Carbon Black’s IPO is another unicorn in the making
By Rohit Kulkarni, SharesPost Carbon Black, the Cambridge, Massachusetts cybersecurity company, recently filed for its [...]
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The rise of tokens: critical considerations for VC firms
By Jennifer Kristen Lee, Louis Lehot and Mark Radcliffe, DLA Piper The year 2017 saw [...]
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Pivotal IPO could bring about new open source offerings
By Rohit Kulkarni, SharesPost Pivotal, the cloud-software company spun out of Dell EMC and VMware, [...]
ContinueHorangic To Leave Austin Ventures
Basic Horangic is leaving Austin Ventures, after having served as a general partner for the past six years. AV sent the following email this morning to its limited partners and other friends of the firm: “We wanted to let you know that one of our General Partners, Basil Horangic, has decided to leave Austin to […]
ContinueOn The Road Again…
Sorry for the very slow blogging over the past few days, but I’ve been caught in biz trip limbo. Right now that means that I’m taking hand-me-down VW to New York, for Buyouts Symposium East (storm has made more conventional travel difficult). Will be sure to post once I get into the Grand Hyatt, where I’ll be stationed […]
ContinueAnd The Winner Is… MIT
I just got back from Top of the Hill here in Chapel Hill, where many of the VCIC competitors and judges are still knocking back a variety of adult beverages. Per usual, it’s been my favorite industry event of the year (neither Schwarzman nor Bonderman invite me to their birthday parties). Anyway, a big congratulations to MIT, […]
ContinueGoogle Snaps Up DoubleClick
It may be Friday the 13th, but it’s a great day Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity. Google has agreed to pay $3.1B in cash for DoubleClick. Not sure what the ROI is yet. Just wanted to post the news asap. UPDATE: Looks like they paid $1.1B back in 2005. Here’s the release: Google to […]
ContinueFeeding the Skills Famine
James Surowiecki, author of The New Yorker’s “Financial Page,” is one of my favorite business journalists. His style and insight make him always worth reading, no matter what piece of the global economy he tackles. But he missed a big trend in his story this week. He writes in “India’s Skills Famine” that the country’s […]
ContinueIn Memoriam: J. Carter Beese Jr.
J. Carter Beese Jr., a venture partner with Boulder Ventures, committed suicide Sunday in his Malibu home, at the age of 50. Funeral services are scheduled for 11am ET tomorrow, at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Owings Mills, Maryland. Beese joined Boulder in 2001 with an impressive financial resume. He previously had served as […]
ContinueThe Unspoken Risk In Private Equity: Part I
Buyout firms and their investors love to point to the high risk-adjusted returns they generate—and justifiably so. But I suspect that few in the industry take tax risk into account when making their calculations. If they did so, returns wouldn’t look quite so handsome. For years buyout firms and their investors have been rolling the […]
ContinueSchilling’s Big Pitch
Curt Schilling wants $48 million. And it has nothing to do with a possible contract extension from the Red Sox. Instead, it’s for a videogame startup he founded last year called 38 Studios. If successful, it would be the largest-ever first round funding for a gaming company. 38 Studios is developing online multiplayer games, with initial […]
ContinueIndustry Standards for Leveraged Buyouts
A winning private equity bid is typically the one with the most zeros after it, but every now and then specific deal terms also come into play. The only problem is that most target companies don’t really know if the specific terms are buyer-friendly, seller-friendly or straight down the middle. It’s old-fashioned ignorance, borne of […]
ContinueFirst AK, Now ChoiceStream
Lots of blog chatter this morning about Aggregate Knowledge, a behavioral search company that just scored $20 million in Series B funding from DAG Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. See here, here and below. After all, it’s not too often that a widget company raises double-digit venture dollars. Moreover, it’s not too often that a company seeds […]
Continue5 Questions for Paul Martino
Aggregate Knowledge, a Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of behavioral search solutions within a single website, today announced that it has raised $20 million in Series B funding. DAG Ventures led the deal, with return backers Kleiner Perkins and First Round Capital also participating. So we’ve got 5 Questions for Aggregate Knoweledge CEO Paul Martino: 1. […]
ContinueDFJ IX Closes: $600M
Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s ninth fund has hit its $600 million target, according to a regulatory filing. peHUB had reported last month that the close had been expected to occur at the end of Q1. DFJ IX is 50% larger than its predecessor, and the firm’s largest raise since the $640 million. DFJ had nine of its […]
ContinueThe Right Way to Right Size?
Though I find myself usually agreeing with Professor Primack, this time I think he has it wrong on the middle market carry issue, both on a couple of points he made as well as some items he passed over. Mega Funds as a threat? In Dan’s hypothetical discussion he has the middle market GP arguing […]
ContinueSequoia Continues Summit Poaching
Sequoia Capital has quietly added former Summit Partners Associate Patrick W. Grady to its team, the third low-ranking Summit employee in the past nine months. Patrick Grady joins former coworkers Alexander Harrison and Scott Carter at Sequoia and will focus on software and services investments. The new Sequoia investor should not be confused with the […]
ContinueDow Chemical: Dubai Ports World Redux?
Dow Chemical Co. is downplaying buyout rumors, after a UK tabloid reported that KKR and several Middle Eastern investors are prepping a $50 billion bid. A company spokesman says that Dow has “no interest” in a leveraged buyout, because it believes it can provide the most shareholder value by remaining a public entity. Now there […]
ContinueSelf-Promotion Alert
Hey Canada: I’ll be on BNN’s SqueezePlay program this afternoon at 5:10 ET, for a conversation about the mega-LBO market. We’ll talk Dow Chemical, fund sizes and more…
ContinueVC Keeps Appealing for Help
Why does Kaj-Erik Relander of Accel Partners look so glum? Probably because he lost an appeal to remove “convicted felon” from his resume. But don’t get too down yet Kaj – you’ve still got one more shot with Finland’s Supreme Court. Relander, you might remember, was convicted in 2005 of having violated Finnish privacy laws while […]
ContinueThe Wrong Way to Right-Size
Buyout firms have begun horse-trading size caps and carried interest on new funds, according to Buyouts Magazine. The article – which I’ve since confirmed independently with several LPs – alleges that numerous firms have raised carried interest on new funds from 20% to 25% (which LPs hate), in a de facto exchange for keeping fund […]
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