The Venture Alley - A blog about business and legal issues important to entrepreneurs, startups, venture capitalists and angel investors.

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  The 2013 Private Equity Survey of McGladrey, done by the research unit of SourceMedia, indicates growth and optimism in the PE sector although the funds remain cautious about the broader economy.  Some findings of the 2013 survey: Funds see "management capabilities and effective strategy and execution as primary drivers of successful portfolios." Outdated IT systems, under-qualified IT personnel and inadequate infrastructure become apparent following acquisitions, often impacting critical areas of the business. Active integration leadership and experienced team members are important to success. Firms frequently find weaknesses in financial reporting (including the frequency, accuracy and efficiency of... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Investor and serial entrepreneur Jonathan Sposato has seen enough startup pitches in his day to know what he likes. In this Geekwire post from earlier this year, he shares his three favorite things to hear from founders seeking an investment. One key piece of advice from Joanathan that is simple and straightforward: your investors want to know their money is going to be put to good use. With that in mind, he advises founders to “speak provocatively and ambitiously about their concept,” to share names of other well-respected investors who are already on board, and to provide a detailed plan... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muir@megan_muir  Q&A: Why this former Microsoft exec wanted to become a venture capitalist  Ted Kummert announced on February 5th that he would be leaving his longtime position as a Microsoft executive to take a new role at venture capital firm, Madrona Venture Group. In this Q&A with John Cook of Geekwire, he answers questions about his experience and what caused him to take the leap into VC. “I...look forward to spending time, more broadly, across the Madrona portfolio of companies. I don’t tend to single out. I see so much opportunity, whether we are talking about consumer or we... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muir@megan_muir  Dr. Eve Riskin is one woman in tech who is actively working to “change the ratio” by increasing the number of women faculty in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).  As Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the University of Washington College of Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Director of the ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change, she is a leader and a mentor for other women considering academic STEM careers (or second careers, following work in industry). Eve received her bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT and her graduate degrees in EE from Stanford.  She... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muir@megan_muir  Jenny Lam is a co-founder of Jackson Fish Market, a small software startup focused on making beautiful software experiences. The company has shipped over 20 software products in the past 5 years. Their latest product is A Story Before Bed - the first (and only) service that lets parents, grandparents, and children record video of themselves reading children's books and play it back as often as they like on the Mac, PC, or iPad. Before Jackson Fish Market, Jenny worked at Microsoft from 2001–2007 as Creative Director of the Windows User Experience team. When she isn't running her... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Eric Savitz of Forbes has a lengthy interview with Mary Meeker up on the Forbes.com site, a companion piece to his profile of Ms. Meeker in the August 6 print edition (which you can read online here).  In the interview, she talks about venture capital, her work investing a $1 billion tech growth fund for Kleiner Perkins (half of which has been deployed to date), the influential reports she produced as an early Internet analyst, and some of the companies that interest her now.  She is someone who has seen - up close - the many ups, downs... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  CB Insights released their Q2 2012 Quarterly VC Report today, showing $8.1B was invested in 812 deals, the highest funding level since 2001.  One interesting trend in Q2 this is year is that 20% of the VC deals were for "seed" round investments (very early stage deals, usually with relatively small investment amounts).  The mobile and Internet sectors were very strong, including a bump in photo and video related companies (perhaps post-Instagram excitement).  And on a local note, Washington State had its highest quarter in over a year, with dollars invested up 136% from Q2 2011.  You can access... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  The short list of Silicon Valley female CEOs at well-known tech companies just got a little longer.  Andrew Ross Sorkin and Evelyn M. Rusli of The New York Times Dealbook broke the story today that Yahoo has named Marissa Mayer as CEO (its fifth CEO in five years).  Mayer comes to Yahoo from a prominent executive role at Google, having been hired originally as employee number 20 and the first female engineer at Google.  Yahoo's press release announcing Ms. Mayer's appointment as President, CEO and a member of the board of directors, states that the "appointment of Ms. Mayer, a leading consumer internet... More

Online and social media have revolutionized the way companies interact with their customers – allowing them to target customer interests and engage customers much more directly. Entering into the world of social media, however, may pose reputational challenges. On-line stores and e-commerce platforms encourage customers to post reviews about the products they offer. Numerous companies directly prompt their customers to “like” them on Facebook or to comment on Twitter about their consumer experiences. But what if the responses customers post are less than glowing? What if a company is the target of defamatory falsehoods? Many companies simply are not prepared... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  As noted in today's Geekwire, CB Insights has released its Q1 2012 Corporate Venture Capital Activity report showing that corporate venture funds are still making investments on a regular basis, but at a somewhat slower pace than over the prior year.  See graphic below with data from the past 5 quarters.  Review a summary of the data here or download the full-length report (54 pages) for free by registering with CB Insights here.... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the JOBS Act), enacted in April this year, makes a variety of significant changes to securities laws, some of which relate to early-stage entrepreneurs, startup companies and venture capitalists concerned about fund raising with respect to their portfolio companies. In this article, I address provisions of the JOBS Act most applicable to startup companies and venture capitalists that fund them. In this piece, I will not be covering other changes in the Act such as broker/dealer regulations, “Reg A+”, or the changes to research reporting and analyst rules.  IPO On-Ramp The... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Gina Durham, an intellectual property partner with DLA Piper's Chicago office, explains the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) program underway by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Over the past several months, ICANN has been accepting applications for the new gTLD program.    This program allows organizations to own their own top-level domain extension and aims to greatly proliferate the number of available domain extensions beyond the limited number of extensions, such as “.com” and “.org,” to which Internet users are accustomed. With a few exceptions, an organization could have applied to have almost anything to the... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  This weekend I spent a day with Rebecca Lovell (on right in photo) and a group of 60+ University of Washington Technology Management MBA students who were doing their final project prior to graduating - a venture capital investment competition. The Tech Management MBA is designed specifically for technology industry professionals and the venture capital competition (with Rebecca teaching) was a component added recently to give them some exposure to entrepreneurs in fund-raising mode and to give them a better understanding of the issues early stage tech investors consider. Although the students were only playing at being VCs, they did so... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com                        In an interview for NACD Directorship magazine entitled Noteworthy Legal Issues for Pre-IPO and Small-Cap Directors, DLA Piper partner and colleague Peter M. Astiz, co-head of our Global Technology Sector Practice, provided updated information concerning director fiduciary duties, voting and control issues raised by FaceBook's structure, the JOBS Act and regulation under Sarbanes-Oxley.  NACD Directorship magazine is published by the National Association of Corporate Directors. The article can be found here.... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  On May 24th, the University of Washington Foster School of Business Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship held its annual Business Plan Competition. The competition is open to teams that include students currently enrolled in a degree program in the state of Washington. Out of 101 teams that applied, the final round of judging by various local venture capitalists and entrepreneurs selected the winners.  UrbanHarvest (pictured below) won the grand prize of $25,000 as well as the Best Clean-Tech Idea (which came with a prize of $2,500).  UrbanHarvest, founded by two students from the Foster School of Business at the UW,... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Career advice from some top women in tech - including Ursula Burns, Sheryl Sandberg, and Virginia Rometty, - courtesy of Siliconrepublic.com: Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, in an interview with Marketplace: "You have to have a very strong opinion with some facts and data to stand it up, you have to prove that you are right more times than you are wrong, and then you better walk into the room with something to say because otherwise you don't really add a whole lot of value to the group.  So if you are going to be in the... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  The National Venture Capital Assocation (NVCA) recently released information regarding Q1 2012 VC fundraising and investment amounts.  They note that in the first quarter of the year, 42 venture funds raised a total of $4.9 billion while venture funds invested $5.8 billion in 758 deals in the same period.  You can find additional data, including details broken out by geographic regions, on the NVCA site here.... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Join us for a complimentary webinar regarding the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the "JOBS Act").  This one-hour webinar for venture capital investors, private equity firms, startup entrepreneurs, late stage companies and management of portfolio companies will cover the following provisions of the Act: The IPO “on-ramp” Reduced initial and ongoing reporting requirements for “emerging growth companies” Confidentiality of SEC registration statements Easing of restrictions on issuance of research reports by participating underwriters Private offerings Relaxation of prohibition on general solicitation in private offerings to accredited investors Increased stockholder thresholds before public company reporting requirements are triggered New... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Yesterday (March 22), the Senate passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), which could make it easier for startups and other small businesses to raise capital.  The bill now goes back to the House, which passed a similar bill two weeks ago, for the reconciliation process, which may occur as early as next week.  Some of the proposed changes to federal securities laws in the bill would: Exempt, for up to five years, “emerging growth companies” (those with under $1 billion in annual gross revenues) from certain financial reporting obligations, auditor attestation of internal controls,... More