View from Elevation: Fred Anderson Discusses Palm
Elevation Partners was originally known for its high-profile partners, including Roger McNamee, Fred Anderson and Bono. But it quickly became better known as the firm that kept plugging money into Palm, the PDA maker whose popularity seemed to have peaked in around 2001. "As goes Palm as goes Elevation," summed up an investor in the firm's $1.8 billion debut fund. Last week, HP completed its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm, which gave around a 5% cash-on-cash return from its $460 million in total investments. Not very good, but better than Elevation would have faired in the Palm bankruptcy that some predicted. To get a better sense of the Palm situation from Elevation's point of view, I spent some time on the phone with Fred Anderson, the ex-Apple CFO who repped Elevation on the Palm board of directors. The conversation actually took place back when the deal was first announced in April, but Palm lawyers prevented me from publishing it until now. What follows are some of his comments from our conversation:
