
1 min read · 03 June 2011
One of the most intriguing factoids to come out of Groupon's IPO filing today was that the daily deals website didn't raise $946 million earlier this year for expansion. Instead, it raised the money primarily to provide huge pay days for the company's founders, insiders and early investors. Of the total amount raised, $136.2 million went to working capital and general corporate purposes, according to the company's S-1. The remaining 86% percent of the capital, or $809.8 million, was used to "redeem voting and non-voting common stock from our existing stockholders at a purchase price of $15.795 per share (on a post-stock split basis), and Series D preferred stock and Series E preferred stock from our existing stockholders at a purchase price of
2 min read · 03 June 2011
1 min read · 01 June 2011
