Streetline Inc. has been selling its parking-sensor technology for only a year and it has just 30 employees, but International Business Machines Corp. is depending on it and hundreds of young start-ups like it to reach ambitious financial targets. By 2015, IBM expects to add about $30 billion to its 2010 revenue of $99.9 billion, ...
During the bubble, companies and VC’s actively sought out strategic investors for the “C” and “D” series of financings. They relied on the “irrational exuberance” along with strategics’s limited VC experience to get them to overpay (often 2x and 3x what a comparable VC would have priced the round at). Like any system based on ...
A fast-growing company recently called me up for some advisory work. One of its main competitors, a multibillion-dollar company, was making overtures for an acquisition. The sides started to talk and found they had both synergies and major disagreements about valuation and strategy. So the discussions moved to another approach: a strategic investment. Such investments ...
