Posts tagged Art
The Daily Start-Up: Has Segway Segued To Obscurity?
Jan 14th
This morning’s roundup of the latest venture capital news and analysis across the Web:
Art by Mike LucasSegway Sold? - In December 2001 Dean Kamen trumpeted his new invention – a two-wheeled, battery-powered balancing scooter – in a Time magazine cover story, predicting the Segway “will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.” A further boast came from John Doerr, the famed venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who said he expected Segway would be the fastest ever to reach $1 billion in sales. Those predictions look silly eight years later, especially with news today that Segway’s chief executive no longer works at the company amid rumors Segway has been sold. Segway has raised at least $176 million in funding from investors including Credit Suisse Private Equity, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures and Masdar. (UPDATE: Segway has posted a statement on its blog announcing a merger. The company said a deal occurred on Dec. 24 in which Segway was acquired by a company based in the U.K. “The acquiring company is backed by Jimi Heselden, a prominent U.K. businessman and the Chairman of Hesco Bastion,” Segway said. “Mr. Heselden is also an investor in the independently owned Segway U.K. distributorship. Additionally, Segway also received funding that will be used to support the continued growth of the company.” We’re trying to get more answers; specifically what, if anything, has happened to Segway’s venture backers.)
Dropping The Shopping – Don’t “shop” your business plan around, says Paul Jozefak of Neuhaus Partners. He’s referring to the entrepreneur that bombards a venture capital firm by sending their business plan to everyone with a firm and in their network. “I can understand doing your best to get your business plan in my hands but this is not the way to do it,” Jozefak writes. “Have one person intro you to me. Either have them ask whether I want to take a look or have them recommend to me that I speak with you.”
Googling China - Chinese entrepreneurs and investors seem to have mixed feelings about Google’s threat to leave China, at least those interviewed by VentureBeat. Some of them are supporting Google and believe it’s taking the right stance. Others believe China doesn’t care what Google does and won’t budge, so the company should just leave. Dow Jones Newswires reports that if Google were to leave China, it could hurt its long-term goals, specifically around Android software, search advertising and its Chrome computer operating system. Google, meanwhile, is making nice in a very small way: today it incorporated pictures of China’s four great inventions into its name on the Google.cn home page.
Skype Hype – Now that Skype’s founders have moved back to the company, will there be a personality clash between them and the powerful tech personalities that bought Skype from eBay? Phillip Phan, a business professor at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in Baltimore, tells BusinessWeek he foresees an ongoing battle between founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis and the investors. But Marc Andreessen, whose venture firm Andreessen Horowitz took a 5% stake in Skype in the buyout, begs to differ: “What’s great about the alignment of interests is that it doesn’t require everyone to love each other; it’s not grade school,” he tells BusinessWeek. “If Niklas and Janus have six ideas on how the company can increase exponentially from where it’s at, I want to hear those.”
The Daily Start-Up: Dark Clouds Ahead For Health Care VCs?
Jan 13th
This morning’s roundup of the latest venture capital news and analysis across the Web:
Art by Mike LucasHealth Concerns – Venture capitalists investing in health care companies were encouraged by several major acquisitions in the fourth quarter. But as VentureWire reports today, the overall downsizing of the venture capital industry is eliminating potential co-investors and adding risk to surviving firms. Regulatory issues and uncertainty around health-care reform are making matters more treacherous in 2010. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist or a doomsdayer, but I do think things are going to get tougher and tighter than we’ve ever seen in our business,” James Garvey, chairman of SV Life Sciences, tells VentureWire. Read the rest of this outlook story here.
Cyber-Censoring In China - If Google, which is threatening to stop censoring its search site in China, leaves the country altogether, “it could throw the future of its investments and partnerships throughout the Chinese Internet and telecommunications sectors into question – while also potentially creating opportunities for Chinese rivals,” The Wall Street Journal reports. That includes the much larger competitor there, Baidu.com, which is facing its own problems in China, and Chinese Internet portal start-ups like Netease.com Inc., Sohu.com Inc., and Tencent Holdings Ltd. J.P. Morgan projects Google’s 2010 revenue at $600 million. Google’s official statement on the issue, all spurred by cyber attacks, can be found here on its blog.
Public Enemy - An IPO may be hard to resist, but private companies should think twice before shooting for the public markets, says Robert Mancuso, the founder and managing partner of private equity and financial advisory firm Dellacorte Group. “Unfortunately, the positive buzz over IPOs flies in the face of a stauncher, more deeply rooted reality — namely, that the public equity markets have failed,” Mancuso writes on TheDeal.com. “They have failed to live up to the expectations of dozens of CEOs who took their companies public in the past five years….The gap between the myths of going public and the reality of being public hasn’t narrowed, while the stakes of public exposure, scrutiny and regulatory freight have multiplied like storm clouds.”
What’s the Incentive? – How successful are states’ attempts at luring high-tech companies with fat tax incentives? According to a new study that examines Pennsylvania’s efforts here, the gains are marginal at best. The state had a net gain of 43 high-tech employers between 1990 and 2006, but a net loss of 2,850 jobs. The incentives offer “little appreciable advantage or disadvantage” over surrounding states. We wonder, though, how bad the results would have been for Pennsylvania without the tax incentives. Interestingly, the study found that more jobs in Pennsylvania were lost to other countries than to other states by a 30-to-1 ratio.
The Age of Innovation – Silicon Valley’s “myopic focus on youth is misguided” even in social media, writes Mercury News columnist Chris O’Brien, responding to comments from a Sequoia Capital partner that people over 30 aren’t innovative. “…If Silicon Valley wants to continue to thrive, and to live up to its image as a meritocracy, it needs to take the blinders off and look for innovation everywhere.”
A Ray of Light – Sad news in Silicon Valley: Dan Ray, who co-founded Level One Communications and later became a venture partner for Jatotech Ventures, died Sunday of a heart attack at age 50. He co-founded Level One and aided by venture capital he helped build the company until its sale to Intel Corp. in 1999 for $2.2 billion. A funeral for Ray is set for Thursday in the Austin, Texas, area, where he lived.
How to Establish Your Bank Auction Bid Amount
Jan 13th
Establishing your bid amount at a bank auction is a matter of having a feel for your financial resources and a feel for the other bidders. By combining these two factors, you can come up with the ideal bank auction bids.
How Much Can You Afford to Spend at a Bank Auction?
You need to know exactly how much you have to bid at a bank auction. You will also be restricted by the amount you want to spend for a property. If nothing else, you want to make sure that you do not go beyond your financial means when participating in any bank auction. It is important to keep your senses. A good rule of thumb is to write down your maximum amount and refer to it constantly when bidding, this way your emotions do not take over.
The Art of Bidding at a Bank Auction
You will also need to pay attention to other bidders and their activities at auction. Don’t be afraid to start bidding at the price that you want. You don’t need to wait until bidding slows or until the bidding reaches the price that you think will be considered acceptable. Bid as early as you like and only raise bids by the minimum necessary increments.
Establish your bid auction amount as a compromise between what you can pay and what it takes to compete with the other bidders. This strategy will increase your chances of being successful at any bank auction.
The Daily Start-Up: First ‘Growth Equity,’ Now ‘Early Growth Equity’
Jan 12th
This morning’s roundup of the latest venture capital news and analysis across the Web:
Art by Mike LucasGrowing Pains – “Growth equity,” a trendy area of investing for venture and private equity firms, is hard to define, and often you don’t even know it when you see it. Generally it implies minority investments in mature companies that are usually profitable and need money for expansion, but the generic term allows firms to place traditional late-stage investments and majority-stake deals into this category. To add to the confusion, now we have “early growth equity.” At least, that’s how Larry Cheng, managing director of the newly independent partnership Volition Capital, labels his firm’s investment model. Volition, formerly the Fidelity Ventures unit of Fidelity Investments, will seek a “meaningful minority ownership” in founder-owned technology companies in the U.S. and Canada with revenue of between $5 million and $50 million. These companies are generally too small to hold much interest for growth-equity giants such as TA Associates or Summit Partners, Cheng tells VentureWire, but Volition could compete with venture firms looking to include growth-equity deals in their portfolios. Got it?
Check The Expiration Date – Stuart Ellman, a partner at RRE Ventures, wonders when he’ll be out of date. The 43-year-old co-founder believes he has at least another 10 years to go, but he says in his post titled “VC Expiration Date,” there are several factors that will make it tougher for him to be a venture capitalist as he gets older. “I need to make sure that my firm, RRE, has people that are younger and will go to every event that I cannot make,” Ellman writes. On a related topic, check out VentureWire’s story from last year about venture capital firms’ succession plans.
When Trolls Attack – As if the problems in the venture capital industry aren’t enough, now VCs need to worry about trolls. Almost a third of Union Square Ventures’ portfolio is under attack by patent trolls, says Partner Bill Burnham. “Our companies are being attacked by companies that were not even in the same market, very often by companies they did not even know existed,” Burnham writes, making a case for patent reform. “The problem is that the patent system has fallen way behind the pace of innovation, especially in information technology.”
Bleeding Solar – Greentech Media picks this year’s potential solar start-up winners and losers in an article dramatically titled, “Solar Start-Up Bloodbath 2010.” It’s identified more than 250 solar companies that have raised funding in the past few years and are hunting for a 10% market share. Sounds like an impending bubble-burst to me.
Related Blogs
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The Daily Start-Up: Finally, Detroit Is Electric
Jan 11th
This morning’s roundup of the latest venture capital news and analysis across the Web:
Art by Mike LucasElectric-Motor City - The 2010 Detroit Auto Show kicks into first gear today as automakers show off their upcoming models. What does this have to do with venture capital? The automakers are focusing a large amount of attention on environmentally-friendly vehicles, an area ripe for venture capital investment. The Detroit News reports that a 37,000 square-foot showcase called Electric Avenue on the main floor will feature 20 electric vehicles and technology from traditional automakers as well as start-ups. Another local publication, Michigan Live, says that an employee from venture-backed start-up Tesla Motors is driving an electric Roadster Sport from L.A. to Detroit, and the company could announce a new battery partner for its upcoming Model S electric sedan. On a related note, Boston Consulting Group just issued a study saying that the electric-vehicle market will not grow as fast as automakers think because the batteries that power these cares will remain too expensive and too technologically limited.
Hercules Yields – The lights will remain on at a start-up in Billerica, Mass. Luminus Devices, a maker of light-emitting diode chips, settled a lawsuit with Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which had frozen Luminus’ bank account because it feared the company wouldn’t be able to repay its loans, an act that threatened the company’s continued existence. Behind the scenes, the company’s venture backers, which had previously invested $140 million in Luminus, had provided some bridge financing to keep the company going, VentureWire reports. Now Luminus plans to raise another round of venture capital, possibly in the beginning of the second quarter.
Here’s The Pitch – Interested in what goes on during a venture-capital pitch meeting? Tom Heath, a columnist for The Washington Post, sits in on one at the offices of Grotech Ventures and details the hour-long meeting with an entrepreneur pitching a Web site that lets people share information about projects.
Call Waiting – Ben Holmes, a partner at Index Ventures, sums up why “mobile (mostly) sucked for so long for VC.” He believes, though, that venture capitalists are poised to escape this “mobile black hole” because many past issues have eroded thanks in part to smartphones, and because of a “very aggressive turf war that is now playing out” between Apple, Google, mobile operators and handset makers.
Pajamas & Profits – The headline’s a bit dramatic – How to Make a Million in Your Pajamas – but Inc.com spotlights the growing trend of entrepreneurs starting businesses at home.
Dear I-Banks – Benchmark Capital’s Michael Eisenberg to investment bankers: “Please do not rush ‘unsuitable companies’ to the public markets to take advantage of the IPO window. That is the best way to close it again.” While venture capitalists are eager to take many of their portfolio companies public, “[w]hat we and they do not need is unprofitable companies, without clearly profitable business models, that consume cash and need to source that cash in the public markets to survive,” Eisenberg writes.
Job Drought – Apologies for leaving on a bad note, but how terrible is the unemployment problem in the U.S.? Check out these two charts compiled by the Calculated Risk blog that are based on last week’s employment report. They’ll make you shiver. In Silicon Valley, the sentiment about whether the job market is improving appears to be mixed, according to The Mercury News.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on The Daily Start-Up: Finally, Detroit Is Electric
Now I’ve heard it all: Fish Herding – Yes, in downtown Scottsdale!
Jan 8th
I’m sure you’ve all heard the term “herding cats“. Well, now, it’s time to learn about “herding fish“!
Direct from the City of Scottsdale:
FISH HERDING BECOMES ART SATURDAY IN THE DOWNTOWN
Canal dry-ups and fish round-ups are an annual occurrence in the Valley, but you’ve never seen one quite like the event that begins Saturday morning, Jan. 9, in Scottsdale’s Downtown.
The fish will be there and so will performance artists, new public art installations and an opportunity to watch it all from the Marshall Way Bridge or one of the restaurants along the canal bank.
Salt River Project begins the roundup of its canal-cleaning white amur fish early that morning, and the fish gathering should be well underway by 8 a.m. Two artistic events start at 8 a.m. — a live art performance by Transfix and the installation of Fausto Fernandez’s Flowing Overlapping Gesture, a temporary, 100-foot-long art piece designed for the canal. Fernandez and his crew will continue working on the installation through the weekend. Other public art installations are scheduled, as well, while the canal through downtown Scottsdale remains dry for routine maintenance. The dry-up lasts for roughly one month.
More detailed information on the Saturday roundup and art event is available on the Scottsdale Public Art Web site or by calling (480) 634-6850.
For more information on the canal maintenance project and historical information on Valley canals, visit: SRP.
Sounds like a bike ride down the canal bank to the Waterfront, with camera in tow, will be in order for Saturday morning. See you there?
