Internet
Blue Apron needs to be acquired soon.
UPDATE: The Amazon $AMZN Whole Foods acquisition makes this post ring truer. If home delivered meal kits are a $1B+ business how long do you think it will be before Amazon leverages their purchase with this easy add-on? RIP $APRN IPO… Nobody has done a better job at making “meal kits” an actual category in…
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Software Infrastructure Gets Hot Again
Middleware is Back. Software infrastructure is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s arcane to most investors because unless you develop software it’s hard to understand. The term “middleware” is often used because it sits behind applications and services that users see. Software “middleware” is critical but invisible. Recently we’ve had successful IPO debuts fro…
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Snap Part 3 – Just in Case
It’s high-noon for Snap and their bankers at the NYSE trading post. The consensus in the capital markets is that the deal will get down and open above the IPO price. Institutions consider Snap an IPO to own “just in case” it works. Most investors now realize that the historical Snap business is betting eaten…
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Snap Part 2 – More like YouTube 2.0
Now that we’ve had a chance to puzzle over the Snap roadshow (you can see the Snap slides here and we have done a full transcript of the Snap roadshow) there are a few more things to say about the deal: Snap is trying to shift from being a product to being a company. It…
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Snap Part 1 – First Take on the S-1
Snap is two things – 1) a new mobile communication platform that puts the camera and the microphone (rather than the keyboard, mouse and browser) at the center of everything and 2) an advertising company combining their platform technology with strong creative to deliver advertisements that work for both the viewer and the brand. Here…
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Time to buy Twilio
[UPDATE: May 4, 2017] So Twilio is losing a chunk of business from Uber, their largest single customer. It’s a blow and it will impact the next few quarters. The shares took a big hit which is to be expected. At this point however the investment thesis remains intact and the company continues to add new…
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Trivago = Trade Desk meets Tripadvisor
The main IPO of interest scheduled for this week is Trivago (NASDAQ: TRVG). The $400M deal is being led by JP Morgan, Goldman and Morgan Stanley with 7 co-managers tacked on for good measure. Our Quick IV points to a share price of $35 versus the $14 midpoint of the proposed range. Post-IPO, Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE)…
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Everbridge IPO looks like a safe bet
The Story, the Reality & The Valuation The Story – Everbridge (EVBG) provides software to enable organizations to rapidly respond more effectively to emergency situations, like natural disasters, terrorist attacks and school shootings to name some examples. (See the EVBG IPO Slide Deck for more.) The software enables effective mass communication and alerting to the…
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Twillo looks to join Apigee in the API software space
There are lots of eyes on the Twilio TWLO IPO this week. It’s scheduled to price tonight. So far the IPO market in 2016 has been dominated by healthcare deals. Normally we tend to have a more balanced mix with more technology deals like Twilio. As a private company Twilio received quite a bit of VC…
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Etsy or Regretsy?
In the early days of Etsy a site sprang up called Regretsy that made me (and many others) laugh to the point of tears. Their tagline was “where DIY meets WTF” and it was simple but brilliant. They would find tragically bad works on Etsy and share them with a brief comment. At first, Etsy…
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