Posts filed under ‘Interim Management’
Is Strong IPO Market Momentum Benefiting VC Backed Companies?
PwC just released its US IPO Watch which tracks IPO activity on US stock exchanges. According to PwC, “…the surge of activity in the fourth quarter of 2010 confirms the IPO market has recovered from the doldrums of 2008 and 2009.” (more…)
2010 Survey of Professional Services Firms in Silicon Valley
2010 Professional Services Survey Names Top Firms
A recent survey of the professional services landscape in Silicon Valley yielded some unique insights into the top names in professional services among VCs and CEOs of VC backed companies. The survey, completed and published by the Silicon Valley Research Group in San Jose and Seattle, was designed to identify trends and the leading brands across six professional services categories in Silicon Valley. (more…)
Focus.com Seminar on Financial Management of SMBs
Focus.com is hosting a teleconference featuring a panel of senior CFOs with extensive tech sector start-up experience on Thursday, January 20 at 11AM PT/2PM ET. The subject is tips and trends in managing finances and cash in early stage companies.
If you are an entrepreneur or CEO of an early stage company, and you are considering additional financing from current or potential investors, then this session should help you stay on top of the finance issues that are most important to growing your business and attracting additional financing. For more information on the event, go to http://www.focus.com/events/finance/focus-finance-roundtable-financial-planning-and-management-s/ and register.
Super Angel versus Venture Man
There has been much noise recently about who’s the better investor: the newly minted Super Angels, or the traditional venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road.
The debate has been carried out rather openly, and the borders of straight-talk, self-promotion, and honest reflection have become somewhat blurred.
The basic question is whether it’s better to take a limited amount of money from Super Angels – say between $100 thousand and $1.0 million, or shoot for the moon and go to Sand Hill Road where a self-respecting Series A starts with $5.0 million. Super Angels are loosely defined as business angels with more money making a lot more investments. (more…)
December 17, 2010 at 10:58 am Gunther Hofmann Leave a comment
There’s Often Drama in Changing CEOs in a Young Company
As I look back on issues involving changing a CEO, I always pause and sometimes even get a chuckle.
How many times does an entrepreneur with a great idea believe they are the only one suited to run their new venture? Usually, they believe they need to be the CEO. However, even if they are the well suited to lead a venture in the beginning, they are not the one to drive to higher levels beyond development. When this expansion phase occurs, the board usually has the difficult task of letting the entrepreneur/CEO know that it is time for him to take a new role in the company.
Often this communication does not go well, and the end result is that the entrepreneur cannot understand the message and leaves the company. (more…)
Only 3 Things Can Go Wrong in VC-backed Businesses
In my many years of working with companies and seeing what works and what doesn’t, I have come to realize that every challenge faced by a venture funded technology company falls into one of only three buckets: (more…)
Managing the Tough Choices Facing Tech Start-ups
In a world where securing follow-on venture capital financing has never been more challenging, executives and boards of venture capital backed companies face difficult choices as the cash dwindles. It is not uncommon, even in cases where fund-raising is ultimately successful, that developing companies at some point are faced with and must navigate insolvency and all that it entails. (more…)
Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship 2010—A Door Closes but A Window Opens
The recent Chris O’Brien post in SiliconBeat on a shrinking Silicon Valley certainly underscores both the diminished IPO activity as well as the reduced VC funding we’ve seen over the last 18 months. Funding deals and dollars invested are down upwards of 50%. Moreover, the number of VCs who are hurting (feeling the pain from their poor historical rates of return) but still active is now only slightly larger than the number who are either shuttered or qualify as the living dead. See TheFunded for detail on the latter group which by their count totaled 353 firms as of this week. One huge by-product of the VC contraction is that new VC investments are decidedly moving away from seed and early stage opportunities.
So with all this bad news one would naturally conclude that new world realities in Silicon Valley would severely dampen entrepreneurial activity. If both institutional funding at the front end and liquidity at the back end of the venture cycle are severely curtailed, entrepreneurship would naturally lessen. But ironically the reverse is actually true as local new business activity is as strong as ever. So what’s going on? (more…)
Texas Hold ‘em, the New Social Gathering Place for Business
An interesting trend has been developing over the past few years. Where once, corporate golf outings were considered the best way to network and entertain clients, a new type of business event has emerged in the last year or two. Many corporations have found a new way to mix philanthropy, networking and fun all together — in a “Charity Poker Tournament”. So, what has really fueled all of this interest in poker? (more…)
Funding alternatives in the “Great Recession”
In the traditional Silicon Valley funding model that worked for many decades, entrepreneurs came up with new ideas, pitched them to Venture Capitalists, and prayed that their idea was unique and that the VC’s found credibility in the management team in order to get funding to build the enterprise.
In the post dot-bomb era, VC’s became increasingly risk adverse, and wanted to fund only those ventures with proven entrepreneurs and only ventures that had already been fleshed out to remove much of the technology risk, leaving only a market risk to conquer.
Now, since the Great Recession, VC’s have gotten even further risk adverse, although they claim otherwise. (more…)
