joschmo

6 ms·

1.
by joschmo 4y ago
Depends on the audience. Am I having a ground-truth level conversation with my deal team? Then everything is neutral. No positive or negative tones. Just assessment of what is good and bad, what could go right or wrong, and the process to b
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by joschmo 4y ago
It's macro-good and micro-bad. On the good side, I was allowed to view this from the perspective of spreadsheets and board meetings and see the net gains. And also do follow-up analysis that showed the least product people retiring or
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by joschmo 4y ago
I'm trying to be descriptive, not prescriptive. It's a black hole because these machines will acquire anything and feed it through the cash flow machine. Massive waves of layoffs because there will be multiple 1K+ layoffs coming o
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by joschmo 4y ago
The cost portion is right but good will from these companies degraded a decade ago. The game is now to do anything at all costs to prevent churn and downsells whether that's bribery, lying, cheating, stealing, lawsuits, etc.
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by joschmo 4y ago
This is a completely different universe from VC, Tiger, Figma or even the public markets. Software companies like this (low growth, high cash flow) got absolutely eviscerated in the public markets over the last decade so they would never co
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by joschmo 4y ago
You're right that it's not paying out Vista much if anything at all when you account for fees, but it's still a nine-figure sum of new money in, which is lifeblood for these zombie B2B software companies to get a few more sho
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by joschmo 4y ago
Background on the deal. TIBCO was acquired by Vista Equity Partners 8 years ago and has been a disaster investment. Growth never picked up despite their investments in product, technology, sales and marketing. As a result, TIBCO was stuck s
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by joschmo 4y ago
That's a really interesting question as I rarely think of a company from pre-seed to series C as having profitability. If they have the cash on balance sheet to do smart M&A, it would only be worthwhile if the company had the human
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by joschmo 4y ago
I would say $2 at $20M post-money was a very average round last year (I think the median from the top 50 seed funds was very close to this and average was slightly higher). I was hearing a lot of $3 at $30 and several $5 at $50s.
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by joschmo 4y ago
This is an ideal time to raise seed money. Many funds have moved heavily down market away from the big Series B/C's of 2020/2021. You now have a lot of tourists at the seed stage who are obligated to deploy capital and even i
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by joschmo 4y ago
To play devil's advocate, the reason a private equity firm should use a continuation is that it wants to hold an asset past the fund's 10-year life because the asset is continuing to perform very well. 10 years ago, many private e
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by joschmo 4y ago
$107K in Berkeley for someone with 2 kids won't lead to a lavish lifestyle in the hills, but it should be very doable on a budget so I don't quite understand that complaint. This reads a bit like someone who is used to a more elev
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by joschmo 6y ago
I disagree pretty strongly, but obviously your experience is your own. If you are going into a hotly contested investment process, are you going to get away with asking for big uncomfortable changes? Probably not as you'll lose the rou
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by joschmo 6y ago
As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days looking at the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns and cost benefit analyses, so why would I take a human capital risk? My entire business is based on my reputation and I've seen
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by joschmo 6y ago
UiPath vs. Automation Anywhere was a hotly contested debate amongst the growth investor set for the last 3-5 years but the massive distance UiPath has put between it and AA in the last 12-15 months is remarkable. Dubious on the very long-te
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by joschmo 6y ago
Sounds exactly like an article being written about the Mission in 2009
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by joschmo 6y ago
One of the few things I appreciated about finance was how clear the hierarchy system was. 3 years as an analyst, 3 as an associate, 3 as a VP, 3-5 as a director with promotion to managing director based on hitting clearly defined fee genera
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by joschmo 6y ago
You've astutely noted the difference between what people think is happening in a direct listing and what actually happens. People think founders are sticking it to Wall Street. In reality, the exact same mechanics are playing out with
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by joschmo 6y ago
1. Strong liquidity position from several recent rounds of fundraising so they do not need the cash 2. Well recognized brand amongst the investor class / product serves the investor class (similar to a Peloton) so the company would not
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by joschmo 6y ago
As a long-time former banker, Instacart is 100% the right candidate for a direct listing and Goldman / Morgan Stanley are likely currently pitching them on it if not beginning anchor investor meetings. It's a win-win from the bank
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by joschmo 6y ago
Tencent is the most likely buyer given their history of building fast follower games. Likely to be some useful components here. Other fast follower studios like Mihoyo could scrape some value, but $6M RMB is no joke to add to a budget of th
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by joschmo 6y ago
This is a breath of fresh air in comparison to HN's typical ignorance on IPOs. I can see why it wouldn't be popular here. A mix of the theoretical grounding of the activity with the on-the-ground realities of filling up a book and
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by joschmo 6y ago
My first thought was that this couldn't possibly be hedge funds reaping the gains of a Republican government because the hedge business is doing pretty miserably. How could their funds be collapsing and still be insider traders? But th
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by joschmo 6y ago
As someone that's raised money for SPACs, been an advisor to SPACs and sold companies to SPACs, the answer is a resounding no. Most VC-backed companies, whether in tech or biotech, don't need the strategic shift that's core t
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by joschmo 7y ago
You are being downvoted because there's no evidence to corroborate what you are saying. Just edit with a link to articles/proof if your statements can be substantiated.