M&a

Last week New York was the third state to create a program – called the International Innovators Initiative (IN2NYC) – based on the construct of the Global Entrepreneur in Residence program . This is a New York City based program created by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the City University of New York (CUNY) . IN2NYC is by far the most ambition program to date. It will help up to 80 selected entrepreneurs gain access to the visas they need to grow their businesses in New York City and is projected to create more than 700 jobs for New Yorkers in the first three years. ...

We’ve seen several M&A deals collapse unexpectedly in the past two months. Each was at the signed LOI stage. There was no warning or evidence of an issue until the moment the CEO got the phone call from the acquirer saying the deal was off. In both cases, the explanation was vague. I’ve also seen several financings fail to close recently. Two of them were late stage financings that were pulled by the investor at the last second. One of these investors is highly visible for doing late stage deals. The other was an investor I didn’t know much about. The explanation I heard from the founder in each case was again vague. ...

I hope you had a nice 4th of July yesterday. Amy and I hid out all day in Longmont, playing with the dogs, napping, and reading. As a result yesterday was a three book day. One of them was Semi-Organic Growth: Tactics and Strategies Behind Google’s Success by George T. Geis. 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. ...

Congrats to my friends at Rally Software on the announcement that they’ve signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by CA Technologies for $480 million . Part of the fun of having a blog for a long time is that it captures some of the history – in the moment – of what’s going on. For example, from a post in 2008 about Rally’s $16.85m financing , I riffed on the origins of the company. ...

Yesterday morning, over scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital (he had yogurt), we talked about immigration reform and our broken immigration system. Both Jeff and I have been working hard on making it much easier for immigrant entrepreneurs to get visa’s to start their companies in the US. Both of us have been unsuccessful in our efforts at a national level. At the end of the discussion, we decided to start the Global EIR Coalition to open source our approach and try to help every state in the US implement a similar program. ...

Several years ago, Alex Iskold wrote a great overview of What It Is Like To Sell Your First Company . I thought it was a great description and encourage every entrepreneur who has never been through the sale of a company to read it. Rereading Alex’s post inspired me to write my first person account of selling my first company. I’m sure I’ll get stuff wrong since it was over 21 years ago (I was 27.) But I’ll try to capture the good stuff that I can remember, especially since I know I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and could only rely on verbal conversations with other entrepreneurs I knew to help me figure things out since there was no web, no real books to read, and entrepreneurship still wasn’t a word being used regularly. When I reflect on it, independent of the modest economics, the experience changed the trajectory of my life in a very powerful and positive way, even though it was an extremely confusing time for me. ...

There’s an amazing amount of bad activity going on in the world of tech right now. It’s predictable – when things start going well the switch flips from fear back to greed and all sorts of craziness ensues. One of the things I see appear is a steady stream of crap aimed at innovators. Patent trolls are an easy one, but heavy handed regulatory activity by incumbents and random lawsuits around acquisitions are also part for the course. ...

Two big proposals from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick today. First, he’s proposing to ban non-competition agreements. He’s also proposing an incredibly clever and innovative approach to immigration reform applicable only to Massachusetts . I lived in the Boston-area for twelve years (Cambridge for four years and Boston for eight years. ) Even though I often say that was 11 years and 364 days too many for my “non-big city, non-east coast” personality, Boston still has a sweet spot in my heart. I had an amazing (and often excruciating) experience at MIT which was foundational to my personality, thought process, and character. I started and sold my first company there (first office – 875 Main Street, Cambridge; last office 1 Liberty Square, Boston). Techstars Boston was the first geographic expansion for Techstars. I’m not a sports fan but I always root for the Red Sox. I think I have more close friends in the VC business in Boston than in the Bay Area. Two of my closest friends – Will Herman and Warren Katz – both live there. And I know my way around downtown Boston – even after the Big Dig – better than any other downtown in the world. ...

When I saw this graph I was hooked. If you are a Twitter user and you don’t use Followerwonk , go try it now – I’ll be here when you return. Yesterday, SEOmoz announced that it had acquired Followerwonk . The acquisition closed about six weeks ago and the Followerwonk product has been fully integrated into SEOmoz . And the Followerwonk team is now fully part of the SEOmoz team. And it’s awesome. ...

On Monday, StillSecure announced that it has acquired ProtectPoint. ProtectPoint is a managed security service provider (MSSP) and immediately adds a portfolio of managed security products to StillSecure’s award-winning product arsenal. Alan Shimel, the Chief Strategy Officer of StillSecure, does an excellent job of explaining the reasons for the acquisition in his post titled StillSecure acquires ProtectPoint, entering the MSSP market – Why? This is the second time in less than a month that a company I’m on the board of has made an acquisition. At the end of January, in my post titled Rally Software is a Buyer I wrote: ...