The latest from TechCrunch
- The Huge Value Sequoia Capital And Other Venture Capitalists Help Create
- Video: Sharp Announces 5.5-Inch And 10.8-inch Android Tablets
- Textbook Rental Juggernaut Chegg Adds Another $75 Million To Its Coffers
- Dave McClure's First Investment In China: ChinaNetCloud (TCTV)
- Entrepreneur Boy Band Cover Flow To Play Disrupt After Party
| The Huge Value Sequoia Capital And Other Venture Capitalists Help Create | Top |
| Last week I sat down with Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha to prepare for tomorrow’s Super Angels To Super VCs — The Changing Face Of Venture Capital panel at TechCrunch Disrupt. As part of that conversation I asked about some of the big exits that Sequoia-backed startups have enjoyed over the last couple of years. After naming a few I became more curious and asked for more data. Sequoia supplied it, and the dollar amounts are…really large. I looked at the current value of Sequioa-backed companies that IPO’d in the last two years, and the acquisition value of the companies that were acquired. The total? Over $12 billion: Of course this isn’t the total amount of money Sequoia made from these deals since they only owned a percentage of each one. And when I told Sequoia I wanted to write about this they quite rightly pointed out that it’s the entrepreneurs, not Sequoia, that should get the credit. But at least some credit goes to Sequoia for at least picking the right entrepreneurs and helping them along the way. What Sequoia and other venture capital investors are doing to create huge value is clear. We’ll discuss this more on stage tomorrow. Note: Some of these companies are based in Asia and I had to do some heavy estimating on their market caps, but I went with the lower estimates in each case. If you note any errors please point them out. CrunchBase Information Sequoia Capital Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Video: Sharp Announces 5.5-Inch And 10.8-inch Android Tablets | Top |
| It took them a while, but now it seems Sharp is serious about entering the e-book and tablet business. The company announced "Galapagos"in Tokyo today [press release in English], with Galapagos being the ( terrible ) name both for Sharp's cloud-based e-book service and two new Android devices supporting that service. Read the rest on CrunchGear . | |
| Textbook Rental Juggernaut Chegg Adds Another $75 Million To Its Coffers | Top |
| Textbook rental juggernaut Chegg raised another $75 million from a Hong Kong investment firm called Ace Limited. This new round, which is a series E, brings the total capital put into Chegg so far to $219 million. The company raised its last round of $57 million just last November. Chegg rents textbooks to college students, which is a capital-intensive business, requiring warehouses, keeping massive inventory, logistics, and shipping. As Chegg grows, so does its need for capital. But the more it scales, the harder it becomes for others to compete. Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig will be speaking at Disrupt tomorrow, where I will ask him what he plans to do with so much capital. Chegg’s main competitive advantage comes from buying textbooks at wholesale, managing its warehouses, and its customer service. All of that takes a lot of money. But Chegg has found a sweet spot in that it is disrupting the quasi-monopolistic pricing for both used and new textbooks at college bookstores. Here is a detailed analysis of Chegg’s business model that we ran earlier this summer. CrunchBase Information Chegg Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Dave McClure's First Investment In China: ChinaNetCloud (TCTV) | Top |
| This guest post is by Dave McClure , founder of 500 Startups and GeeksOnaPlane. As we wrap up our GeeksOnaPlane video series for TechCrunch TV, I thought I’d offer a perspective on Asia from the eyes of a Silicon Valley geek and investor (not to mention the father of two Japanese-American kids). For those aren’t familiar with what GeeksOnaPlane (aka “GoaP”) is all about, we bring geeks and investors from Silicon Valley and elsewhere to geeky locations all around the globe. We talk/ meet/ socialize to understand more about technology, entrepreneurship, and new markets through travel and cultural exchange. To learn more, visit our website and blog and meet the 100+ folks who have traveled with us to Asia in 2009 and 2010, and Europe in 2009, or see any of the thousands of photos, tweets, and other social media created while we visited 10+ countries in the last 2 years. I am extremely optimistic about tech entrepreneurship around the world, and in particular in the emerging powerhouse economies of Asia. My new fund 500 Startups is only a few months old, and yet we have already made 8 investments outside the US (4 in Europe, 4 in Asia). Earlier this year, on a trip to Japan I made an investment in MyGengo.com , which provides a crowdsourcing platform and API for language translation. Over the spring & summer, we made several other investments in Europe after meeting companies last year in London at SeedCamp . And our most recent deal happened just this past Thursday, and is our first portfolio company in China — ChinaNetCloud out of Shanghai. ChinaNetCloud is a unique company — although most of our investments are in software or internet companies, this our first investment in a China cloud computing & managed services provider. Run by Silicon Valley veteran co-founders James Eron and Steve Mushero, CNC was founded in 2008 in Shanghai China. The company solves two key problems in China: the severe lack of trained system administrators and the lack of flexible cloud computing. CNC customers are mostly Chinese Internet companies across all industry verticals, and also include global companies coming into China, as well as Chinese Internet/game companies going out to the US via Facebook, Japan via Mixi, and other sites in Asia. I’ve known Steve for over 10 years, and he’s been in China since 2007. We caught up last year during our GeeksOnaPlane trip in 2009, and I heard him speak about the tremendous growth CNC is seeing from internet startups across China and East Asia. This year when we met again, we (500 Startups) decided we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to learn more about the exploding Chinese internet market, and by investing in CNC we are also investing in that growth. And we’re looking forward to CNC as a stepping stone to do more in Asia and China in coming years. In the 4th and final episode of our 2010 GeeksOnaPlane East Asia trip from earlier this summer, we wrap up our trip in Singapore for the Echelon startup conference. There I spoke about the Lean Startup movement coming out of Silicon Valley, changes in venture capital and angel investing, and with other emerging internet entrepreneurship communities around the world. In our trips this year to China, Korea, Singapore, and Japan we realize more and more how closely we are connected to the billions of people online around the world, both in our social lives and our business lives, we are inextricably connected to the World Wide Web. In closing, along with our video is also a photo essay of our trip to Asia by our fellow GoaP member Kris Krug . Kris tells his story in both words and pictures and you won’t want to miss a thing: While in Asia the geeks got a chance to attend many conferences and specially organized conferences. Their itinerary included ReThink Shanghai, the Shanghai World Expo , Ignite Shanghai, CHINICT Conference , Startup Weekend Seoul and Echelon 2010 Conference . Between all the business of being geeks, the GOAP group attended themed dinners, awesome parties and even the Great Wall of China. This is Kris Krüg’s third time attending a GOAP event, having joined the crew for their 2009 Asia trip and their 2009 ReThink Hawaii journey. Kris provides the perfect amount of geek and artist into the GOAP crew. Here is a photographic recap of Geeks on a Plane Asia 2010: The GOAP crew was invited to a special tour of the US pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . Micro-documentary filmmaker Ben Henretig catches some footage of the DMZ in South Korea. The final leg of the GOAP journey took the geeks all the way to Tokyo! Here geek girl Rachel Lara Horton roams the streets of Japan. GOAP Portraits: the geeks enjoy the country pavilions at the Shanghai World Expo. Geeks from GOAP being interviewed during the CHINICT conference in Beijing, China. At every dinner table during the GOAP Asia 2010 tour, there was always an iPad around. :) GOAP portraits: Geeks on planes, eating dinner and in the kitchen. GOAP Geek Ken Brady poses outside a building at the Shanghai World Expo in China. A round-table dinner of sharing entrees was often the setting for most of the GOAP dinners during the Asia tour. The Tokyo neighborhood of Harajuku is a world of fashion that is colorful and creative. GOAP portraits: geeks sleeping on a plane, geek kung-fu master on the Great Wall of China and GOAP founder Dave McClure going through airport security in China. GOAP geek Paul Papadimitriou gave a talk during the Ignite Shanghai event. This event was one of many planned during the tightly scheduled Shanghai portion of the tour. Geeks love good food! The diversity of food presentation was often a highlight of the different cities in this GOAP tour. During the Beijing leg of the trip, the geeks got a true lesson from a kung fu/zen master. Aside from Tai Chi lessons, the whole group got to see his superhuman feat of needle throwing. | |
| Entrepreneur Boy Band Cover Flow To Play Disrupt After Party | Top |
| Many of you may know Blippy’s Philip Kaplan, but many of you may not know that Blippy’s Philip Kaplan (Drums) is in a boy band with Mayfield Fund VC Raj Kapoor (Vocals/Gold pants), Investor Tim Chang (Bass), Facebook’s Ethan Beard (Guitar) and Prashant Fuloria (Guitar). If you are just learning this now now, don’t fret. There’s still opportunity to familiarize yourselves with the smooth stylings of entrepreneur side-project Cover Flow (there’s nothing dorkier than being named after an iTunes interface ). The nerd fivesome met each other through “business” according to Kaplan, and mostly play songs from the ’80s and ’90s, with some Lady Gaga mixed in. Really. Kaplan tells TechCrunch that band’s pretty nervous about playing the Media Temple Disrupt Party tomorrow night at Manor West , especially when going up against the star power of MC Hammer at the Google Ventures/SV Angel party on Tuesday, in a battle to win over the ears, hearts and minds of Silicon Valley. “ The investors in the group keep trying to collude every time we get together to rehearse, but we’ve managed to run through the set a few times uninterrupted and it sounds great.” Perhaps the only band whose members correspond to Crunchbase profiles, here they are playing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” below. | |
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