Visto Secures $51 Million in New Financing to Accelerate Penetration of the Mobile Email Market on Press Releases

"Visto Corporation raised $51 million in financing, which the company plans to leverage to increase its subscriber base. Along with the funding news, Visto announced the appointment of America Online's former chief to its board.

In addition to using the funds to increase its subscriber numbers, Visto also plans to leverage the influx of financing to fuel global expansion, as well as support the sustained development of mobile technology, the company said in a prepared statement."

Notes: File this under high risk no return. Visto started its life in August of 1996 before the internet bubble. Ten years later, the company has burned through over $220M+ over ten rounds of financing - a recap round was done in Sept 01. Remaining VC investors that have skin in the game (and might actually make some kind of return) include Oak, Rustic Canyon, Blueprint, DFJ, DFJ ePlanet (Growth), Meritech, and GKM. Don't hold your breath on any type of mega return however, as the market for email wireless push email is dominated by Good, Rim, MSFT, and to some extent Seven. Visto holds key patents which they may use to hold MSFT, RIMM (remember NTP), and others hostage down the road. The patents are around software for accessing e-mail from phones and other wireless devices. Operationally, Visto has has more than tripled its subscriber base and announced almost a dozen new mobile operator customers across North America, Europe and Asia over the past year.

YouTube’s Video Poker - New York Times

"YouTube is relying on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which in general does not require Internet companies to screen material they store in advance. Rather, the law says Web sites must remove content when a copyright holder informs them of a violation.
But there are many who wonder how safe YouTube’s position is. The Supreme Court ruled in the MGM v. Grokster case that music file sharing systems could be held liable for inducing users to violate copyrights. That said, many other mainstream sites, like MySpace and Yahoo, also post videos without trying to screen out copyrighted material. (Most do scan for pornography, though.)"

Mobile ESPN Will End Venture, Seek New Strategy - WSJ.com

"ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney Co., plans to pull the plug on its sports-themed mobile-telephone venture later this year but hopes to expand its wireless presence by licensing its Mobile ESPN application to other providers.
The New York sports-entertainment company confirmed Thursday that it will immediately suspend sales of new handsets for the Mobile ESPN service it launched less than a year ago. The company has developed cellphones that feature a variety of sports-centric content and features. But it has struggled to build a customer base in a fiercely competitive cellular industry with much bigger players."

RED HERRING | Final Bell for Mobile ESPN

"After spending $80 million to acquire only 30,000 subscribers, the Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday it is pulling the plug on Mobile ESPN, a high-profile sports-oriented mobile phone service.

Disney, ESPN's parent, ended its sports MVNO experiment and will offer its branded content through mobile carriers, according to a report in Thursday?s Wall Street Journal. That means it will no longer offer mobile phone service along with its sports updates and news."

Photobucket: $200M - $500M valuation

From the Photobucket official blog:
"Photobucket has more users then the....
Distance from Earth to Venus -- 25,000,000 miles
Number of acres of lawns in the U.S. -- 25,000,000 acres
Annual number of lightning strikes globally -- 25,000,000
Population of Venezuela -- 25,000,000
Population of Uzbekistan -- 25,000,000
Amount of wool clipped in Wyoming every year -- 25,000,000 lbs.
Number of riders annually on all Amtrak trains -- 25,000,000
Population of Iraq (2004) -- 24,500,000
Population of Texas -- 20,851,820
Population of Australia -- 20,090,437
Population of New York -- 18,976,457
Five times the population of Colorado -- 4,301,261"

and ZERO dollars back to investors to show for it

Notes: Likely Acquisition range: $200-$500M assuming each user is valued at around $8 - $20. Skype, whose user base was obvioulsy more valuable than Photobucket's was valued at around $20-30 per member at time of acquisition. Another comparable is Shutterfly whose upciming IPO would give the company a market cap of approximately $330M, assuming $14 per share price. Other comps: Flickr/Yahoo $30M; Snapfish/HP for $200M plus. One can almost think of Photobucket as a play on Youtube, Flickr, Myspace. To add value to an acquiror (say NewsCorp, Viacom, Yahoo, MSFT), the company needs to incorporate community - they are a web 1.0 company w/ web 2.0 type traffic growth.

Photobucket Reaches Landmark of Over 25 Million Members

"Photobucket (http://www.photobucket.com), the largest personal media company for people to create, manage and share their digital life online, today announced that it has exceeded more than 25 million members.
The site, launched in 2003, has become a creative hub delivering billions of personal photos, graphics and videos daily to over 200,000 different websites – including eBay, Craigslist, MySpace, Blogger, and LiveJournal – and enables sharing via email, instant messaging, and mobile devices. comScore Networks reports that Photobucket is one the top 50 most visited websites, with 15 million unique visitors per month. "

DealBook: Myspace $20B?

"1) Raw, unprecedented user/usage growth, 2) Massive international appeal, 3) Scale enough to become an intellectual property distribution powerhouse, and 4) A management team with the experience and credibility to solve difficult technical, copyright, and creative issues. We believe media investors may not fully appreciate what has already been done with MySpace or what may lie ahead."

Silicon Valley's Mr. Green | Newsmakers | CNET News.com

"Vinod Khosla is a man on a mission. And this time, it's more than just making lots of money. "

Billion dollar SaaS sectors | ZDNet.com

"The drawback of having Salesforce.com as such a dominant figure in the SaaS industry is that many casual observers form the erroneous impression that SaaS is just a handful of companies, largely confined to the CRM sector. Nothing could be further from the truth. To see the full extent of the industry you have to look beyond CRM and Salesforce.com. "

Fortinet Ranked Among Top Ten Fastest Growing Companies in Silicon Valley: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Fortinet -- the pioneer and leading provider of multi-threat security solutions -- today announced it has been chosen by Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal as a 'Fast 50' private company based on strong revenue growth over the past three years. This marks the second consecutive year Fortinet has made this coveted list."

MAKE: Blog: HOW TO use the PSP to open Masterlocks

"This homebrew PSP application will generate a list of the 100 possible combinations for a Masterlock combination lock given the last digit in the code. Check out our HOW TO on running homebrew code. I loaded up the program using KXploit - here is a photo and here's a link to download the PSP application. "

YouTube - Bump keying

Google Fellow': Why I invested in Photobucket

Creative Destruction in the Software Industry

Alfreso has built up some momentum. Since posting its application on the SourceForge open source site a year ago, 350,000 people have downloaded it and the 30-person company has 200 paying customers, including the US branch of Japan's Daiwa bank and Virgin Money.

Riverbed Technology Leaps in IPO: Yahoo! Finance

"Shares of Riverbed Technology Inc. soared Thursday in their trading debut.
The San Francisco-based company, which makes network infrastructure products for computer systems, saw its stock rise $5.55, or 57 percent, from the IPO price to close at $15.30 Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market."

"Riverbed has experienced massive growth this year. Its revenues in the six months to June 30 were $31.8 million, up from $5.2 million in the same period a year earlier, while its customer base has grown from 500 in January this year to more than 1,000 at the end of June."

Notes: Cocked, loaded, and ready to explode - that's what the market is saying about Riverbed and the WAN optimization market, which has been a hotly acquisitive space recently (Citrix / Orbital Data; Cisco / FineGround, Juniper / Peribit, etc.). Riverbed's performance today is testament to the company's future growth potential and the white hot growth in the market. Investors that made out include Accel, Goldman, Lightspeed, UV Partners, and Meritech. Company was founded in Dec 02 and only raised $56M of capital. Last round raise was $300 post in Feb of this year by Meritech, the sole investor in that mezzanine round.

Other Sources:
Riverbed Prices IPO Houston Chronicle
Riverbed floats on Nasdaq Computing
Riverbed Soars on Debut Light Reading

Slashphone.com - Motorola Announces Vending Machine Like Self Service Store

"Motorola is testing this new automated vending format as a way to directly connect with consumers in places and at times where convenience is needed most. Leveraging small format robotic stores operated by Zoom Systems, the new retail option will be placed in high traffic locations giving consumers the immediate satisfaction of getting the products they need and want on demand. "

YOUTUBE'S GOT A FAT IDEA OF ITSELF By SAM GUSTIN - New York Post Online Edition: Seven

"INTERNET upstart YouTube, the bane-du-jour of copyright holders everywhere, won't sell itself for anything less than $1.5 billion, The Post has learned. "


UPDATE: "Media companies looking to acquire Internet sensations YouTube and Facebook would need to take a "big leap of faith" to pay current valuations on the takeover targets, Time Warner Inc's boss was quoted as saying in an interview."

WSJ.com - Facebook, Riding a Web Trend, Flirts With a Big-Money Deal

"One popular use of social-networking site Facebook.com is to flirt with other members. As it happens, Facebook Inc., the start-up company behind the Web site, has been doing some serious flirting of its own.
People familiar with the matter say the company has held separate acquisition talks with Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Viacom Inc. over the past year. Now, say some of these people, the start-up is in serious discussions -- again -- to sell itself to Yahoo for an amount that could approach $1 billion."

FT.com - Hedge funds trawl for gossip with web filter

"Called Monitor110, the platform acts as an aggregator and a filter for hedge funds trying to keep up with the explosion of information sources on the internet, such as blogs."

Notes: DFJ and DFJ Gotham led the first $5M round of funding in Sept 06. Chairman is former EIR at DFJ Gotham, an early investor in in-game advertising leader Massive (acquired by MSFT). Other executives have past history on Wall Street. Monitor110 is develpoping a financial intelligence services platform due out next year that enable institutional investors to access, analyze and monetize real-time Internet information.

Hedge funds need an edge and Market110 provides it for them. Should Monitor110 execute on their strategy and build a sustainable useful, value-add service, they will be quite sucessful as lots of hedgies will sign up for the service, in the same way they all signed up for CapitalIQ, which was acquired by McGraw-Hill's Standard & Poor's unit for a hefty multi-hundred plus valuation. Other comparable information service companies include Thomson First Call/Analytics, Bloomberg, Technorati, SeekingAlpha.


Acquisition Potential: 8
IPO Potential: 2
Probability of raising another round: 9
Positive Outcome for investors: 8
Red Herring nominee: 2007 spring or 2008 spring

Tech Confidential Blog: Apple should buy YouTube

"While Apple reportedly is nearing a deal to partner with Google to carry its video service on Apple's pending set-top-box iTV, Apple should take a look at the market leader, YouTube. Most analysts and bankers think that YouTube will be acquired by a media company looking for new customers, but YouTube looks like a better fit for Apple. "


We called Youtube a home run investment for Sequoia way back in a October 2005 post

ESPN.com - MLB - Gammons: Still believing in man's goodness and dignity

Good to hear Peter Gammons is back and well!

People offer me congratulations these days, but sitting here writing is not about congratulations; it is about thanks, care and incredible medical genius.

Mark Pincus Blog: i've helped murry gunty make google and wikipedia!

"sorry. i just find this whole thing too funny. so i looked and saw that a) the murry gunty story is now most of the links when you google him and b) someone created an entry for him on wikipedia that links to this blog and the original story in the harvard crimson. wonder if he also asked them to take his full name out?"

it would be so nice to hear murry own up to this instead of being another lay or skilling, hiding behind bullshit. why couldnt you just stand up and say i fucked up? i was scared i wouldnt get a job at goldman sachs. i was greedy but now i see that. it's never too late murry. and now i'm helping you. just go google yourself and see!

Original story
More here

EMC acquires Network Intelligence

"EMC announced Monday that it has acquired IT security company Network Intelligence, in a deal valued at about $175 million. The storage specialist's announcement comes on the heels of its $2.1 billion buyout of security vendor RSA Security. That deal and the Network Intelligence purchase provide EMC with the foundation to launch its new information security division. " CNET News.com


Notes: This is a solid deal for all investors, most notably Ascent VP who led the first and second rounds in March 2002, July 2003 respectively. Other investors include JMI, Egan, Bain, Castile. Total raise: $28M. Company raised 2 bridge rounds in June and October before raising a slight up round in Feb 05 from Bain and Castile.

NI can expect up to $250m if metrics are met. Even at a $175M acquisition value, it is a 7x multiple to an estimated last year revenue of $25M. NI competes with Intellitactics, Netmuse and lists many customers in the financial services sector. EMC gains an appliance- based security event management solution targetting automated compliance and security information.

Other:
- Our Mar 05 post on NI
- EMC Acquires Network Intelligence Line 56 News
- EMC buys Network Intelligence BusinessWeek
- In Depth: The Transformation Of EMC InformationWeek

Lumexis

Lumexis Corporation, the technology company that created the Fiber-To-The-Seat™ (FTTS™) In-Flight Entertainment System, today announced the closing of a Series B venture funding round led by Zone Ventures, a leading early stage venture capital firm. Monitor Ventures and Angel investors have also participated in this round.

Notes: The company was founded in 2003 and lists only 10 employees. Interesting description of Lumexis' FTTS product announced earlier this year:

Lumexis Corporation unveils its next-generation Fiber-To-The-SeatTM (FTTSTM) In-Flight Entertainment system at the Aviation Interiors Expo here this week (hall 9, stand B23). The result of nearly three years of work springing from proprietary aerospace optics technologies, the system provides unprecedented Gibabit-per-second bandwidth to each passenger screen. Installed with no electronic boxes under the seat or elsewhere in the cabin, this unique product promises entertainment options which have never before been possible, yet at a fraction of the weight and price of existing systems.

The company will likely need another round of financing down the road. Few VC's have invested in the airline technology space as there have been few exits and a number of high profile failures to speak of (e.g. last month's announcement of Boeing shutting down high-speed broadband airline service Connexion)

WSJ.com - How Giant Bets on Natural Gas Sank Brash Hedge-Fund Trader

"Of all the traders gambling big sums on energy, a 32-year-old Canadian named Brian Hunter made some of the brashest bets and the fastest money.
Last week, he fell hard, proof of how quickly fortunes can reverse in gyrating commodities markets.
Here in this bustling new energy frontier, Mr. Hunter headed the energy desk for a Connecticut hedge fund called Amaranth Advisors. At the end of August, trading natural gas, he was up approximately $2 billion for the year. Then Mr. Hunter lost roughly $5 billion, in about a week."

Think Secret - Sources: Apple phone on track for early '07

"Apple is working at a feverish pace to finish up its initial foray into the cellular phone market, but reliable sources report the new device will not be announced until Macworld Expo San Francisco in January 2007."

Handango $60M - Wireless Developer Network

"Handango, the world's leading provider of smartphone content, today announced a financing in excess of $60 million to aggressively extend its leadership position in the fast-growing smartphone content market. The company plans to intensify its investment in the consumer experience, building on its position as the world's largest smartphone content retailer, accessible online and directly from the device. Additionally, Handango's growth initiatives include global expansion, support for new types of content and establishment of new distribution channels.

The funding was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). Joining IVP in this round are Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), Centerpoint, Neo Carta, Pharos Capital Group and SSM Partners. As part of the investment, Handango has appointed two new members to its board of directors: technology financier Sandy Miller from IVP, who will become chairman of the board, and the former head of Lucent's Wireless Business, Bill Wiberg from ATV. "

YouTube - David Blane Heart Exposure

YouTube - David Blane Chicken Magic

Nortel - Force10 Marriage: PE Week Wire

Nortel Networks is nearing an acquisition of Force10 Networks Inc., according to an interview with Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Joe Chiasson in The Deal. Force10 is a Milpitas, Calif.-based provider of 10-Gigabit Ethernet switching and routing solutions, and recently raised Series F funding at a pre-money valuation of around $420 million. Overall, the company has raised over $300 million in VC funding from firms like NEA, Crosslink Capital, U.S. Venture Partners, Pacesetter Capital Group, Morgenthaler Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners and Worldview Technology Partners. www.nortel.com www.force10networks.com

Notes: The rumored acquisition value is $550M according to Joseph Chiasson, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. In a Light Reading article from earlier this year, Dick Kramlich is quoted saying revenues in 2005 are expected to be $60 million, up from $27 million in 2004. That would imply a 9x TTM multiple. Good exit for a company that had been struggling against Cisco and Juniper early on.

XORA - Powering the Mobile Enterprise

Xora delivers location-based mobile workforce management solutions that allow customers to realize improved productivity, reduce the cost of field operations and provide better customer service.

Notes: Xora is currently raising a $10-$15M round. Existing investors include Dawntreader, Garage, Empire Ventures, and others. $11M total has been raised by the company with the last round raised in 2003. The LBS space hasn't garnered much VC attention lately since more than a few VCs have been burned in the past from such investments - GeoTouch, InirU, SigmaOne. Xora faces stiff competiton from middleware and GPS companies Sybase, Symbol, Telenav, Portable Internet, and others. That said, the company's products and customer list are solid and we believe in management's ability to raise another round of financing.

Exit Potential: 5; less than $100M
Financing Potential: 7
IPO Possibility: 2

Facebook $1b - Bambi Francisco

"This summer, Yahoo offered $1 billion for Facebook, but rescinded the offer after its shares tanked 22%, following the company's disappointing earnings. Viacom made a $750 million offer for Facebook in the spring. As it stands, Facebook is valued at north of $500 million. The fact that Facebook's price tag could jump 10-fold in a year underscores the cutthroat competition for eyeballs, growth and ad dollars, not only by Internet companies, but by established media. It also reflects the growing envy, or admiration, for News Corp's (nws) purchase of MySpace. "

Site for Fido gets funding | CNET News.com

Dogster, a San Francisco-based company that launched online dog- and cat-oriented communities in 2004, has secured its first round of funding.

The company, which said it has been profitable since mid-2005, announced on Wednesday $1 million in funding, which was led by Michael Parekh, the founder of Goldman Sachs' Internet research effort.

Other investors in the round include HotOrNot's Jim Young, SoftTech venture capitalist Jeff Clavier and Delicious founder Joshua Schacter, among others.

Google Goes to Market - washingtonpost.com

Google's Acquisitions Since Going Public


2004
Oct. 27 Keyhole Mapping software
Oct. 30 Zipdash Traffic information to mobile phones
Dec. 15 Where2 Mapping software

2005
March 25 Urchin Software Advertising performance
May 12 Dodgeball.com Mobile social networking
July 20 Akwan Info. TechnologiesSearch engine
Aug. 7 Android Mobile software
Sept. 15 Transformic Search engine

2006
Jan. 5 Reqwireless Mobile Web browsing
Jan. 17 dMarc Advertising
Feb. 14 Measure MapBlog statistics
March 10 Upstartle Web-based word processing
March 14 @Last Software 3D software for architects
April 10 OrionSearch
Aug. 15 Neven Vision Facial recognition software

SOURCES: Thomson Financial, Citigroup, Washington Post reporting

Youtube to be sued soon -- New York Times

In a report on the first day of Merrill’s media industry conference, Ms. Cohen wrote that Doug Morris, the chief executive of the Universal Music Group, “strongly suggested that the company was planning to take legal action in the near-term to either prevent the illegal use of their content on Web sites such as MySpace and YouTube, indicating the sites owned UMG ‘tens of millions of dollars’” He also called the two sites “copyright infringers,” Ms. Cohen wrote.

Online Content Buyout Candidates Include Bankrate, YouTube - SeekingAlpha

"YouTube, Bankrate.com (RATE), eHarmony, and Gawker were on a list of candidates for buyouts shown by an investment banker at a presentation to the Online Publishers Association Wednesday morning."

News Corp. May Launch YouTube Rival

"News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin told investors at an industry conference Tuesday that the media giant was considering creating a video component to its MySpace social-networking Web site that could rival the wildly popular YouTube.
At the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference in Pasadena, Calif., Tuesday, Chernin said that because most of YouTube’s traffic starts at MySpace, it may be time for the No. 1 social networking site to cut out the middle man."

RealNetworks agrees to buy WiderThan for $350 mln - MarketWatch

RealNetworks aid late Tuesday it has agreed to buy South Korea-based mobile music and entertainment provider WiderThan Cofor $17.05 a share, or roughly $350 million. The offer represents a 20% premium on WiderThan's closing share price on Tuesday of $13.97.

Key Metrics:

2.69x acq value / 06 rev multiple
2.25x acq value / 07 rev multiple

Notes: Both companies have a heritage of innovation that has enabled popular consumer services including music, casual games and video services. This acquisition is complementary to RealNetworks' strategy of providing end-to-end digital media solutions to partners such as Cingular, Comcast, Sprint and Telmex. The companies' geographic footprints are complementary, with both companies enjoying market penetration in North America, while RealNetworks is strong in Europe, and WiderThan in Asia. This acquisition also provides RealNetworks with technology and customer relationships to extend its market-leading music subscription service into the rapidly growing mobile music space. RealNetworks expects the acquisition to be accretive in 2007 excluding acquisition-related charges (1). RealNetworks intends to keep the WiderThan brand intact and operate the business as a wholly owned subsidiary and intends to maintain its existing employee base.

Source: Yahoo Estimates
WTHN in blue
RNWK in red

Yahoo Finance Now Carries Seeking Alpha Articles - SeekingAlpha

In conjunction with the Yahoo deal, Seeking Alpha also announced funding from Benchmark folks.

SeekingAlpha Founder David Jackson and Bill Gurley share a past as equity research analysts.

Comments from David:

Our partnership with Yahoo! Finance proves that the combination of Seeking Alpha and an army of informed finance bloggers can change the face of financial publishing.

For Seeking Alpha's contributors and for bloggers in general, this is a big day. Our contributors write for a variety of reasons: to build their reputations, test their stock ideas in an interactive environment, demonstrate the quality of their stock picking or analytical skills, or to promote their newsletters, consulting practices or other businesses

More reaction:

Matt Marshall, VentureBeat: 'By putting the bloggers on a par with Dow Jones, Street.com and other mainstream sources, Jackson thinks Seeking Alpha will encourage even more bloggers to participate. Seeking Alpha’s aggregated content may soon dwarf the content produced by mainstream sites, the thinking goes. So now you are getting the full image — the image of that revolutionary, proverbial long tail. “We’re tapping into the long tail,” Says Jackson referring, to the long line of contributors with a good opinion about stocks he thinks will transform analyst coverage of mid- and small-cap companies that newspapers and other sources don’t have the resources to cover. '

Investors Pull $120Million From Century City Venture Capital Firm - Los Angeles Times

"For a time, the 30-something venture capitalists were flying high, backed by tens of millions of dollars from Harvard, Boeing and other big-league investors, and consulting with such disparate advisors as the Columbia University business school dean and KISS singer Gene Simmons."

News Corp. Buying 51 Percent Of VeriSign’s Jamba For $187.5 Million | paidContent.org

More here

9/11/06 - New York Times

Interesting...

YouTube - 1st plane hit Sept. 11

RIP

AdMob Dials Up Funding from Sequoia

AdMob, Inc., operator of a global online mobile ad network that generates over 250 million page views per month, announced today that it's received Series A funding from Sequoia Capital. The company, formed in early 2006, will use the capital to support continued rapid growth, to expand sales and marketing efforts, and to accelerate the development of its Web-based products and services. AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui also announced that the company has added two investors to its board of directors -- Jim Goetz of Sequoia Capital, and Maynard Webb, prominent Silicon Valley investor and former COO of eBay.

Notes: This appears to be another sweet deal for Sequoia (despite their star Mike Moritz not sitting on the board). AdMob was only formed in early 2006 and is already serving 250 million mobile page views per month! The company allows advertisers to run ads across a comprehensive set of mobile content channels, including communities, entertainment, news, and portals. It has recently added a contextual search channel, allowing advertisers to build campaigns that include mobile Web searches through Google’s mobile AdWords service.

The company will likely face stiff competition from Google Mobile Ad Words who recently announced a product and potential entrants Mister Softie and Yahoo, who also happen to be potential acquirors.

More on their funding from the Admob blog. Nice blogger template by the way.

We predict an acquisition of the company from Verisign, Infospace, Microsoft, Yahoo, Sybase in 12-24 months.

Of VCs, Vloggers, and Beer Money

We blogged about a wsj article written in the summer about Patrick Sell and his idonothingallday.com site, which earns him roughly $15 per day from users clicking on ads inserted after the video on revver.com. Pocket change for now but with the recent increase in site traffic at Revver and other such sites, we wonder what the effect in dollars that would mean to idonothingallday and almost famous vloggers like zefrank down the road.



I do nothing all day is a collection of NYC fashion reality video clips featuring the most beautiful, the hippest, the sexiest, the most daring, the best styled, and the wonderfully free spirited women seen everyday on the streets of the Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods that I roam.



When and where is the tipping point of vloggers quitting their day job (a la bloggers Arrington, Huffington Post, Venturebeat and Om Malik, PaidContent) and going mainstream? It's only a matter of time when a vlogger will raise the attention of such vc blog investors as Greycroft, Softbank.






Update: Interesting piece from Fred Wilson, blogs on Youtube and a typical high traffic user's revenue potential. Essentially, lots of traffic equals lots of dollars.

Meru Networks - School District of Philadelphia Selects Meru Networks for Landmark All-Wireless "School of the Future" Deployment

Big win in the wifi equipment space. It appears Meru beat out Cisco/Airespace, Aruba, Trapeze at the hotly contested Philadelphia Schools project.

"Meru Networks, the global innovation leader in wireless infrastructure for the All-Wireless Enterprise, today announced that it is delivering wireless LAN solutions for a milestone deployment that will serve as a model for schools across the country. The School District of Philadelphia, the 7th largest school district in the country, servicing over 210,000 students across 278 schools, is using the Meru Wireless LAN System "

Samsung SCH-u420 Phone for Alltel Wireless : MobileWhack.com

The new Axcess Shop uses the QUALCOMM's uiOne(TM) technology and sports applications like World Series of Poker(R) Texas Hold'em by Glu Mobile, Realtone Jukebox(TM) by 9Squared, and Axcess Wallpaper Powered by Digital Orchid. Let’s

Sybase Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Mobile 365: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

4.4x. acquisiton value / revenue multiple. Home run investment for early investor DFJ, and triple for fourth and final round investors Mayfield, IVP who invested at a $68M post in March 2004. New CEO since June 2006 likely to have made out well on the deal

"Sybase, Inc., leading provider of enterprise infrastructure and mobile software, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Mobile 365, the global leader in mobile messaging and content delivery, in an all cash transaction. The purchase price set forth in the definitive agreement is $425 million, which is subject to adjustment based on Mobile 365's working capital as of the closing date. Net of acquired cash, the transaction is valued at approximately $400 million. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006, subject to regulatory approvals and other specified closing conditions. Headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, Mobile 365 is privately held and backed by leading venture capital firms including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper Atlantic Venture, 3i Technology Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, and Mayfield.

For its fiscal year ended March 31, 2006, Mobile 365 generated approximately $90 million in revenue. Sybase expects the acquisition to be accretive to pro forma earnings within 12 months following the close of the transaction."

Exeros Secures $12M in B-Round Financing: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Exeros(TM), Inc., an innovator in data mapping and automated data relationship discovery software, announced today it has secured an additional $12 million in a Series B round of private equity financing. This round of funding is led by AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. (NYSE: AB - News), with Exeros' original investors Bay Partners and Globespan Capital Partners participating. The Series B round of funding will be used to grow the sales team, add sales coverage in new geographies and to grow the engineering team in order to extend the product line."

IPO Potential: 2
M&A Likelihood: 7
Likelihood for subsequent round of financing: 8
Potential Acquirors: BI players, database vendors, Oracle, IBM, Sybase, others.
Current acquisition range: $20-$50M


Notes:The company had planned to raise $10-$20m earlier in the year. It's quite odd that AllianceBernstein would come in as a lead investor given AB's focus on later stage and PE type opportunities. Nonetheless this is a decent series B deal. Solid early stage investors (Bay, Globespan) and a strong management team with particular domain expertise in data integration - Informatix, IBM, Sybase, Informatica. Market timing and acquisition pace for ETL, EII companies is robust. Look for the company to raise another round next year (after showing further, if any, customer traction) and get acquired by a database vendor looking to fill a product gap.

Internet video | The trouble with YouTube | Economist.com

"A rival estimates that YouTube is losing more than $500,000 a month."

"When Guba cut its prices last week, allowing new films to be downloaded for $9.99 and older ones for $4.99, its sales jumped tenfold."

Internet Phone Upstart at a Crossroads: Off the Hook, or Off the Mark? - New York Times

"A chief concern is that Vonage, which helped popularize Internet telephone calling, faces brutal competitive pressure from well-heeled and bigger telecommunications players. That makes it expensive for Vonage to acquire customers and, in turn, to make them profitable. Internet calling allows voice traffic to be sent as packets of data, using the infrastructure of the Internet rather than expensive phone networks.
Competitors, particularly cable companies, continue to erode Vonage’s market share. After the first quarter, Vonage had 29.7 percent of the market for Internet phone service. That’s down from 31 percent at the end of 2005 and 34 percent at the end of 2004, according to research by Sanford C. Bernstein & Company."

Online Game, Made in U.S., Seizes the Globe - New York Times

Less than two years after its introduction, World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., is on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year with almost seven million paying subscribers, who can log into the game and interact with other players. That makes it one of the most lucrative entertainment media properties of any kind. Almost every other subscription online game, including EverQuest II and Star Wars: Galaxies, measures its customers in hundreds of thousands or even just tens of thousands.

Panasonic To Make Wi-Fi Phone For Skype - News by InformationWeek

"Panasonic Communications Co. Ltd. on Friday said it plans to offer a Wi-Fi phone for the Skype Internet telephony service.
The phone will be Panasonic's first in a series of products the company has planned for the Voice over IP service used by more than 113 million people worldwide, according to Skype. "

Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin dead | PerthNow

"He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said. It is understood he was killed by a sting-ray barb that went through his chest.
He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary and that's when it occured.
Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef off Port Douglas. "

Open Sources | InfoWorld | SugarCRM's #1 problem: It's too easy to use | September 2, 2006 05:01 AM | By Matt Asay

SugarCRM's biggest problem is Matt Asay.

Pixsy to launch photo, video search engine - Yahoo! News

"Gossip and entertainment news junkies have a new way to get their fix. Pixsy Corp. is set to launch Friday http://www.StarHabit.com, a photo and video search engine that gives priority to the freshest celebrity content on the Internet. "

Light Reading - Video - Motorola, Cisco Buyouts Vex VOD Market - Telecom News Analysis

"The wheeling and dealing in the cable video-on-demand (VOD) market may have only just begun. Now that Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT - message board) and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board) are preparing to take the plunge into the market by buying hot startups, market analysts, investors and other industry sources are buzzing about who the next takeover targets will be.
Most of the fresh speculation is focused on the two current VOD market leaders, SeaChange International Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAC - message board) and Concurrent Computer Corp. , because of both their visibility and their vulnerability. In the most widely discussed scenarios, sources see Comcast Corp. scooping up SeaChange and Arris Group taking out Concurrent. "

YouTube - hot babe named brook

EMC-HP storage race heats up | InfoWorld | News | 2006-09-01 | By Robert Mullins, IDG News Service

"Number two storage systems maker Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has closed the gap between it and number one EMC Corp. to what research company IDC calls 'a statistical tie.' "

Bookham Announces $23.5 Million Private Placement of Common Stock: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Bookham, Inc. (Nasdaq: BKHM - News), today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement for the private placement of 8,696,000 newly issued shares of common stock at $2.70 per share, and warrants to purchase 2,174,000 shares of common stock, with selected institutional investors, for gross proceeds of approximately $23.5 million. The warrants, which have a term of five years and will become exercisable after March 1, 2007, have an exercise price of $4.00 per share. This represents a premium of approximately 26 percent over the closing price of the Company's common stock on August 31, 2006. Cowen & Company, LLC, acted as the sole placement agent for this offering.Bookham, Inc. (Nasdaq: BKHM - News), today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement for the private placement of 8,696,000 newly issued shares of common stock at $2.70 per share, and warrants to purchase 2,174,000 shares of common stock, with selected institutional investors, for gross proceeds of approximately $23.5 million. The warrants, which have a term of five years and will become exercisable after March 1, 2007, have an exercise price of $4.00 per share. This represents a premium of approximately 26 percent over the closing price of the Company's common stock on August 31, 2006. Cowen & Company, LLC, acted as the sole placement agent for this offering."