(this is a rough draft i am working on this afternoon for volhart vincentz's comp econ class open project. i want to work on a visual aid graph that configures the VC trail for a more pictoral analysis.)
Venture capital is an essential part of th growth of creative and technical sectors. A look at the venture capital and other capital sources for the facebook company will provide an interesting subject for investigation. As facebook, inc. has topped the social networking gamut in popularity, it’s innovation and company strategy has relevance for many industries who either rely on facebook fro marketing or use it as a part of an integrative internet strategy. While the average facebook user may have no concern for the financial underpinnings of the tech phenomenon, a look at the financing structure and company history may have a broader relevance for understanding the motivations behind various finance groups and investors.
In this paper I plan to explore the relevance of the National Venture Capital Association, a lobby and trade group, the accel venture capital infusion, and more recent capital assets as provided by elevation partners. Techcrunch, the leading technology blog, has a whole page devoted to facebook. Their very excellent crunchbase provides a tracebale link to investor time lines and profiles of start-ups of all sizes and the investment history of individual angel investors and the investors in venture capital firms. It is possible through hyperlink to understand a graph of investment in a chronological schema, or a branching network.
other amazing sources of tech info are
The Financial Times in April 2010 profiled the corporate strategy to reach out for advertising links with a new program the “like” feature in which users can express themselves via “liking” various brands. Programs like this which seek to divert attention to demi-adverts seek to monetize Facebook, an ultimate duty for the VC investors. The digital gift economy or the facebook dollars are other such schemes towards infusing the dreamy start-up with a measure of profitability.
Facebook as an entity has a story which is a common myth known to many. There are numerous websites detailing the many issues which beset the industry behemoth.
It is necessary to distinguish the difference between angel investors and venture capital investing. Angel investors have a solid amount of funds they want to bestow upon a promising firm. Venture capitalists pool their funds in a venture capital network, which distributes the risk of their investment across many firms.
The venture capitalist sees the risk in the tech start-up as a worthy risk. Many tech entrepreneurs who sell their successful start-ups immediately pour their financial capital into new ventures. Noteworthy among those are Paypal’s Peter Theil a Facebook angel investor, who now sits at the hed of Clarium Capital. The atmosphere of high risk is mitigated by the actual enjoyment of the flourishing of new technological trends. The structure of tech investment
Accel was one of the first most significant firms to see the potential in Facebook and put major investments towarss its growth. It is important to note that Facebook did not come out of the red until September 2009. A look at Accel’ investment portfolio will reveal numerous lesser known companies in the tech sector.
The early 2000’s brought infusions of cash into the Silicon Valley landscape. Many ventures were fiscally disastrous. A look at venture capital climates will still find that the cash infusion made possible in the United States exceeds many other economic climates. Paul Carr’s spoof of a book, Bringing Nothing to the Party, details the struggles of an aspiring tech start up’s quest for venture capital. The company, a social networking site for hip young Londoners, faces immanent financial peril. Carr’s portrait of the London VC scene pits the fledgling tech scene as far inferior to the stateside tech riches. Another approach to measuring the atmosphere for tech start-ups are the amount of governmental participation in fostering growth. In Finland for instance, the government when faced with depopulation and a bleakly performing agrarian economy, infused cash into the tech sectors and subsidized advanced tech degress and education which helped the young Nokia ascend the charts in the pre-smart phone cell phone revolution. And while capital investments may be exceptional in the United States, whether or not a host of political factors are entirely hospitable is debatable.
everything from labor costs to investment visa availability pertain to the flourishing of tech start-ups. Venture capitalists must consider these factors as well as possible legal threats which will undermine their business.
What makes Facebook such an interesting company to follow, is that not only have they anticipated cultural trends but they have shaped them, and they have quickly adapted as new technologies shaped the zeitgeist. The Twitterification of their interface rapidly followed the Twitter ascendancy, which in a sense showed a loyalty and duty to their investors, to keep the company at the cutting edge for as long as possible.
The recent “Google Me” medfia buzz has alerted the tech community that there may be a very imminant demise of the Facebook, even with its 500 milion strong. The company seeks to return the VC investment as it serves as a model for sociological transitions and adapts to a host of factors including the viability of ad revenue, the crunchability of statistics for ad revenue microcash, the sale of raw data, and or government support or subsidy, and decline in trendiness.
Accel, as one of the most premier investment companies involved in tech growth, has a close relationship with the NVCA which rewarded Jim Swartz with a Lifetime achievment award. The NVCA has shared several figures from the Accel group, and holds their interest and future at heart as it represents over 400 similarly situated firms. The NVCA lobbies the US Congress for more easily available investment Visas. The seek to influence the Federal Communications COmmission regulations for the benefit of their frims.
When following the trail of Facebook capital investment, it is important to ask whether any of the investment firms have any particular political or other aims. Do they see Facebook as a valuable tool for civic surveillance. As Facebook hosts a panoply viewpoints, no one viewpoint predominates, but certain overarching norms prevail: namely, recession of privacy norms, increasing levels of participatory surveillance, increasing mythologizing of the cult of identity.
In February 2010, the Electronics Frontiers Foundation sued the United States federal government for failing to disclose the level of their utilization of social networking for surveillance or other purposes. Might it be possible to show that the state has a direct interest in supporting the growth of the social networking phenomenon?
The company In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm directly and officially and openly linked to the development of technologies useful for the Central Intelligence Agency. A lot of their capital investment is geared towards the development of advanced technologies such as speech recognition. The latest notice on their Crunchbase profile shows their investment in an aggregation service which allows corporate interests to watch and compute the success of their social network advertising penetration.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/13/visible-technologies-raises-a-whopping-22-million-for-social-media-monitoring-software/
The social media monitoring software in a sense becomes a derivative industry which crunches a much larger data base, of which Facebook is only a part.
Bono Rockstar is a primary investor in the Elevation Partners firm which provided a substantial infusion to Facebook in June 2010. According to British tech mag The Register, the 120M venture capital infusion gives Elevation a mere .05% ownership in Facebook. What motivation would the Bono empire have in facebook? Facebook serves a high level of traffic. For some users, the rest of the internet does not exist. Potential Ad revenue schemes, and a stadium full of adherents might be more suseptible to the Bono humanitarian agenda. In a certain sense we could easily hypothesize that Bono’s Facebook share is geared towards advancing his larger philosophical agenda.
The Facebook venture capital investigation might also beg the question, why invest in a company that has not yet turned a profit?
What can other start-ups gain from this finance model? How can new companies compete for Venture Capital investment or the horors bestowed by angel investors? How can tech start-ups protect their capital investment from crippling litigation? Many a firm finds itself in protracted litigation, which can either slow, or sometimes halt growth altogether. Indeed Facebook is currently being sued by a software programming contractor who alleges he found a contract entitling him to 85% of Facebook. As Richard Susskind details in the book The End of Lawyers the future of many tech companies will involve engaging legal services on a per anum basis, rather than after costly litigation has ensued. And then the law firms will conduct extensive review of all accounts and potential intellectual property vulnerabilities prior to litigation, so as to head off unnecessary squabbles and be prepared for any legal assault. Susskind points out that the emerging technological sector has a new kind of need for legal services, and the legal industry is adapting to suit their needs. A company which is financed by the good graces of angel investment and VC does not need to involve the company in unecessary protracted litigation. So indirectly the comprehensive management of a company must involve a legal risk analysis and the engagement of appropriate preventative legal services. Mark Howitson, a Silicon Valley attorney has represented facebook as deputy general legal counsel since 2007.
A general survey of Facebook and cyberlaw questions, which often involve the confluence of sociological issues, investment, government involvement, and citizen participation can be found at the Center for Internet ans Society, hosted by Stanford University’s cyberlaw domain. The Berkman Center at Harvard is the east coast cyberlaw counterpart and hosts conferences joining the worlds of programmers, the developers of the DARPA net, the future of internet micro-cash, crowd sourcing, and other exciting trends in Internet as they take place across an economic and regulatory landscape.
Remarkably, unexpected consequences of the Facebook cultural revolution have turned facebook into a digital courtroom to a certain extent. Australia has ruled Facebook to be an adequate way to serve summons for a lawsuit notification. Numerous instances of law enforcement using facebook to establish identity or whereabouts of suspects are known. In a certain sense, government could not live without Facebook, or some equivalent. Online predators are seduced through various internet media channels, of which Facebook, is but one.
In this paper I plan to explore the relevance of the National Venture Capital Association, a lobby and trade group, the accel venture capital infusion, and more recent capital assets as provided by elevation partners. Techcrunch, the leading technology blog, has a whole page devoted to facebook. Their very excellent crunchbase provides a tracebale link to investor time lines and profiles of start-ups of all sizes and the investment history of individual angel investors and the investors in venture capital firms. It is possible through hyperlink to understand a graph of investment in a chronological schema, or a branching network.
other amazing sources of tech info are
The Financial Times in April 2010 profiled the corporate strategy to reach out for advertising links with a new program the “like” feature in which users can express themselves via “liking” various brands. Programs like this which seek to divert attention to demi-adverts seek to monetize Facebook, an ultimate duty for the VC investors. The digital gift economy or the facebook dollars are other such schemes towards infusing the dreamy start-up with a measure of profitability.
Facebook as an entity has a story which is a common myth known to many. There are numerous websites detailing the many issues which beset the industry behemoth.
It is necessary to distinguish the difference between angel investors and venture capital investing. Angel investors have a solid amount of funds they want to bestow upon a promising firm. Venture capitalists pool their funds in a venture capital network, which distributes the risk of their investment across many firms.
The venture capitalist sees the risk in the tech start-up as a worthy risk. Many tech entrepreneurs who sell their successful start-ups immediately pour their financial capital into new ventures. Noteworthy among those are Paypal’s Peter Theil a Facebook angel investor, who now sits at the hed of Clarium Capital. The atmosphere of high risk is mitigated by the actual enjoyment of the flourishing of new technological trends. The structure of tech investment
Accel was one of the first most significant firms to see the potential in Facebook and put major investments towarss its growth. It is important to note that Facebook did not come out of the red until September 2009. A look at Accel’ investment portfolio will reveal numerous lesser known companies in the tech sector.
The early 2000’s brought infusions of cash into the Silicon Valley landscape. Many ventures were fiscally disastrous. A look at venture capital climates will still find that the cash infusion made possible in the United States exceeds many other economic climates. Paul Carr’s spoof of a book, Bringing Nothing to the Party, details the struggles of an aspiring tech start up’s quest for venture capital. The company, a social networking site for hip young Londoners, faces immanent financial peril. Carr’s portrait of the London VC scene pits the fledgling tech scene as far inferior to the stateside tech riches. Another approach to measuring the atmosphere for tech start-ups are the amount of governmental participation in fostering growth. In Finland for instance, the government when faced with depopulation and a bleakly performing agrarian economy, infused cash into the tech sectors and subsidized advanced tech degress and education which helped the young Nokia ascend the charts in the pre-smart phone cell phone revolution. And while capital investments may be exceptional in the United States, whether or not a host of political factors are entirely hospitable is debatable.
everything from labor costs to investment visa availability pertain to the flourishing of tech start-ups. Venture capitalists must consider these factors as well as possible legal threats which will undermine their business.
What makes Facebook such an interesting company to follow, is that not only have they anticipated cultural trends but they have shaped them, and they have quickly adapted as new technologies shaped the zeitgeist. The Twitterification of their interface rapidly followed the Twitter ascendancy, which in a sense showed a loyalty and duty to their investors, to keep the company at the cutting edge for as long as possible.
The recent “Google Me” medfia buzz has alerted the tech community that there may be a very imminant demise of the Facebook, even with its 500 milion strong. The company seeks to return the VC investment as it serves as a model for sociological transitions and adapts to a host of factors including the viability of ad revenue, the crunchability of statistics for ad revenue microcash, the sale of raw data, and or government support or subsidy, and decline in trendiness.
Accel, as one of the most premier investment companies involved in tech growth, has a close relationship with the NVCA which rewarded Jim Swartz with a Lifetime achievment award. The NVCA has shared several figures from the Accel group, and holds their interest and future at heart as it represents over 400 similarly situated firms. The NVCA lobbies the US Congress for more easily available investment Visas. The seek to influence the Federal Communications COmmission regulations for the benefit of their frims.
When following the trail of Facebook capital investment, it is important to ask whether any of the investment firms have any particular political or other aims. Do they see Facebook as a valuable tool for civic surveillance. As Facebook hosts a panoply viewpoints, no one viewpoint predominates, but certain overarching norms prevail: namely, recession of privacy norms, increasing levels of participatory surveillance, increasing mythologizing of the cult of identity.
In February 2010, the Electronics Frontiers Foundation sued the United States federal government for failing to disclose the level of their utilization of social networking for surveillance or other purposes. Might it be possible to show that the state has a direct interest in supporting the growth of the social networking phenomenon?
The company In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm directly and officially and openly linked to the development of technologies useful for the Central Intelligence Agency. A lot of their capital investment is geared towards the development of advanced technologies such as speech recognition. The latest notice on their Crunchbase profile shows their investment in an aggregation service which allows corporate interests to watch and compute the success of their social network advertising penetration.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/13/visible-technologies-raises-a-whopping-22-million-for-social-media-monitoring-software/
The social media monitoring software in a sense becomes a derivative industry which crunches a much larger data base, of which Facebook is only a part.
Bono Rockstar is a primary investor in the Elevation Partners firm which provided a substantial infusion to Facebook in June 2010. According to British tech mag The Register, the 120M venture capital infusion gives Elevation a mere .05% ownership in Facebook. What motivation would the Bono empire have in facebook? Facebook serves a high level of traffic. For some users, the rest of the internet does not exist. Potential Ad revenue schemes, and a stadium full of adherents might be more suseptible to the Bono humanitarian agenda. In a certain sense we could easily hypothesize that Bono’s Facebook share is geared towards advancing his larger philosophical agenda.
The Facebook venture capital investigation might also beg the question, why invest in a company that has not yet turned a profit?
What can other start-ups gain from this finance model? How can new companies compete for Venture Capital investment or the horors bestowed by angel investors? How can tech start-ups protect their capital investment from crippling litigation? Many a firm finds itself in protracted litigation, which can either slow, or sometimes halt growth altogether. Indeed Facebook is currently being sued by a software programming contractor who alleges he found a contract entitling him to 85% of Facebook. As Richard Susskind details in the book The End of Lawyers the future of many tech companies will involve engaging legal services on a per anum basis, rather than after costly litigation has ensued. And then the law firms will conduct extensive review of all accounts and potential intellectual property vulnerabilities prior to litigation, so as to head off unnecessary squabbles and be prepared for any legal assault. Susskind points out that the emerging technological sector has a new kind of need for legal services, and the legal industry is adapting to suit their needs. A company which is financed by the good graces of angel investment and VC does not need to involve the company in unecessary protracted litigation. So indirectly the comprehensive management of a company must involve a legal risk analysis and the engagement of appropriate preventative legal services. Mark Howitson, a Silicon Valley attorney has represented facebook as deputy general legal counsel since 2007.
A general survey of Facebook and cyberlaw questions, which often involve the confluence of sociological issues, investment, government involvement, and citizen participation can be found at the Center for Internet ans Society, hosted by Stanford University’s cyberlaw domain. The Berkman Center at Harvard is the east coast cyberlaw counterpart and hosts conferences joining the worlds of programmers, the developers of the DARPA net, the future of internet micro-cash, crowd sourcing, and other exciting trends in Internet as they take place across an economic and regulatory landscape.
Remarkably, unexpected consequences of the Facebook cultural revolution have turned facebook into a digital courtroom to a certain extent. Australia has ruled Facebook to be an adequate way to serve summons for a lawsuit notification. Numerous instances of law enforcement using facebook to establish identity or whereabouts of suspects are known. In a certain sense, government could not live without Facebook, or some equivalent. Online predators are seduced through various internet media channels, of which Facebook, is but one.
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