Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2016

They followed this up with two acquisitions – first Conspire and then Profoundis. I love using a targeted acquisition approach in conjunction with a business that has a clear strategy and strong organic growth. In my world, historical revenue is the least interesting thing to consider in an acquisition strategy.

Management 70

Management Acquisition Revenue Technology 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 5, 2015

If you are a Google watcher, aspire to have you company acquired by Google some day, or just want to understand Google’s approach to acquisitions (which Geis calls “semi-organic growth”) this is a must read book that is well worth the money. It’s comprehensive and well done.

Acquisition 70

Acquisition Cap Table Framework Retention 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 26, 2021

Amy and I are financial supporters, I gave them my vintage computer collection several years ago, and we’ve underwritten their acquisition of several collections. Last week I participated in a virtual tour of the Media Archaeology Lab. “Working” is an important part of the phrase.

Audio 144

Audio Media Acquisition Video 144

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 26, 2014

In addition to having my company acquired, I worked with them on the diligence team for a number of other acquisitions. ” After Len and Jerry bought my company, the two of them took me under their wing and exposed me to doing deals.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Boston Internet Venture Capital 150

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 20, 2020

The agenda ( full agenda here ) includes the following discussions: DEIS in Corporate Governance & Board DEIS in Human Resources & Talent Acquisition DEIS in Procurement DEIS in Edge Technology Product Development & Corporate Innovation DEIS in Go To Market DEIS in Venture Capital & Investment DEIS in Impact.

Equity 123

Equity Cofounder Venture Capital .Net 123

Feld Thoughts

MAY 12, 2014

Twitter’s acquisition of Gnip is a big deal for Boulder as it brings one of the most interesting and creative companies in the world to our town as Gnip will serve as the foundation for the first Twitter office in Colorado. Kind of like how Twitter grows and evolves. This is a #BoulderWin.

Colorado 160

Colorado Investment Bankers Acquisition Community 160

Feld Thoughts

MAY 6, 2014

Patent trolls are an easy one, but heavy handed regulatory activity by incumbents and random lawsuits around acquisitions are also part for the course. Deals acquisitions deals facebook m&a oculus zenimax' One of the things I see appear is a steady stream of crap aimed at innovators.

Intellectual Property 130

Intellectual Property Acquisition IP Open Source 130

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

So the lenders don’t see any of the upside on the acquisition. Note that if the acquisition price is low, the holders of the debt may usually opt out of conversion and demand cash payment on the notes. Our strong advice is to address how the debt will be handled in an acquisition in the documents.

Conversion 96

Conversion Sales Later Stage Preferred Stock 96

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 7, 2017

I was an early angel investor in Harmonix in the mid-1990s, enjoyed the Viacom acquisition of Harmonix in 2007, watched Alex and his co-founder Eran acquire Harmonix back from Viacom in 2010, and then I invested again in the company in 2013 with my partners at Foundry Group. .” – Island, Aldous Huxley.

Angel Investor 140

Angel Investor Cofounder Acquisition Conversion 140

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Today one of our portfolio companies BigDoor announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based OneTrueFan , a community and web check-in company. When there is a great fit, I love seeing our portfolio companies make acquisitions.

San Francisco 115

San Francisco Acquisition Cofounder IPO 115

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 23, 2010

In their travels they had a few inquires for an acquisition of the company, but really only wanted to sell the RedLaser product, not the entire company. Tags: Uncategorized acquisition Boulder iphone occipital redlaser TechStars. Oh – and RedLaser is now free in the iPhone AppStore. Congrats to Occipital, Vikas and Jeff!

Bootstrapping 131

Bootstrapping Acquisition eCommerce Valuation 131

Feld Thoughts

JULY 14, 2010

I love when companies I’m an investor in use acquisitions to build out their product line. Tags: My Investments acquisition agile iphone rally. In April Rally Software did one when they acquired AgileZen ; yesterday they announced that Rally Software has acquired the ScrumAway iPhone app from Blue Hole Software.

Agile 109

Agile Software Product Acquisition 109

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 27, 2014

The book is divided into sections that cover topics such how to come up with an idea, advice on applying to an accelerator, tips for marketing and user acquisition early on, approaches to fundraising, and what the accelerator experience is actually like. It has feedback from entrepreneurs who have gone through accelerators all over the world.

Global 160

Global Acquisition Programming Networking 160

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 2, 2019

This was the origin story of PowerPoint and Forethought, the first acquisition Microsoft ever made. As a bonus, I finished Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint by Robert Gaskins.

Cofounder 70

Cofounder Database Acquisition Leadership 70

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 10, 2018

Out of this mess came several long-term companies and a huge number of pennies on the dollar type acquisitions. The web hosting business – lead by Exodus – almost entirely went bankrupt or was restructured.

DC 112

DC Equity Hosting Valuation 112

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 23, 2019

Engineering growth rate – Unless you are making an acquisition and running it separately or sub-dividing engineering in some novel way, you should strive not to more than double a monolithic engineering organization in a 12-month period.

Engineer 70

Engineer Acquisition Revenue Naming 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 15, 2015

I know that Microsoft Outlook is really Acompli rebranded at Outlook, but in the eight months since the acquisition the product has continued to get better and better. I’ve also tried using the Google iOS Gmail client, which – while better than Apple Mail – is still very klutzy at certain things.

Email 70

Email Acquisition Product Technology 70

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

We worked together on the Intuit acquisition of GoodApril. .” Luke ran an amazing program this summer. I spent at least an hour a week with him and all the CEOs in the program in our top secret weekly CEO session. And a bunch of other things.

Entrepreneur 118

Entrepreneur Acquisition Programming Email 118

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Recognize that I’m talking about investments, not acquisitions. I never saw the retrade dynamic go away with certain buyers and certain type of acquisitions. And, when a deal stretches out over 60 days, there’s a lot of risk around deal certainty – both retrade as well as a full deal collapse.

Term Sheet 70

Term Sheet Reputation Valuation Acquisition 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 15, 2014

6M-$15M used to scale customer acquisition and revenue). Seed is the new Series A. (~$2M used get for building product, establishing product-market fit and early revenue). Series A is the new Series B. (~6M-$15M Series B is the new Series C. Series C/D is the new Mezzanine.

Stock 114

Stock Mezzanine Acquisition Revenue 114

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

It’s evolved into a much broader book covering financings, acquisitions, how VC firms work, and a bunch of other random things we think are important to entrepreneurs. The project started as an extension of our Term Sheet series and Letter of Intent series that we wrote on this blog in 2005 and 2006.

Term Sheet 134

Term Sheet Acquisition Finance Partner 134

Feld Thoughts

JULY 24, 2014

FG Angels has helped us address all of our major angel-herding challenges through the following: FG Angels increased the amount of capital our group has committed since our official founding in 8/13 by 103% which will certainly help us with deal flow, member acquisition etc.

Syndicate 132

Syndicate Syndication Colorado Angel Groups 132

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 29, 2015

For a short time I was connected into GE via their acquisition of AmeriData (I still have my GE business card with the “ meatball logo ” on it.) During the same time, I started working as an affiliate to Softbank which was a large Japanese company acquiring minority and majority interests in lots of US companies.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Reputation Affiliate Conversion 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 10, 2013

“In 2011, Apple and Google spent more money on patent litigation and defensive patent acquisitions than on research and development. Here’s a great quote on patent trolls from an article in Time Magazine (how much more mainstream can you get than that.). That’s not a good sign for the U.S.

New Hampshire 140

New Hampshire Intellectual Property United States Boston 140

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 11, 2021

He told me that Cable & Wireless wasn’t moving forward with the acquisition of Interliant – the deal was all but done. We ended that morning with a big hug like we started and ended all of our days together. I remember clearly a phone call on 12/1/2000 where Len called me from NYC.

SEC 164

SEC Cofounder Boston New York 164

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 25, 2015

Sure, every now and then something magical happens (very high price point, very low cost of customer acquisition, zero churn), but that’s a serious edge case. You want to do an acquisition, but the seller wants some cash. It’s simple math – give it a shot if you want. I could come up with 100 more items.

Finance 70

Finance Bootstrapping Acquisition Revenue 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 15, 2015

A few months after the acquisition, they raised a Series C round led by Mithril which we participated in. We first met the founders of AppDirect – Daniel Saks and Nicolas Desmarais – when they acquired Standing Cloud , a Boulder-based portfolio company of ours.

Finance 70

Finance San Francisco Hiring Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2013

As we progressed, the Techstars leaders, especially Luke Beatty, David Cohen, and Brad Feld, guided us through many tough decisions, including finally whether to accept Intuit’s acquisition offer. We are extremely appreciative for what Boulder has given us, so we hope our donation to EFCO can help the community recover from this flood.

Colorado 138

Colorado Cofounder Community Programming 138

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 27, 2014

Throughout the entire process, Terry was a tireless leader who never gave up and, even after two acquisitions feel apart at the end, he still tried to find a home for the remaining employees. After numerous painful layoffs and several near misses to sell the company, Gold Systems finally shut down early this year.

Angel Investor 110

Angel Investor Acquisition Channel Revenue 110

Feld Thoughts

MAY 20, 2010

This is now TechStars fifth meaningful acquisition and the first from the 2008 class. Another TechStars Boulder company – this time DailyBurn from the class of 2008 – has been acquired by IAC. I’m super proud of Andy Smith, Stephen Blankenship, and the whole DailyBurn team. The TechStars Boulder 2010 class has begun.

Affiliate 122

Affiliate Seattle Boston New York 122

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 20, 2019

After I sold my company, I went on a journey that included working for a public company, being part of the M&A deal team for a very acquisitive business, making a bunch of angel investments, starting a number of companies, and being chairman or co-chairman of several of these companies.

LP 108

LP Angel Investor Cofounder Leadership 108

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 27, 2012

Or when I got a call that an acquisition of a company I was an investor in, which we had struggled through for months and was an outstanding outcome for everyone involved, had been called off because it wasn’t approved at the board level of the public acquirer.

Denver 160

Denver Colorado Acquisition Naming 160

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

Brown & Sons, focused on corporate finance and mergers & acquisitions. Tysdal is also the founder of Sports Shares, a fractional luxury suite club. He began his career in investment banking with Alex. Mr. Tysdal graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BSBA in Finance from Georgetown University.

Private Equity 94

Private Equity Entrepreneur Merger Cofounder 94

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 10, 2012

Instead of articulating a powerful story about low customer acquisition costs with minimal downstream churn, he lead with “the worst problem with the business is our high churn rate.” .” The entrepreneur understood the miss, but had internalized BucketHead Ventures feedback and was letting it color his view of his business.

Churn Rate 135

Churn Rate Finance Acquisition Conversion 135

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 18, 2010

Tags: My Investments acquisition gist learn that name startup weekend.

Naming 119

Naming Seattle Startup Acquisition 119

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 27, 2015

I used OtherInbox for a little while before and after the acquisition, but in one of my mad Gmail / Chrome plugin-performance-misery-slowdown-cleanup-fits I stopped using it. Josh Baer , a long time friend and leader in the Austin Startup Community, was the co-founder.

Email 70

Email Cofounder Channel Acquisition 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 14, 2014

By the end of 1994 I had a staff job, reporting to the co-chairmen of AmeriData where I travelled all over the US helping with acquisitions and generally causing trouble. I’d sold my first company, Feld Technologies, in 1993. At some point Amy and I realized we could live anywhere and we knew that Boston wasn’t home.

Alaska 110

Alaska Colorado Boston Cofounder 110