Online video startup Veoh is in the process of raising a $40 million round at a proposed $150 million valuation, and has hired investment bank Bear Sterns to help with the effort, Silicon Alley Insider reports.
San Diego-based Veoh is a distant competitor to market leader YouTube, but still claims to be growing at a healthy [...]
Web middleware provider BEA has an all-cash offer on the table from Oracle for $6.66 billion, an acquisition that would put Oracle against IBM for the application server market.Who says Larry Ellison of Oracle doesn’t have a sense of humor? Oracle’s bid for BEA, which one could view as 666 without the qualifying decimal point and dollar sign, arrived just ahead of Halloween.
The gist of Oracle’s letter to BEA lays it all out: $17 per share for BEA, a 25 percent premium over BEA’s October 11th close.
“We believe our all cash offer provides the best value for BEA’s shareholders and the best home for BEA’s employees and customers,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “This proposal is the culmination of repeated conversations with BEA’s management over the last several years.”
Phillips also promised that existing BEA customers and products would be supported “for years to come.” He cited Oracle’s previous wallet-openings that brought PeopleSoft and Siebel among others into the Oracle corporate arcology, as examples of Oracle’s continuing support commitment.
Stuart Williams, senior technology analyst with TBR’s Software Business Quarterly, thinks the deal puts Oracle right in IBM’s face for application server and middleware customers. He called the buy a “strong win” for Oracle.
“Oracle can integrate the BEA technology directly into the core of the Oracle stack, strengthening it, while at the same time removing a competitor and adding close to $1.4 billion in annual revenue to its coffers,” said Williams.
The main person spearheading Google’s WiFi efforts will jump from the Googleplex at the end of December.
…Velocity Interactive Group. Comprised of some of the most experienced and visionary investors, executives and entrepreneurs……in digital media and communications, Velocity Interactive Group brings human capital, in addition to financial capital, to their portfolio companies.
Ross Levinsohn and Jonathan Miller launched Velocity Investment Group earlier this year with the goal of acquiring and investing in digital and communication media startups. Today, they announced their merger with ComVentures to form their new Velocity Interactive Group. Ross is former President of Fox Interactive and Jonathan, former Chairman and CEO of America Online.
However, two major ComVentures partners, Michael Rolnick and Jeb Miller, will be pursing other interests. So, if I can assume correctly, Keyur Patel will be one of the major partner with Velocity IG. To support this assumption, here are few of my personal analysis;
” Velocity IGs fund is investing in NDTV Networks, IndiaTV, Fabrik, Doppelganger and Mixercast.
” Velocity IGs primary areas are digital media and communications of which Media is something Keyur Patel is pursuing rigorously. He started FUSE+Media which targets primarily the Media and Entertainment Industry in India.
” Velocity IGs footprints are in Palo Alto, Los Angeles, New York, China and India. Well, their listed address for India is the hometown of Keyur Patel. He was also extremely successful in China and knows that country very well. He was responsible for turning around Maxtor into a Profit company with the One-Touch-Backup button idea and of course, their units are mass-produced in China.
Here my personal wishes to Keyur Patel and the new Velocity IG for a prospective future. Velocity IG is investing out of its current fund and has over $1.5B in assets under management. The fund will be invested in digital media companies exclusively.
On one of the merger news, from Om Malik, few phrases that caught my stark attention was;
“The private equity styled investments dont exactly make sense in pre-revenue pre-profit start-ups, Velocity was trying to acquire. In other words, the deals were too complex for Silicon Valley.”
Is this something that Startup Entrepreneurs should take notice of a noticeable trends that might happen with initial investments from VCs. Or this is just my personal acknowledgement of learning something new today!
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Microsoft turned Internet browsing from an application license driven economy to one supported by advertising and deals with search engines for default placement.You’re an Internet oldie if you remember plunking down $59 for a corporate license for Netscape, which represented the web browsing game outside of its predecessor, Mosaic, in the 1990s.
No one will be buying into Netscape the browser after March 1st, 2008. The BBC reported support for the browser ends on that date; users will be encouraged to switch to Firefox or Flock.
If they go with Firefox, someone familiar with Netscape will be waiting for them, as the BBC noted:
“I think we represent the hope that was of Netscape,” Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation which coordinates development of Firefox, told BBC News.
“We have picked up many of the things that Netscape launched but we’ve taken them further in terms of openness and public participation.”
Ms Baker was one of the first employees at Netscape in 1994.
Netscape’s existence threatened Microsoft so much, the software giant entered the arena with Internet Explorer and billed its price as “free forever.” The first couple of versions of IE gave no one motivation to switch.
Microsoft pulled even with IE 3.02, and by the time version 4 of each browser arrived, Microsoft started to move ahead. However, their competition with Netscape proved an undoing, as a federal antitrust suit that still has repercussions today nearly broke up Microsoft over its behavior in the browser market.