Cisco hit the skids 18 months ago which led to a restructuring that was completed in record time. Now Cisco is ready to roll again, and to celebrate, CEO John Chambers discussed the company’s future. Here are 3 key takeaways. Read More »
Although the goal for most startup founders might be to build your company’s value, many companies are inadvertently taking steps to kill it. Marty Wolf, the founder of Martinwolf M&A advisors, explains the 5 things you need to avoid. Read More »
Netvibes, the San Francisco–based startup that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS feed dashboards, announced on Wednesday evening it has been acquired by French enterprise software firm Systèmes. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Read More »
It’s clear that Pinterest is really hot, but a new study shows just how powerful the virtual pinboard company has become. Pinterest is now driving more referral traffic on the web than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined, according to Shareaholic’s January 2012 Referral Traffic Report. Read More »
Los Angeles-based startup Causecast this week debuted its Employee Impact Platform, a web-based program that connects companies and their employees with non-profits and charitable causes. With Causecast, small businesses can compete with larger, more established companies when it comes to offering employees ways to give back. … Read More »
Summify’s sale to Twitter this week was good news for the startup, but bad news for many of its users, who expressed frustration that the news aggregation service would be mothballed post-deal. But startups News.me and Percolate are now vying to take on Summify’s users. Read More »
Unsubscribe.com, the Los Angeles–based startup that makes security and privacy tools for email and social networking applications, has been acquired by TrustedID, a Palo Alto, Calif.–based credit and identity protection technology firm. Financial terms of the deal have not been announced. Read More »
We’re hearing that Walmart Labs, the e-commerce arm of the American retail giant, has acquired an Sydney, Australia-based startup called Grabble, which makes point-of-sale technology that ties in with consumers’ mobile phones. Read More »
Facebook announced Tuesday its latest talent acquisition: Strobe Corp., a San Francisco-based mobile app development startup focused on HTML5 apps. Strobe was born out of SproutCore, an open-source JavaScript framework built by engineer Charles Jolley in 2007 while he was a full-time engineer at Apple Read More »
Venture capitalists have generally given semiconductor startups the cold shoulder for years now in favor of the web and software spaces. But LSI Corporation’s $400 acquisition of VC-backed chip startup Sandforce could encourage more VCs to warm up to chip technology once again. Read More »
Cardpool, the San Francisco-based startup that lets people buy, sell and trade unused gift cards, has been acquired by Blackhawk Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of grocery giant Safeway. Details about the deal are scarce, but Cardpool co-founder Anson Tsai says his investors “are quite happy.” Read More »
With all the buzz around Yahoo recently, its financial conference call with analysts and investors could have been a big event. But interim CEO Tim Morse made it clear that investors looking for answers about Yahoo’s CEO search and M&A options were out of luck. Read More »
More Must Reads
LinkedIn has made its second small acquisition in as many weeks with the purchase of IndexTank, a San Francisco-based startup that makes a real-time, hosted search engine service. LinkedIn has thus far opted to spend the $352 million it pulled in from its IPO very slowly. Read More »
LinkedIn has finally started spending some of that cash it raised in its May 9 stock market debut. But given the company’s $7.3 billion market cap, its first post-IPO acquisition — of husband-and-wife startup “Connected” — is not quite as splashy as some might have expected. … Read More »
On-demand music service pioneer Rhapsody is acquiring Napster, the company announced Monday. The deal is just the latest example of how the rapid ascent of Spotify — which GigaOM called “the new Napster” back in 2009 — is shaking up the on-demand music space in a … Read More »
Autonomy’s impending acquisition by Hewlett-Packard is nearly done. The controversial $10.3 billion deal was cleared by regulators in the U.S. and Australia on Thursday, according to reports. Autonomy shareholders still have until Monday morning 10:00 a.m. U.K time to weigh in. Read More »
So, that personal computer business that HP doesn’t want anymore? The one with the largest market share in the world? Samsung isn’t interested either. The company attempted to put an end to rumors it was considering taking over HP’s laptop and desktop unit on its blog. Read More »
Exclusive: Group Commerce, a New York City-based company that sells a software platform to let publishers host their own daily deal applications, has acquired geo-location startup Socialight. The Socialight team and technology will be put toward fleshing out Group Commerce’s mobile strategy, said CEO Jonty Kelt. Read More »
Hewlett-Packard plans to spend some $10.25 billion to acquire Autonomy, the United Kingdom–based software and services company. HP’s balance sheet currently has $13 billion in cash. Why is the company making such a big bet? According to HP’s CEO, Leo Apotheker, it’s now or never. Read More »
Evernote, the notetaking software program aimed at helping users “remember everything,” has acquired image-sharing app Skitch. The full version of Skitch previously cost $19.99 in the Mac store, but will be free and soon available on “every desktop and mobile platform under the sun.” Read More »
Hewlett-Packard searching for a new role for itself in the post PC world is looking to sell its PC hardware business, according to Bloomberg. The company is also looking to buy enterprise search giant, Autonomy for $10 billion. Read More »
Facebook has acquired Push Pop Press, a San Francisco-based digital publishing platform startup in a move likely aimed at building out its forthcoming iPad app and strengthening its HTML5 development team. Read More »
European startups have a long history of trying to break the American market — a move that works for some but not all. Now the CEO of print-on-demand website Photobox says that Europe’s entrepreneurs should learn from history if they want to build strong companies. Read More »
The FinTech Innovation Lab, an accelerator program for financial tech startups, graduated its first class on Friday. This first batch of companies is bringing some impressive ideas to bear on data, analytics and payments and showing there’s room for new approaches in the financial sector. Read More »
When Google discontinued support for QR codes in its Places product earlier this year, many saw it as an early death knell for the barcode scanning technology. But Google’s latest acquisition is evidence that the company may not be completely abandoning QR technology just yet. Read More »
Twitter announced Tuesday it has acquired BackType, an analytics platform aimed at helping companies and brands gauge their social media impact. The possible rationale for the deal is BackType’s Storm real-time big data processing platform that could help Twitter offer well-defined analytics. Read More »
Zynga has shown a notable uptick in acquisitions in recent months. But although much has been made of the volume and frequency of Zynga’s M&A activity, the S-1 Zynga filed Friday for its planned IPO revealed exactly how savvy it has been in making those deals. Read More »
It’s not quite the $150,000 offered to Y Combinator companies, but DreamIt Ventures, a Philadelphia-based accelerator program, is dangling some cash of its own to its startups in an attempt to keep them nearby and ensure that it stays competitive. Read More »
In Silicon Valley, happy days are indeed here again: Investors are feeling generous, the IPO market is percolating, and the tech industry’s biggest players have worked up a very healthy appetite for mergers and acquisitions. Read More »
Bunchball, the social gaming software company, has raised $6.5 million in a new funding round. The San Jose, Calif.-based startup has recently received “knocks on the door” from potential acquirers, but opted to raise money instead to bet on growing more, CEO Jim Scullion told me. Read More »
At the IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium last week I listened to the world’s leading academics, engineers, executives, and government officials project what the world will look like in 2020. The future brings technology together for everything from enhancing the human experience to improving environmental sustainability. … Read More »
Google’s acquisition of social analytics technology startup PostRank indicates the company is also looking beyond its own walls to get its social efforts off the ground. Scouting for fresh talent externally is a smart move for Google, an aging player in an increasingly cutthroat industry. Read More »
Groupon’s hotly-awaited initial stock offering will either stand as a beacon of hope to technology and Internet stocks of all kinds, or as a giant warning sign indicating a huge bubble of irrational exuberance. The company’s prospectus contains plenty of evidence for both sides. Read More »
Just months after raising $950 million, Groupon has filed for an IPO as it looks to stay ahead of a gaggle of competitors in the daily deal market. The company faces challenges in its high user acquisition cost and expansion into local and mobile. Read More »
Gamification startup Badgeville expects to book $10 million in sales for 2011, its first year in business, according to CEO Kris Duggan. He claims that being the new kid on the gamification block is an asset. “We’ve built this over last year with modern approaches.” Read More »
Kayak kicked off 2011 with major sales growth in the run-up to its planned IPO, according to a regulatory filing. The travel search company made $52.6 million in the first three months of 2011, representing a 43.4 percent increase over the same period in 2010 Read More »
The global economy continues to face uncertainty, but despite this, many technology companies have cash on hand and are opting to spend it on mergers and acquisitions. Here we examine some likely strategies from five different companies: IBM, Oracle, HP, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard. Read More »
Twitter officially confirmed its long-rumored acquisition of TweetDeck on Wednesday morning. Twitter/TweetDeck rumors have been flying around for weeks now, so lots of folks have had time to form opinions about the tie-up. Here are some of the more interesting takes on the situation. Read More »
We’re hearing that Cisco is shutting down Eos, a social publishing platform aimed at media and entertainment companies, as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts. While Eos was by all accounts a cool service, shuttering it is a smart move from a strategic perspective. Read More »
After overseeing 75 acquisitions in 7 years at Cisco in the 1990s, then-CSO Mike Volpi helped the company become a role model for tech M&A and an acquisition-as-growth strategy. In this second post of a two-part series, he reveals four more strategies for smart acquisitions. Read More »
After overseeing 75 acquisitions in seven years at Cisco in the 1990s, then-CSO Mike Volpi helped the company become a role model for tech M&A and an acquisition-as-growth strategy. In this two-part series, he reveals six ways companies can make sure their acquisitions create value. Read More »
LinkedIn made its NYSE debut Thursday morning with a bang, with an IPO that made $352.8 million for the company. The question now is: What will LinkedIn buy with its new cash? Here’s a short list of startups that could make it onto LinkedIn’s shopping list. Read More »
AVOS, the new startup run by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, could be targeting the consumer and brand research market with its acquisition of Tap11. Such a move would pit the startup against tech industry stalwarts like Google and Salesforce. Read More »
Photobucket wants to reclaim a spot at the top of the crowded photo and video sharing space, and it’s prepared to open its wallet to do so. The company is actively looking at potential acquisition targets, CEO Tom Munro told me in an interview this week. … Read More »
This week, tech insiders and observers are abuzz with estimates of how much Facebook is really worth. What set off the latest round of chatter was a Sunday morning Wall Street Journal report that Facebook could have a valuation of $100 billion after an IPO. Read More »
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