Is it a tech bubble? Every week a “we are in a tech bubble” article seems to come out in a major newspaper or blog. People who argue we aren’t in a bubble are casually dismissed as promoting their own interests. I’d argue the situation is far more nuanced and that people who engage in this debate should consider the following: 1) Public tech companies: Anyone with a basic understanding of finance would have trouble arguing many large public tech companies are trading at “bubble valuations” – e.g. Apple (14 P/E), Google (18 P/E), eBay (16 P/E), Yahoo (17 P/E). You could certainly debate other public tech stock valuations (there are a number of companies that recently IPOd that many reasonable people think are overvalued), but on a market-cap weighted average the tech sector is trading at a very reasonable 17 P/E. 2) Instagram seems to be the case study du jour for people arguing we are in a bubble. 4) Certain stages – most notably the Series A – seem under valued. 5) No one can predict macro trends.
'PayPal Mafia' Gets Richer. The fortunes of the so-called PayPal Mafia are poised to grow. Jeremy Stoppelman and Max Levchin own about $200 million in Yelp Inc. shares heading into the company’s initial public offering, setting up the latest payday for PayPal Inc.’s former executives. Stoppelman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Yelp, owns 11.1 percent of the company, while Levchin, the chairman, has 13.5 percent. The user-generated review site announced plans last week to sell shares for $12 to $14 apiece in an IPO, valuing Yelp at as much as $838 million. The Yelp executives join Facebook Inc. investors Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. founder Elon Musk on a short list of ex-PayPal employees poised to generate big-time riches from pending IPOs. “PayPal did a great job of producing a very talented class of entrepreneurs,” said Eric Jackson, the company’s first marketing director and author of “The PayPal Wars.”
CrunchBase Reveals: The Average Successful Startup Raises $25.3 Million, Sells For $196.8 Million. Most investments fail but the few successful ones more than make all the money back — or so startup investors hope. But what sort of returns do these profitable exits bring in? According to a new analysis of all the exits listed in CrunchBase, the average successful company has raised $25.3 million, and sold for $196.8 million, for investor profits of 676% (if you assume the investors own 100% of the company, which they normally don’t). Meanwhile, IPO-bound companies generated lower percentage returns, but made a lot more money per exit. The average one raised $580.3 million while private, then went public with a market cap of $2.3 billion on its first day of public trading for 303% profit on investment (yes, investors probably aren’t selling all their stock on the first day, this is just one way to measure IPO exits).
Mouse over the dots below for more details. Anyway, the analysis has also uncovered some other surprising trends in recent startup returns. Analytics by @BuzzSparks_org. SoundCloud raises $50 million round led by Kleiner Perkins. The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010. It’s been a long drought for IPOs, but venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain.
Earlier this year, a handful of IPOs trickled out, such as OpenTable, Rackspace, and A123Systems. But what people are really waiting for is another Netscape moment—an iconic IPO which will whet investor’s appetites and open the floodgates for others to follow. Below is our list of the top ten IPO candidates for 2010 in the technology industry (and, no, it doesn’t include Twitter). I conducted an informal survey of some top VCs and angel investors. These are the names whispered about the most in the Valley and other tech circles. The hope is that the economy will swing back and the public markets will become receptive to IPOs, especially towards the second half of the year. 1.
If there is one company which everyone is looking towards for a new Netscape moment, it is Facebook. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Dotcom bubble 2.0 - 2011, the next dotcom bust? Yahoo Considers Buying Foursquare For ~$100 Million. Carol Bartz Bio - Quotes by Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. On January 13, 2009, Carol Bartz became CEO of Yahoo! One of her first acts was to inform her staff that she would "drop-kick to fucking Mars" anyone who leaked company secrets. Since then she's been trying to return Yahoo! To dominance, deliberately destroying everyone's impression of what it actually does.
After a deal with Microsoft, Yahoo! Is transforming from a search engine to a Web portal — one that, if Bartz is right, will attract new users (and new revenue) by trimming unwieldy Web searches down to personalized streams of information. My mom died when I was eight. One day, my brother and I were in the machine shed when we heard a rattlesnake above us. It wasn't like she was trying to give us some big life lesson. I was a damn good cocktail waitress. I can't believe they let me keep that job. One night I had a trayful of drinks, and I had on black fishnet stockings and a garter, and the next thing I know I'm like getting air. I said, "Well, I'm not going anywhere. " Yahoo!