News & Insights

A set of rules I wrote in the mid 1980s that I referred to as my Three Rules of Successful IPOs.

The short answer to the question posed is...the last preferred stock investor with the top most liquidation preference is reaping the gains.

My response to Michael Beckerman of The News Funnel about the importance I ascribe to the development of venture capital sources of capital as part of the ecosystems necessary for CRE Tech to gain momentum.

The question is wrong. Its not "What’s Uber Worth?” because the premise that Softbank paid two different prices for the SAME share of stock is wrong.

I have been frustrated by the false equivalency of public market valuations calculations applied to the last preferred stock financing of a private company. Here is my attempt to make a simple, understandable explanation of why the last private financing doesn't mean all shareholders own something worth the same as the implied valuation ballyhooed in the news.

Sometimes even the best of technologies require generational transitions of leadership to see the full potential of the technology brought to the problem.

In recent months, we have fielded inquiries and assisted in evaluating and developing ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) for companies that provide services to the federal government. ESOPs are front and center as a result of a slowdown in M&A activity in the government services industry, particularly for private company sellers. There are a few segments of the government market...

Timing the sale of a company can make a difference of millions of dollars. It is one of the most critical decisions an owner or an equity fund can make; however, successful mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can seem so serendipitous. There are plenty of stories of companies having the right product at just the right time – and being swept...

It's an age-old and true maxim that great entrepreneurs usually don’t make it to the executive suite at IBM, GE, HP, or Exxon. Big companies love the upside – the passion, the long hours, the breakthrough thinking, the ability to inspire others, and the knack for getting lots done with few resources. For big companies, however, each element of upside...

Commonly used to justify transactions, fairness opinions have come under heavy regulatory and public scrutiny. Investment banks often issue supposedly "objective" opinions when there are substantial potential conflicts of interest that could have affected their objectivity. In some cases, the bank was actually advising the company on the transaction and had a large success fee at stake. Quite often, a...

Most companies view business planning as a necessary evil. Senior executives would rather be building new technology or talking to customers. For early and growth stage companies, the goal of business planning is to obtain funding to start or expand the business. For more mature companies, the main goal is usually to drive either an acquisition by a larger player...

Occasionally there is an industry cycle that lasts so long investors cannot see when they have crested the hill, or, even worse, they think the good times will never end. In the 1990s, during the creation of the Tech Bubble, private equity disdained companies that conducted business with the federal government. These government contractors (or, pejoratively labeled ”Beltway...