Klout, the website that rates online influence through social media metrics, has agreed to be acquired for $200 Million by Lithium Technologies, a Bay-area social customer service expected to announce an IPO later this year. Klout had previously raised $40M in venture funding over the past five years.
EnVerv, a Bay-area semiconductor company with offices in San Diego and China, has raised $15.4M in Series C funding. EnVerv has been working to develop advanced power line communication through their "system-on-a-chip" technology.
"Social" has been an application buzzword for the past decade, but who would invest in an "anti-social app"? Apparently Chris Burch of Burch Creative Capital, who led a $1M seed funding round for Split, an Israel-based app for "avoiding unwanted encounters" with people - such as your ex. According to Split's website, the app gives you real time alerts when someone you want to avoid is in the area, and suggests an "escape route" to avoid seeing them.
Personal Blogs
Dan Primack of Fortune's Term Sheet commented on King Digital's lackluster IPO and what it has taught us about today's IPO buyers:
By market close, however, King shares were down more than 15% (and have fallen even further in today's early trades). Apparently folks are a bit worried that this is Zynga Part Duex, a gaming company that has tied its IPO to the moment of peak popularity for its flagship game. And it probably doesn't help that King's initial market cap was virtually identical to that of Zynga at the time of its late 2011 IPO.
So what have we learned here? Namely, that profits don't really matter when it comes to tech IPOs. Or, at the very least, they are not determinative.
Today's IPO buyers care about two key metrics:
1. Growth.
2. Total available market, into which that growth can be realized.
David Jackson, CEO of stock market analysis site Seeking Alpha, gives a short commentary on job interviews, linking to Dr. Todd Dewitt's "Reinventing Hiring".
"If you can’t afford expensive assessment centers like BMW, so what. Just sit around a table with a candidate and throw some of your work at them. See how fast they start to get it. Hire the one that gets it the fastest."
In other words, don’t ask the candidates about their capabilities, get them to demonstrate them.
No comments:
Post a Comment