Posts Tagged ‘Gogobot’
First Juvo Capital Event
January 27, 2012 | Posted by: TalmadgeOn January 25, we flew up to Oakland to host an event at the owner’s suite for the Warriors-Trailblazers game at the Oracle Arena. Our group included folks from Ekso Bionics, eSalon, Gogobot, Jones Day, Navitas Capital, Primera Capital, Saygent, Sharespost, and The Climate Corporation. We had a great time, and the Warriors won!
Here is a picture with Stephen Curry during the warm up session.
First Juvo Capital Get-Together
Tags: Ekso Bionics, eSalon, Gogobot, Jones Day, Navitas Capital, Primera Capital, Saygent, Sharespost, The Climate Corporation
Juvo Capital 2011 Roundup
December 31, 2011 | Posted by: TalmadgeIn 2011, Juvo Capital deployed over $25 million into 11 new investments and 5 follow-on investments bringing our total portfolio investment to $36 million to date. Our investments in 2011 included:
AQUSH (new and follow-on)
Browsium (new and follow-on)
Chegg (follow-on)
Dropbox (new)
eSalon (new)
Facebook (new)
Fenix International (new)
Gogobot (new)
Moshcam (new)
Pollenware (follow-on)
Redfin (new)
Serious Energy (follow-on)
Silver Spring Networks (follow-on)
Social Annex (new)
YouNow (new)
In terms of liquidity events, 2011 was a good year. We had exits in LinkedIn and Tesla Motors which together turned an initial $3.9 million investment into $17.1 million for a ~4.4x return and a ~340% IRR. In addition, we have two companies, BrightSource and Silver Spring Networks, in our portfolio that filed S1′s to go public in mid-2011 however the process has been long and drawn out. Silver Spring Networks recently raised an additional $30 million clearly suggesting the IPO is not imminent. To balance the positive with the negative, we also took markdowns totaling $1.0 million for three investments (two late stage, one early stage) that look unlikely to create value long-term.
At this time, we don’t have a particular investment focus for 2012, although online video is growing significantly both in terms of consumer interest and monetization, and we continue to look for interesting opportunities as they arise. One of the key questions is can any consumer facing video company build a substantial audience outside of YouTube, and soon Facebook. We have two new investments in online video, YouNow and one to be announced shortly, which reflect this thesis.
As we look forward to 2012, the Facebook IPO looks certain to happen and it will be interesting to see whether the event drives an upsurge in VC investing. We believe we have several candidates which will have the option to go public in 2012, and we look forward to liquidity events just as the Patterson Cycle ramps towards the 2014 peak.
Tags: AQUSH, Browsium, Chegg, Dropbox, eSalon, Facebook, Fenix International, Gogobot, Moshcam, Pollenware, RedFin, Serious Energy, Silver Spring Networks, Social Annex, YouNowQ4 2011 Roundup – New Investments
December 20, 2011 | Posted by: TalmadgeWe are proud to announce that Q4 2011 represented a significant uptick in investing for Juvo Capital, despite the fact that everytime we watch Kyle Bass on the TV, it scares the crap out of us. During the quarter, we made follow-on investments into AQUSH, Browisum, and Pollenware, all of which continue to show great traction and opportunities to expand their market potential. We also made investments in a number of new companies during the quarter including:
Dropbox is the independent leader in cloud based file sharing with more than 45 million users, and recently raised a $250 million Series B financing from Index Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners, Valiant Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Accel Partners. The service has grown rapidly tripling their user base in 2011.
Gogobot is the leader in social travel with numerous awards and rapid growth. Gogobot recently raised a $15 million Series B round from Redpoint Ventures, Battery Ventures and CrunchFund. There are a number of competitors, but Gogobot has a clear lead in building the potential successor to the ad laden TripAdvisor.
RedFin continues to lead the way in dis-intermediating the residential real estate market paying its network of real estate agents based on the satisfaction of the customers rather than the selling price of the house. Redfin recently raised an additional $15 million from Globespan Capital Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Greylock Partners to continue to expand into additional markets in the U.S.
Social Annex is a boot-strapped provider of social commerce platforms that allows e-tailers, or almost any website, to better understand the metrics behind its core customers and influencers. While there are a number of companies who have entered this space, and the challenges of selling low cost software to hundreds or thousands of websites are not insubstantial – the value and insights from the social commerce platform are real and therefore valuable.
We have a number of additional investments that we hope to announce shortly in the online video space, and while it would be great to take advantage of zero capital gains tax on any gains at the time of liquidity if we hold on to these stocks for at least 5 years, these investments may or may not occur before December 31, 2011.
Tags: AQUSH, Browisum, Dropbox, Gogobot, Kyle Bass, Pollenware, Portfolio Investment, RedFin, Social Annex