LogMeIn: IPO Drought? Feh…
Earlier this week John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPOScoop.com, said that LogMeIn was an IPO “candidate that should blow the socks off people.” Looks like he was right.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The OpenTable Binge and Purge
For a company whose business is built on the recession-brutalized fine-dining industry, OpenTable’s IPO last week was impressive. Must have made for quite a windfall for the company’s larger investors. Especially those who took the opportunity to dump their stakes in their entirety.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Weekend Update, 05.23.09

This Weekend Update is particularly exciting because of all the things happening here at All Things Digital. There is, of course, the upcoming D7 Conference, which promises to be more tech-extravaganza fun than a tweet from @sockington (if only half as cute), but this past week has also seen the launch of our very own iPhone app, meaning that ATD has gone mobile–smart news for your smartphone (we’re still working out potential taglines).
OpenTable Shareholders Apparently Booking Reservations in Empty Restaurants
Anyone who dismissed OpenTable’s IPO price of $20 as grossly overpriced has, in short order, been proven grossly mistaken. Shares in the online restaurant reservation company opened at $24.50 apiece, up 23 percent from its IPO price. As I write, they’re trading at $28.72 after topping out at $30–-more than double their original price range.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
EBay Beats Q1 Estimates; In Line With Q2 Forecast
EBay reported Q1 sales and earnings this afternoon that fell from the same quarter last year, but beat analysts’ estimates just the same. The company’s revenue totaled $2.02 billion, down 7.8 percent from $2.19 billion in 2008. Earnings were 39 cents per share. Analysts had been expecting worse, with estimates of 1.94 billion in revenue and earnings of 34 cents per share.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Irrational Exuberance?
They say “flat is the new up” and that certainly seems to be the case with the venture capital industry. Though we’ve had two consecutive quarters without an IPO and the venture market is all but frozen, VC optimism is beginning to return. The latest Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index shows a small but noteworthy uptick in the VC community’s views of the entrepreneurial environment in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Weekend Update, 4.04.09
Welcome once more to Weekend Update! I’ll be filling in today for your regular host Beth Callaghan, who’s on vacation. And what sane person wouldn’t be, after the slew of Silicon Valley silliness inspired by April Fools Day this past week? Digital pranks were the name of the game, and Google and others heaped so many tepid hoaxes upon us that we wanted to call April Fold so as to quickly end this round of gags.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
IPO Market Just Really, Really Lousy
To hear tell from the National Venture Capital Association, the VC landscape is as burned out and desolate as the ashen vistas of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” According to its latest data, not a single venture-backed company went public in the first quarter of 2009 or the one that preceded it. That’s the first time the association has ever recorded two consecutive quarters with no issues.
Monday, February 2, 2009
An OpenTable IPO? Yeah, Good Luck With That…
The market for initial public offerings has been all but boarded up by the financial crisis. The unemployment rate in the restaurant business is nearing 10 percent after what Cowen & Co. restaurant analyst Paul Westra describes as “one of the most brutal years in history for the restaurant industry.” And fine-dining sales are forecast to fall 12 percent to 15 percent in 2009. But restaurant reservation service OpenTable is filing to go public anyway.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Weekend Update, 12/12/08
Where are Tina Fey and Sarah Palin when we really need a laugh? In this week ramping up to the holidays, good cheer–unsurprisingly–was hard to find. 2008 may well be remembered as the year the econalypse stole Christmas.
Yahoo was bereft of cheer, for sure. BoomTown covered its long-dreaded layoffs and published Jerry Yang’s complete memo to Yahoo staff about the painful process, which began on Wednesday. Ex-Yahoos from all corners of the company spoke (and vented) to BoomTown about the as-yet fruitless search for a CEO to replace Yang, who laid himself off last month. But wait–Digital Daily pointed out a singular moment of misplaced cheer–akin to fiddling while the proverbial Yahoo burns–as the company, uh, celebrated the holidays with a bafflingly lavish year-end party on last Saturday–four days before layoffs began.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Report: 2008 IPO Market Obviously Lousy
With the economy in contraction and the stock market going all to hell, 2008 was not a good year for the IPO market. In fact, volumewise, it’s looking like it was one of the worst in the last 13 years. Global IPO activity has more than halved since 2007, according to Ernst & Young’s year-end Global IPO update.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Mark Zuckerberg: Bad Santa
Facebook’s virtual gift market may turn out to be the best holiday shopping option for employees hoping to cash out some of their shares. On Thursday, the company postponed a program that would have allowed employees to sell up to 20 percent of their vested shares.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Mark Zuckerberg Has Sent You a Gift: A Small Fortune
So much for “growth over profits,” or should I say “growth over as-of-yet-unrevealed meaningful profits”? Word on the street has it that Facebook is considering a program that would allow employees to sell up to 20 percent of their vested shares.
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About John
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Ethics Statement
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
alt.misc
- 10 Best Uses Of Classical Music In Classic Cartoons
Includes “Pigs in a Polka,” “Rabbit of Seville” and, of course, “What’s Opera, Doc?”
- Web Site Story
Take the famous ballads and duets of West Side Story, insert a dozen mentions of famous social media sites like twitter and facebook, and this is what you get.
- Wooden iPod
An iPod mini rebuilt with a wooden case
- Han Solo, P.I.
Star Wars meets Magnum, P.I.
- The “literal video” collection
Music videos recreated with new lyrics based on what’s actually happening in them. Daydream Believer and Total Eclipse of the Heart are particularly good.
- E-Mail From Your Facilities Department
In response to numerous e-mails, I have no idea what planet the giant alien creature is from. Judging from its enormous gills, I’d have to guess it’s from a watery planet. Reminder: please let me know if you plan to be in the office on Memorial Day so I can request HVAC for your floor.
- Amazon Customer Reviews: Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt
For those of you who mock the wolf shirt beware. There is an old Navajo story about a young man who made fun of another man for wearing a wolf trio shirt. Legend has it that in his sleep, the wolves on the other man’s shirt came to life and tore his body to shreds. They never found any part of that man’s body. The Wolf is something to be respected and feared, not treated like a novelty.
- Nice Muscle!
Hands down the most inexplicably bizarre game for Wii I’ve ever seen
- Respectful Yo Mama Jokes
Yo mama is so attractive she could be on the cover of Prevention.
- Introduction to Microcontroller Programming: The Flatulometer
The inspiration for this project was to determine who could generate the worst flatulence measurable in a personally unbiased manner.






