More Than Half of VC-Backed Start-ups Valued at $1Bil+ are B2B

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Logo-for-the-Wall-Street-Journal-CIO-JournalBrokerDealer.com blog update is courtesy of this a.m.’s WSJ CIO Journal and reporter Rachel King: For companies who aspire to the same success as the biggest and best, selecting the right investment banker and broker-dealer can mean the difference between greatness and simply a great idea (that never made it..) The brokerdealer.com database can help entrepreneurs source and locate bankers, licensed investment brokers and qualified investors across the globe.

 

Twenty of 35 VC-backed startups valued at $1 billion or more are business-to-business companies, including Dropbox Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc. and Cloudera Inc. That’s a higher percentage of B2B startups than during the dot-com bubble years of 1999 and 2000. For some of these startups, the high valuations can help inspire confidence with prospective corporate customers. For others, the overall rise in valuations is reminiscent of previous instances of collective — and misplaced — euphoria. “I’m not worried,” Karim Faris, general partner at Google Ventures, tells CIO Journal. “There’s a lot more meat to the bone this time around than there was in 1999.” The WSJ CIO Journal full list of $1B+ startups is in this article.)

 

BrokerDealer.com IPO Spotlight: MobileIron Raises IPO target to $128M; Arista Ups Ante: Offering to Raise $241M

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silicon valley businessCourtesy of Silicon Valley Business Journal and Cromwell Schubarth

MobileIron, the mobile device management software company, on Thursday gave new hope to those worried that the IPO boom of the past year had run out of steam.

The Mountain View company, led by CEO Bob Tinker, said it plans to raise up to $128 million when it sells 11.11 million shares to the public alongside another allotment to insiders.

That’s above the $100 million placeholder fundraising target MobileIron announced at the beginning of April when it made its first public disclosure of its plans.

Raising price targets from that initial filing number, which is only disclosed for tax and fee purposes, isn’t a big deal in normal times. Nearly all of the IPOs during the recent streak did that. Some raised their targets more than once before their Wall Street debuts.

But that hadn’t been the case in the past two months, when investors started pushing back on companies that were all revenue growth and that had no profit in sight.

The chill on Wall Street prompted MobileIron, Arista Networks and Box all to postpone IPOs that had been expected before Memorial Day.

Now Arista and MobileIron have jumped back into line, both raising their top target numbers.

Santa Clara-based Arista on Monday said it expects to raise up to $241.5 million, above the $200 million top target that it projected in late March when it first officially disclosed its plans to go public. But it was also unusual among some startups in the fact that it has been profitable in the three years leading up to its impending stock offering.

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