I was duped on a scoop. Word had reached me, from multiple sources, that Mark Zuckerberg had sold $40 million worth of shares in Facebook's $300 million financing round. Not so, we hear: All of the $300 million Facebook raised from Microsoft and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing is in the company's bank account, not…
In every startup's life, before it can go public, there's a ritual called the roadshow. NetSuite, an online-software company backed by Larry Ellison, may begin its run as soon as Thursday, having filed an updated prospectus with the SEC detailing its plans to issue shares to the public. The total: As much as $99…
Alibaba.com, the most anticipated IPO since Google, dropped almost 18 percent to HK$32.60 as quick-trading investors captured profits. Yesterday, on the first day of trading, Alibaba.com shot up 300% from HK$13.50 at open to HK$39.50. Perhaps investors who bought at the peak paused to look into Alibaba.com's real…
Alibaba.com, perhaps the most anticipated IPO since Google, nearly tripled in price to HK$39.50 after opening at HK$13.50. If you weren't able to catch any shares, you may get some vicarious plesure from analyst quotes about the company. Hong Kong investors "trade stocks like they're playing at the baccarat table."…
Alibaba.com, the business-to-business unit of the Alibaba Group, raised $1.5 billion with its IPO, breaking a record for Chinese Internet companies. The $1.5 billion also makes the public offering the largest tech IPO since Google raised $1.66 billion in 2004. Alibaba's PE ratio, around 55, is a bit Googly as well.…
Do you ever stop and feel sad for Friendster? Me either, but if there was any room in your tiny, cynical hearts, you could. Yet another social network that's not the original is talking about taking big money moves. This time it's LinkedIn. CEO Dan Nye recently told Newsweek the company isn't interested in…
Chinese business-to-business website Alibaba.com — of whom Yahoo already owns a hefty chunk — has received $100 billion in offers for its $1.5 billion IPO. What are they, Facebook? This is way more interest, of course, than they can accommodate. But there may not in fact be much substance behind the bids. Unlike…
Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce giant set to launch an initial public offering of a business-to-business unit on November 6, said it now expects to raise $1.49 billion. That makes it the largest tech IPO since Google raised $1.66 billion in 2004. Alibaba founder and former English teacher Jack Ma hasn't missed…
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage at John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly's Web conference, and he's proved to be game for questions. Battelle, clearly expecting a nonresponse, asks Zuckerberg about his company's financing — the sale of a small stake that would value the company at as much…
China's Alibaba.com, a business-to-business marketplace, is going public. Yahoo, which already owns a 39 percent stake in the Alibaba Group, will add to its stake in the deal, purchasing 8.2 percent of the $1.33 billion IPO. [WSJ]
Some IPOs — like Google and VMWare—are impressive from the start. Others — like Vonage, which has fallen 85 percent since going public — fall flat. Virgin Mobile, with its cherry brand name and backers, should have had a sparkling debut. And yet it didn't.
The new editor at TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld, has gotten a little IPO-crazy in these heady days of Bubble 2.0. The best guess we've seen on a Huffington Post valuation is $60 million which, for a media company, is a drop in the bucket. We can't remember a tech or media company going public with a valuation anything…
Sony's continued financial woes — a projected loss of $630 million in its fiscal fourth quarter — have led it to offer up Japanese insurance subsidary Sony Financial as a sacrificial lamb. It's selling off 33 percent of the company in an initial public offering on October 1, and will use the proceeds to fund its…
Valley-hot business-networking site LinkedIn uses rival Craigslist to lure applicants, describes itself in the ad as "pre-IPO." Speaking of which, has everyone seen the SEC's warning about "Pre-IPO Investing"? [Craigslist]
What do you do if you are the granddaddy of social networks, having been around for more than a decade, but you aren't getting any bounce from the social-network buzz? Shoot for the moon, of course! Classmates.com, acquired by discount Internet service provider United Online for $100 million in 2004, is being spun…
Just like the Perseids that streaked across the sky this weekend, VMware, a boring little software company, is leaving a meteoric trail, up and away, on the stock ticker. Bought by EMC, the storage-hardware maker, in 2003 for a mere $635 million, VMware's backers had hoped to spin it off at a value of $10 billion. A…
Armand Rousso is an international man of mystery — Internet-style. Long before today's Web 2.0 kids were even suckling at their mamas' teats, in the 1980s — or so he claims — he invented e-commerce. Others claim that, at the same time, he invented e-commerce fraud. On an ancient MCI telecom network, he ran something…
Sarah Meyers, Valleywag's new videographer, attended Facebook's Lunch 2.0 happy hour and asked Facebookers and other developers what the buzz was all about. She cut through the hype to get the real answer on why Facebook's so hot — the long-rumored IPO, of course.
When Brian Alvey, the cofounder of Weblogs Inc. and a former AOL executive, suggested that AOL change its name to TMZ, the popular gossip blog it owns a stake in, I took it as the throwaway joke it was. But now, some idiot named Bill Hartzer on InternetFinancialNews.com appears to be taking Alvey seriously. For…
Even more fictitious than Facebook's revenues is its valuation. A market value, after all, requires a willing buyer and a willing seller, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and his board members have repeatedly said they don't want to sell. (Facebook has a valuation as a private company, of course, but trust me, it's…
