Slide raised $58M and today lays off a bunch of people and none of the “influential” tech blogs come out and say anything remotely… anything.
Om Malik, whom I respect quite a bit, publishes a post that doesn’t really say much. Read his post a few times and tell me what are you supposed to walk away with? Of course, Om is a VC as well, so he probably won’t berate any of these crappy companies that have too much VC money riding them anyway. continue reading...
While 2008 finished off with companies doing their best to cling on to anything to avoid from being sucked into the maelstrom, I think - despite the continued stock market meltdown - that many companies are seeing some stabilization in their core business. In other words: yes, 2008 Q4 saw a rapid evaporation of booked business, but 2009 is not looking as dire as some expected.
Online Remains a Beacon of Growth continue reading...
I hate to post my third anti-VC rant in two days… but upon learning that some former Facebook staffers are looking at unloading some of their vested shares at a value of $3-4B (when supposedly Facebook locked in a $15B value earlier this year), it sort of reiterates my whole argument for providing liquidity preferences to founders, and in some exceptional cases, executives and employees, too. Read more in Bulls Make Money, Bears Make Money, Hogs Get Slaughtered.
Trust me, if you surround yourself with the right talent, cashing in some of your chips definitely does not make you less hungry for success… it just makes you more patient for it. continue reading...
I probably don’t make too many friends saying this, but I predict that our generation’s answer to Pets.com won’t be Dogster.com (that actually makes sense), but rather, the Slide’s and Rock You’s of the world. I could be very, very wrong… but no way is Slide worth $100M, let alone $500M.
Anyway, if what Tech Crunch is saying is true - that Facebook just deleted one of Slide’s applications - then Slide might not be worth $5M, let alone $500M. continue reading...
Step 1: After f*cking over Sean Parker at Plaxo, Sequoia is shunned from participating in Facebook funding, who raises money from former Paypal President Peter Thiel.
Step 2: Sequoia is snubbed once again from Facebook craze when Slide - founded by former Paypal encryption wunderkind Max Levchin - launches slide show maker for social networks. Social networking craze ensues… then starts to fizzle. continue reading...
M&A can happen quickly, but financing is a mind-numbing process that takes 6, sometimes 12 months.
As such, learning that Rock You just raised $35M for Facebook apps, you have to wonder, how do the investors feel upon learning that just yesterday, the #1 in this “space”, Slide, signaled a shift in strategy by stopping to develop new apps. continue reading...
Fake Steve Jobs was absolutely correct in saying that the “Facebook and Slide ecosystem” represented a ponzi scheme of sorts. No one in the Valley will say this, because they would run the risk of burning too many bridges… but the truth is that while Facebook has created an interesting business, it also lost a lot of value by opening up to developers and whoring their audience. I log in to Facebook less and less frequently, and I am probably not alone.
But the euphoria that fanboy developers had for Facebook’s platform helped lock MSFT’s interest to the tune of a $15B market cap, on paper… it was not a coincidence that no one other than Slide founder Max Levchin stood up at the F8 event and hailed Facebook’s platform as the platform to pick up the baton from MSFT’s Windows ecosystem. That kind of developer envy led to MSFT’s investment… which by of itself was smart (it c*ck-blocked Google from Facebook and ensured that no one but MSFT could ever buy Facebook if an exit was warranted). continue reading...
Uber angel investor JF (you call him Jeff) Clavier raised some eyebrows last year when he was quoted as telling startups that their income is “noise”, even if said income is approximating $300,000 in monthly revenues. A $300K monthly revenue implies an annual run-rate of $3.6M.
Maybe he’s right: Ning just raised $60M on a $500M pre-money valuation despite making $1.7M in revenues. That’s also the valuation Slide got, and it too probably commands an eye-popping revenue multiple. Any way you dice it, Clavier’s $300K per month revenue would be for a company with twice as much revenue as Ning. In a linear world, that would be a $1B company (if Ning is indeed wirth $500M at $1.7M in revenue). Obviously, we’re playing with numbers, because a company with $1.7M in revenues should not be worth half a billion… but who cares, obviously investors don’t, argues Macromedia founder Marc Canter, who sold his firm to Adobe for a cool $3.4B a few years ago. continue reading...
Paid Content refers to a NYT article on CBS which calls for the company that Bill Paley built to make digital acquisitions, which begs the question: should they go for a big purchase or make small moves?
Of course, answering that question alone without addressing the backdrop to that question yields an incomplete picture. continue reading...
2007 marked a euphoric climate for valuations and fundings in the digital space.
- Facebook kicked off the festivities with a $240M investment on a $15B valuation [our coverage]. continue reading...
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