GoDaddy to Tap Public Markets for IPO

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BrokerDealer.com blog extends thanks to NYT DealBook for below news extract.

GoDaddy, the domain name registration giant, plans to sell its shares to investors in an initial public offering.

Courtesy of NYT DealBook

Courtesy of NYT DealBook

The company, which filed a prospectus with regulators on Monday, is preparing to tap the public markets about two-and-a-half years after it was bought by a group led by the private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake. GoDaddy previously sought to go public in 2006, but a deal never materialized at that time.

GoDaddy allows individuals and small businesses to set up Internet domain names, offering services like website building, hosting and security. The company had 57 million domains under management as of Dec. 31. It generates the majority of what it calls bookings — gross sales before refunds — from sales of domain names.

K.K.R. and Silver Lake, along with the venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures, paid about $2.25 billion for GoDaddy in December 2011. The company plans to use some of the money raised in the I.P.O. to reduce its debt.

It also plans to make a $25 million payment to its private equity and venture capital owners, to terminate an agreement under which the owners have collected fees.

For the full story, please visit NYT DealBook article.

Do’s and Don’ts When Raising Capital

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BrokerDealer.com/blog thanks the Sydney Morning Herald for below extracts re: profile of top gun entrepreneur Greg Taylor and guidance on best ways to raise capital for start-up enterprises..

Entrepreneur Greg Taylor

Entrepreneur Greg Taylor

“..Raising capital is stressful and incredibly time consuming. It’s a full time job. So if you embark on a money raising mission, make sure your business is at a stage where it can survive (and hopefully flourish) with minimal input from you. The raise will demand most of your time and attention for the next little while.

It’s actually a lot like internet dating. You write a profile (information memorandum) you go on a first date (swipe right), you decide if you’d like to see each other again, (thank-you text), one party plays hard to get (valuation), meet the parents (due diligence), buy a ring (appoint lawyers), ask the question, (term sheet) and get married (settlement).

Once you’ve got a little seed money to work with, it really then becomes an issue of timing. If you go to the market looking for money before you have a concept or product, you don’t have as much leverage with investors and could potentially be beaten down on your valuation. So founders are generally better off building the product and getting as much traction as possible before courting investment to reduce the risk profile of their venture.The longer you can hold off, the more leverage you have with investors. But the longer you wait, the more risk there is that your competitors will land funds and get the jump on you. And it can be hard to play catch up.

Preparing the business for a capital raise correctly is critical. My advice is to find yourself someone who knows what they are doing. I was incredibly fortunate to have met a trusted adviser who works in the digital space.

QUICK TIPS FOR RAISING CAPITAL

Dos

  • Have all your legal documents prepared and in order.
  • Ensure the information you provide to potential investors is easily understandable and clear. Some aspects of the business may seem simple to you but complex to them. It’s always better to put more information than less.
  • Have all of your company information (ABNs, insurance, contracts) centralised and easily accessible so that it can be supplied to potential investors upon request.
  • You will end up getting married, so make sure your new partners and you both have the same goals (exit strategy, founders’ roles etc) and that the culture is right.
  • Be prepared to negotiate and get a deal done.

Don’ts

  • Don’t think you have the cash in the bank until it’s in the bank
  • Don’t be cocky. You need to show investors that you not only have a good idea, but are willing to listen and learn off them. Most of the time, they are investing 80 per cent in you and 20 per cent in the product.
  • Don’t have an unrealistic goal on valuation – its better to have 10 per cent of something huge than 100 per cent of nothing.

Greg Taylor is the co-founder and CEO of Clipp, an app that allows consumers to open, view, share and pay their bar tab or restaurant bill seamlessly and securely. Clipp secured $1.55m investment in November 2013. Greg sold his previous venture, eCoffeCard for an undisclosed amount earlier this year.

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BrokerDealers and Billionaire Clients: Who are YOU Goin’ To Call?

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If you’re an aspiring billionaire, or the real thing, it won’t surprise you to know there is lots of competition among brokerdealers for your big account. Find the right broker-dealer, and the right individual broker who can be trusted to provide good guidance, and you can take two items off of your check list.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times.Thorne Perkin, a wealth adviser, said the young tech group was not to be ignored.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times.Thorne Perkin, a wealth adviser, said the young tech group was not to be ignored.

Searching for a broker to manage your bucks (or yen, or euros, or maybe your bitcoin fortune)??.. Today’s article from the NYT Dealbook is worth your read….here are some extracts:

When Microsoft went public in 1986, its chief executive and largest shareholder, Bill Gates, wound up with a broker at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firm that had led the company’s initial public offering.

The San Francisco broker, William Hobi, was so excited to have Mr. Gates as a client that he put a vanity license plate on his Porsche for a few years with the letters MSFT, the trading symbol for the company’s stock.

Times may have changed, but technology billionaires still set the engines racing among Silicon Valley brokers. Social media I.P.O.s, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and acquisitions like Facebook’s planned $18 billion purchase of WhatsApp have created more than a dozen billionaires, by one count of Forbes magazine data.

Competition to handle their money is intense. “Every day I get a connection request from a wealth manager on LinkedIn,” said Michael Cagney, the founder and chief executive of Social Finance, or SoFi, an online student-loan platform in San Francisco that might go public in the next year or two. Mr. Cagney sold another financial software company, Finaplex, in 2007 and runs a hedge fund. Continue reading →

Uber Snags $1.2Bil in Funding at $17Bil Valuation: Deal Investors Drive Record Raise for Car-Ride Service

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A BrokerDealer.com/blog special:

Bankers, Broker-Dealers, venture and private equity investors, and the universe of fast-growth start-ups who keep an eye on the pulse of pre-IPO funding rounds were salivating on Friday after Uber, the car ride service, announced it raised $1.2bil from “institutional investors, mutual funds, private equity and venture capital,” with a second round of investors coming soon. The new round of financing values the company at a total $18.2 billion. The company’s pre-money valuation, not counting the latest round of funding, was $17 billion.

Investors hope the company, which allows users to summon a ride on their smartphones, can expand globally and diversify into logistics.
The investors in the round valued Uber “pre-money” at $17 billion, the blog post said. The $1.2 billion infusion took the startup’s valuation to $18.2 billion.

Fidelity Investments put in about $425 million, Wellington Management added $209 million and BlackRock Inc contributed $175 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Venture firms Summit Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures and Menlo Ventures also participated in the round, a person familiar with the matter said. Kleiner’s investment came from its Digital Growth Fund, run by former stock analyst Mary Meeker, known for her bullish recommendations during the first dot-com boom. Her fund has had recent hits, including traffic app Waze, acquired last year for $1.1 billion by Google.

“Uber is one of the most rapidly growing companies ever, and we believe there are opportunities for continued tremendous growth,” Joan Miller, a spokeswoman for Summit Partners, an investor in the funding round, said by telephone.Uber, which did not give details about its latest investors, operates in 128 cities across 37 countries.

Kalanick said he expected to close a second round of funding from strategic investors of about $200 million

 

A Chinese Menu of Deals Drives Venture Capital Guru East; BrokerDealer.com spotlight

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Investing in China and sourcing private equity, venture capital and deal opportunities is getting better every day.

BrokerDealer.com blog extract is courtesy of New York Times Dealbook

SHANGHAI – James W. Breyer, the venture capitalist who made a fortune with an early bet on Facebook, is putting some of his winnings to work in China, partnering with Beijing-based venture capital firm to invest in Chinese technology start-ups.

IDG Capital Partners said on Wednesday that Mr. Breyer, a longtime partner at Accel Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., would advise and invest alongside a $586 million IDG fund that closed June 3. The fund is expected to make early stage investments in Chinese technology, media and telecommunication companies.

The announcement comes as interest soars in Chinese technology companies after two years of frenzied deal-making, much of it involving China’s Internet giants: Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. Those three companies alone have spent more than $10 billion buying up start-ups and rivals during the last few years.

And with other technology highfliers here, including JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce company that recently raised $1.78 billion in its New York public listing, China has rapidly become a prime destination for the world’s biggest venture capital and private equity firms. Among the biggest and most active in China are Sequoia Capital, Qiming Ventures, SAIF Partners, IDG Capital Partners and Northern Light Venture Capital.