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Haas Business School Alumni Networks

The recently updated features of new LinkSViewer 1.3 allows new ways to explore university ties. Allow me to provide some examples of Haas Business School at UC Berkeley on (1) Haas multiple management team ties; (2) Haas CEOs; (3) Roost CEO and Haas-Alum. Alex Chang ties; (4) Accenture, Tube Mogul, Delivery Agent, & Clorox Haas Clusters ; (5) Two Large Haas Clusters; and (6) Berkeley, Stanford, & Cornell Haas Clusters.

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How Can Entrepreneurs Use LinkSViewer?: TheFunded.com Case Study

The Funded.com is a entrepreneurial resource that provides various ratings and data for VC funds.  LinkSViewer illustrates relations between Silicon Valley investors, companies, and their board members/management teams.  This post demonstrates LinkSViewer network map integration with TheFunded information to further supply resources for the emerging start-up company interested in obtaining venture capital.  The main idea here is to combine capital relations with entrepreneurial experiences. 

Some potential questions (with TheFunded.com in mind):

• What are the investment relations of the VC(s)?
• How are they related to other VCs?
• How are they related to board members and/or management team members?
• What other companies has the VC (or multiple VCs) invested in? 
• In what sector? 
• Over the what time period? 
• With what keywords? 

Let’s look at an example:

True Ventures is currently rated as one of the top VC firms by the members at TheFunded.  Let’s examine the relational network map for True Ventures’ portfolio companies in the Silicon Valley:

True Ventures Relational Map.  Notes: (1) All of the active companies are private companies (blue rectangles); (2) Three Angel investors (yellow ovals) have multiple capital relations with True Ventures: Auren Hoffman (Meebo & BrightRoll) and Michael Tanne & Jeff Clavier (BrightRoll & Maya’s Mom) have two common investment ties with True Ventures; (3) Three Board/Management Team Members (tan ovals) have board/management team interlocks with Sphere and Automattic: Phil Black (True Ventures), Toni Schneider (True Ventures & Automattic CEO), and Matt Mullenweg (Automattic founding executive).  Double click on each tan oval in the map for their LinkSV bio (in a new window).  Here is a complete view of all of the relations for True Ventures Silicon Valley active companies (including all co-investors and related management team and board members). (Source: LinkSV.com)

Here we gain a sense of the Silicon Valley company portfolio of True Ventures as it relates to its co-investors and board/management team interlocks.  LinksViewer provides a handy (and clickable) representation of the relational capital for each VC firm.  Below are some other potentially interesting maps for start-up entrepreneurs: 

Sequoia Capital + Accel Partners: Round 1-2 Internet Sector companies funded in 2005 or later 

Sequoia Capital + Accel Partners: Round 1-2 Keyword “Wireless” companies funded in 2005 or later

Entrepreneurs are encouraged to try out LinkSViewer for a free two-week trial (particularly when in capital-seeking mode).  This allows the user access to multiple map views, search, filtering, and a number of other features.  After the two-week trial, LinkSViewer is available on a per seat monthly subscription basis for $25/month.  Check it out, it may save you money in the long run…

ShoreTel Soars: IPO Update + Rationale

In an earlier post, I touted ShoreTel Networks as an up and coming IPO.  This post updates ShoreTel’s IPO status, comments on its recent patent suit, and provides some further rationale on the importance of relational capital (i.e., strategic connections) in ShoreTel’s investment network (particularly its ties to Apple).

Trading Details: SHOR was originally priced at $10.50 (at the top end of its range) on June 28th and then was re-priced at $9.50 (at its mid-range) when it opened on July 3 (it opened to the public at $10.00).  ShoreTel ended up at $12.15 (+27.89% from IPO price) after its first day of trading.  It closed at $12.77 (+34.44% from IPO price) in Day 2 trading. 

IPO Delay Background: ShoreTel was set to trade on June 28th, then got hit with a patent suit by Mitel Networks (ShoreTel CEO John Combs‘ ex-company) on the eve of its IPO.  If you read into the infringed patent claims, the details do not seem to affect core business processes (realize that I am no patent attorney, but I can differentiate between features and core technologies): (1) Automatic Web Page Generator; (2) Portable telephone user profiles using central computer; (3) Automatic telephone feature selector; and (4) Local area communications server.  It is of no surprise that Mitel also filed for its IPO, so its timing on the patent suit presumably had a modus operandi.  ShoreTel plans to defend the lawsuit, issuing a statement that ”We believe we have meritorious defenses to Mitel’s claims.”  In any case, the suit seemingly resulted in a 5-day delay in ShoreTel’s IPO and a $1.00 reduction in its original offering price. 

Relational Capital Update: I have argued in the past that the strategic investment connections (as a form of relational capital) bode well for a company about to go public (See CapitalBLOG post, Infinera IPO Soars: Why Relational Capital Matters).  For example, I was (serendipitously) examining the investment capital network of Apple and Google and stumbled upon the below map.  The main hypothesis here is the “Midas touch” exemplified by the co-investment ties of Apple and Google as a predictor of successful IPO companies. 

Google+Apple Investment Relational Map (Pendants dropped).  Notes: (1) Of the 52 related active companies on the map, 22 are private, 6 are acquired, and 24 are public = 46% linked public companies (a very high relative percentage); (2) note the presence of ties to recently successful IPOs Infinera and Aruba Networks; and (3) note the presence of Apple’s ties to ShoreTel Networks also noting its proximity to Lam Research, another successful public company.  ShoreTel–>SoarTel?

Conclusion: ShoreTel continues to have an upside considering its recent activity and patterns in comparison to its recent IPO brethren of Aruba Networks (ARUN) and Infinera (INFN).  Realize that I do not consider myself as an investment expert, only a network analyst identifying strategically connected IPOs and then tracking trends associated with their related companies. 

New Feature: Company Activity Maps & Examples

We recently integrated a new feature that allows registered users to quickly identify Silicon Valley capital activity (we actually unveiled this at the Launch Silicon Valley event on June 5).  The feature is accessible from our newly designed home page at http://linksviewer.com/home, which also provides access to a wide array of (free) sample maps.  To illustrate the utility of activity searches (updated daily), a couple of scenarios can help identify how this new feature can be used:

• What companies recently received funding? (Focus of this post)
• What investors have been recently active? (Next post)

Example 1:  I am interested in recent SV-funded companies (let’s say I was on vacation).  Who was funded in the past week?

From the LinkSViewer home page, I started at the Search Recent Funding Networks and from each pull-down menus I selected All Rounds, 7 days, and All Sectors, and clicked on Show Results.  Very handy/time-saving.  The results returned 8 companies (DVC Labs, Eye-Fi, iKoa, Luminescent, M-Factor, Roxro Pharma, Silver Spring Networks, & Telltale Games), listing the company name, number of investors, and funding date.  At this point I can select any combination of the results in displaying the map.  For this example, I selected DVC Labs and Eye-Fi (clicking on the DVC Labs and holding onto the Ctrl key while clicking on Eye-Fi) and clicked Show Relational map.

Relational Map of DVC Labs and Eye-Fi.  Notes: (1) the board interlock between Larry Orr (Trinity Ventures) and Carl Showalter (Opus Capital): Orr sits on the board of DVC Labs, Showalter sits on the board of Eye-Fi, and they both sit on the board of Identity Engines; (2) DVC Labs has two VC investors, Matrix & Trinity - they were also one of five investors in Aruba Networks, a recently successful IPO. 

Continue reading New Feature: Company Activity Maps & Examples…

Apple + Google: Board Interlocks

Apple+Google: Now That’s Hot (GigaOm)

Om Malik references a Wired.com post (Fred Vogelstein) on next week’s expected alliance between Google & Apple (cloud computing partnership).  This post reminds us of the extent of the board ties between Apple and Google:

Apple + Google People Relational Map. Notes: (1) Direct Board Ties of Eric Schmidt (Google CEO), Arthur Levinson (Genentech CEO), & Al Gore (Advisor on Google); (2) Indirect Board Ties between John Doerr (KPCB, Apple Board) & Bill Campbell (Intuit Past CEO, Google Board); and (3) Sequoia Capital invested in both companies (albeit Apple went public in 1980). (Source: LinkSV.com).

Thus it should not be a surprise that Apple and Google are teaming up on anything.  While they may have a mutual enemy in Microsoft (although Jobs recent appearance with Gates tempers this a bit), they actually have similar board leadership.  Behind the scenes, there may be more collaboration than we know.  For example, take the Google Maps integration on the upcoming iPhone.  For previous CapitalBLOG commentary on the Google/Apple connection check out Apple and Google - Network Clusters and Interlocks (9/16/06).

Infinera IPO Soars: Why Relational Capital Matters

Infinera shares soar in debut (CNN Money)

Infinera had a 14M share offering with a price range of $10-12, it priced at $13 and opened yesterday at $16.04.  It closed at $19.71 after reaching a high of $21.24 in mid-day trading (low = $16.00).  As a result, Infinera (INFN) was up 52% if you got in at the IPO and up 23% if you got in at the opening bell.  This is particularly noteworthy because the NASDAQ was down 1.77% yesterday.  From the CNN article, independent IPO analyst Tom Taulli states, “In hindsight [Infinera] looks like it was underpriced.”  This hails the sentiment I offered in my March 2 blog post, Infinera IPO Filing: The Juniper Net Works?  Here I was bullish on Infinera because of its relational capital via co-investor ties to 24 public companies and multiple board ties to Juniper Networks.  I repeat two of these maps below:

Infinera Investment Relational Map. Notes: (1) Juniper Networks as both an investor (orange oval) and related company (green box) via Kleiner Perkins & JAFCO; (2) Kleiner multiple public co-investment ties to Venrock (Photon Dynamics, Pharmacyclics, Geron, Echelon, & NeoMagic) & Sprout (Synaptics, Verifone, & eHealth); and (3) 17 investors on the map reflecting 7 rounds of capital ($315M total raised). (Source: LinkSV.com)

Continue reading Infinera IPO Soars: Why Relational Capital Matters…

Scribd Relations: Geoffrey Yang Tie

Scribd tries to live up to YouTube comparison (VC Ratings)

Scribd + Geoffrey Yang Relational Map: Notes (1) Redpoint/Yang connection to BigBand Networks (recent IPO); (2) Yang’s board presence on Tivo and Ask.com (purchased by IAC in 2005 for $1.9B).  In general, Yang’s presence on the Scribd board provides an additional source of relational capital for the company.

eBay Acquires StumbleUpon: Capital Relations

Ebay acquires StumbleUpon for $75M (Venture Beat)

While there was some speculation as to the reasons why eBay made this deal, the capital network shows some indirect ties between StumbleUpon and eBay.  This is noted in the below relational map of eBay (as investor and company) and StumbleUpon: 

Relational Map for eBay/StumbleUpon.  Notes: There are two capital paths between eBay and StumbleUpon: (1) eBay as an investor (orange oval): eBay as investor in Feedster –> Josh Kopelman (Board Advisor to Feedster) –> StumbleUpon (Kopelman as Board Member); (2) eBay as a company (green box): Benchmark Capital (eBay investor) ties to Ram Shriram (via Friendster), Mitch Kapor (via Linden Lab), & Ron Conway (via OpenTable & oDesk) as angel investors in StumbleUpon; and Bob Kagle (Benchmark) board interlock tie to Ram Shriram (via Friendster) as angel investor in StumbleUpon. (Source: LinkSV.com) 

MySpace Acquires Photobucket?: Trinity-HP Tie

MySpace to buy Photobucket? (Venture Beat)

The apparent acquisition of Photobucket by MySpace for $250M has some precedence from a venture capital perspective.  By examining the capital map combining MySpace with Photobucket I found a former tie between the two.  Realize that each only has one main investor: Trinity Ventures (Photobucket) and HP (MySpace).  By filtering in inactive company ties, one connection emerged between HP and Trinity: Speedera Networks.  Speedera Networks (total capital raised in 4 rounds = $53.3M) was acquired by Akamai Technologies for $130M in 2005  - Trinity and HP were among 10 of the investors in Speedera.  Thus, HP and Trinity have had a previous acquisition experience together, albeit they were on the same side of the table on the deal.  This relationship is shown in the below map (pendants dropped), followed by a map including pendants = current and former board and management team members for Photobucket and MySpace (Source: LinkSV.com).

NeurogesX IPO - Walden & Alta Ties

NeurogesX, a San Carlos pharmaceutical company, recently had its IPO.  Here I explore NeurogesX’ relational capital network.  Below is the Relational Map for Active companies: 

NeurogesX Relational Map (Active companies only).  Notes: (1) Alta-Walden co-investments: Plexxikon, Terawave Comm., Metabolix, & Corcept Thera.; (2) Alta-Global Life Science Ventures co-investment: Coapt Systems; (3) Alta-Arch Ventures co-investments: R2 Tech.; (4) Alta-Walden public company tie: Corcept; and (5) Alix Marduel (Alta Ventures) board interlock: Metabolix & Corcept ties.  Below is the Relational Map for Active & Inactive companies.

Continue reading NeurogesX IPO - Walden & Alta Ties…