Venture Capital
Intuit to Acquire Demandforce for $424MM
This morning, Intuit announced its agreement to acquire one of Benchmark’s portfolio companies, Demandforce, for $424mm. As with Instagram, Benchmark Capital is the largest institutional investor in Demandforce. Unlike Instagram, which is a consumer application and is extremely well known, Demandforce focuses on local professional businesses and has chosen to keep an intentionally low profile [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 13 so far )Why Dropbox Is A Major Disruption
Back in October, Techcrunch announced that Dropbox had raised $250mm at a seemingly absurd valuation. Many firms, including my firm Benchmark Capital, participated. When this happened, many people asked us why this was a special company that would cause us to break our standard investment paradigm. They didn’t quite understand why this was a company that deserved [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 143 so far )Why Facebook Clearly Belongs in the 10X Revenue Club
Attached are my thoughts on the Facebook S-1 along with some quick stabs at valuation. Brief disclosure, Benchmark Capital has a minority position in Facebook as a result of the acquisition of FriendFeed, a company that was incubated in our offices. I thought it would be useful to look at Facebook using the scorecard from our [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 55 so far )All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club
[Follow Me on Twitter] “ Don’t you know that you are a shooting star, And all the world will love you just as long, As long as you are.” – Paul Rodgers, Shooting Star With the IPO market now blown wide-open, and the media completely infatuated with frothy trades in the bubbly late stage private market, [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 110 so far )Silicon Valley’s IPO Anxiety
[Follow Me on Twitter] “Living in the limelight The universal dream For those who wish to seem. Those who wish to be Must put aside the alienation, Get on with the fascination…” — Limelight from Moving Pictures, Rush If you could travel back in time to the early 1990’s and ask Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 51 so far )Android or iPhone? Wrong Question
[Follow Me on Twitter] In a recent New York Times article, Kathryn Huberty, a Morgan Stanley analyst was quoted suggesting that Apple’s iPhone is the key catalyst for an important new technology trend. “Applications make the smartphone trend a revolutionary trend – one we haven’t seen in consumer technology for many years.” This argument rings [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 154 so far )What Is Really Happening to the Venture Capital Industry?
[Follow Me on Twitter] Many are speculating that the year two thousand and nine represents a fundamental turning point for the venture capital industry. Some are arguing that the industry is in dire straits after years of poor performance. Others have argued that the math simply does not work for the industry’s current size. Another theory suggests that permanent challenges with the IPO [...]
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