Why pretend Facebook is a sure thing?

By rickColosimo / February 4, 2011 / Comments Off on Why pretend Facebook is a sure thing?

Dear NY Times, Please stop writing about corporate finance. Nobody who worked on this article appears to know anything about securities laws, corporate finance, reasons companies go public, or how to read past issues of this paper. Securities laws: Facebook is subject to the same fundamental law as every other company: Rule 10b5, which says…

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Simplicity vs complexity

By rickColosimo / February 3, 2011 / Comments Off on Simplicity vs complexity

Although the mind instinctively rejects all needless complexity, we shall greatly err if we fail to recognize the fact that what the mind recoils from is not the complexity, but the needlessness. G.H. Lewes, “Simplicity,” in Foundations of English Style 108, 108 (Paul M. Fulcher ed., 1927). Our vision for financial management for companies employs…

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Do you track liquidation scenarios in your startup?

By rickColosimo / February 1, 2011 /

Fred Wilson has had a series of posts relating to M&A transactions, generally revolving around case studies. This one on ChiliSoft describes how certain features embedded in the capitalization table (liquidation preferences and floating price warrants), coupled with being acquired for shares rather than cash led to a seemingly dramatic erosion of value for the…

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What happens when nonpublic information is shared?

By rickColosimo / December 20, 2010 / Comments Off on What happens when nonpublic information is shared?

Answer: it becomes regular useless information, arbitraged away by the market. (Unless you don’t believe in the efficient market hypothesis, in which case you’re reading the wrong blog! The only way to live in between those two things is to believe that you understand the mechanics of value differently or better than the market and…

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