Connie Loizos
Think what you will about Mike Arrington; one thing is certain. The blogging entrepreneur and investor never shrinks from an opportunity to flame someone or something when the mood strikes him. And why would he? While he sometimes makes himself look like a tin pot dictator, his sharply worded diatribes are almost always widely read […]
On Friday, when Bankrate CEO Tom Evans rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange, it seemed like an appropriate way to mark the occasion of the company’s initial public offering. After all, Bankrate, which operates personal finance sites, has been public before. (It was taken private in 2009.) And Wall Street wasn’t […]
Late last year, the alternative trading platform Xpert Financial made much of its approval from the SEC and FINRA to automate the business of providing liquidity to startups. It kind of had to. It had entered into direct competition with SecondMarket and Sharespost, both now 800-pound gorillas in the world of private placements. At the […]
It’s fun, speculating about who’s getting filthy rich off some long-awaited tech IPOs. But once companies hit the public market, it’s not nearly as easy it looks for insiders to capitalize on what many view as bubbly valuations. Consider that Reid Hoffman owns more than 20 percent of LinkedIn, the professional social network he founded […]
This Friday, Bankrate expects to raise up to $320 million in an initial public offering. But the prospect of its IPO has elicited a giant shrug from Wall Street, says John Fitzgibbon, founder of the independent research firm IPO Scoop. Bankrate runs numerous personal finance Websites, and while the company posted a profit of $20 million […]
While today we contemplate the future of Facebook — which is reportedly planning to go public by the first quarter of next year — it may be worth remembering the buzz about Google, which also became increasingly negative in the months leading up to its August 2004 IPO. “This could turn out to be a […]
If you find Facebook boring and/or its privacy policies worrisome, you apparently aren’t alone. According to a newly issued report by the research and marketing group Inside Facebook, 6 million Facebook users have canceled their accounts in the last month, “the first time the [United States] has lost users in the past year,” according to […]
Josh Silverman has just been named head of American Express’s U.S. consumer services unit, which manages consumer cards and travel services. A repeat entrepreneur who, at 41, has already made more career moves than most people in their lifetimes, Silverman is joining American Express from Greylock Partners, which brought him on as an entrepreneur-in-residence last […]
The New York Times recently wrote a piece suggesting that “Groupon’s fate hinges on words.” Unlike Google, which “had secret algorithms that gave superior search results,” or Facebook, which “provided a way to broadcast regular updates to friends and acquaintances that grew ever more compelling as more people signed up,” in the view of the Times, […]
When LinkedIn went public last month, the financial community balked at its skyrocketing IPO, claiming LinkedIn’s underwriters — Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley — had set its share price too low. Columnist Joe Nocera said the company had been “scammed by its bankers.” No one mentioned the 7 percent commission that LinkedIn […]