location based blog: selling

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Verizon Won't Be Selling Any More 4G Phones Until The Network Is Working Again (VZ)

verizon 4g lightning

UPDATE 2: Verizon will not be able to activate phones and devices that use its 4G network until its fixed again.

This news comes a day before the network is about to launch its second 4G phone, Samsung's DROID Charge.

Here's the full statement from Verizon:

We are aware of an issue with 4G LTE data connections and our network engineers are working to resolve this quickly. We have determined the cause of our issue and are working with our major vendors to restore connections.

4G LTE smartphones will still be able to make calls.

Customers are temporarily unable to activate any 4G LTE devices.

Please note: Customers may experience a 1XRTT data connection during this time.

After determining the cause of our 4G LTE network connection issue, we are continuing to work to restore connections.

We expect to see the network restore on a market-by-market basis. Timing and additional details will be provided as they become available.

UPDATE: Verizon just tweeted that it has identified the problem with 4G service and is working on repairing it now.

EARLIER: Verizon's 4G network is still down after experiencing problems yesterday, shutting out around 500,000.

In a tweet, Verizon said it is aware of the outage, and is working on a fix.

Right now there's only one 4G phone, the HTC Thunderbolt, that can run on the network. (That changes tomorrow with the release of Samsung's DROID Charge.)

There's also a 4G wifi hotspot and two USB modems.

Thunderbolt owners are reporting that their phones are only running at "1x," which is slower than 3G.

We'll let you know as soon as Verizon says the network is up and running again.

Don't Miss: Samsung Galaxy S II: The Phone U.S. Android Lovers Will Be Begging For

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Verizon Won't Be Selling Any More 4G Phones Until The Network Is Working Again (VZ)

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Friday, March 11, 2011

Kleiner Perkins Already Selling Its Twitter Stock

Twitter COO Dick Costolo

Kleiner Perkins is already selling some of the stock it bought in Twitter just last December, Henry Blodget reports.

We heard from a source that Kleiner has already unloaded some of its stock on private markets, quickly making a profit as Twitter's valuation has skyrocketed. Kleiner partner John Doerr has not responded to emails for comment, and we have not confirmed the the stock sales.

Kleiner invested at a valuation of $3.7 billion, and a recent Sharespost auction valued Twitter at $7.8 billion.

Kleiner's decision to sell stock on private markets so quickly after investing raises a host of questions about Kleiner's role at Twitter and the lack of regulation in secondary private markets, which we investigate further in the post below.

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Kleiner Perkins Already Selling Its Twitter Stock

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Comment on Infographic: The Selling Power of the iPad by Brett

I love my windows convertable tablet. Has come in handy and still performs better than the ipad in some situations since it has a digitizer. Microsoft just seemed hung up on the idea that a tablet should run a full fledged OS. At the time it was obvious that MS did not have the software to run a barebones OS readily available. Apple decided to run its iOS on an tablet, thus creating a great tablet OS that many people doubted would work (including myself). Loving my windows tablet, I picked up the ipad on day one. It was alright at first, but as the app market grew and diversified it has really helped the iPad meet nearly all of my educational and business needs. So there you go laughing boy, thats how MS and nearly every other company missed it. As for the article, who are those 10% that are not aware of an iPad?

Comment on Infographic: The Selling Power of the iPad by Brett

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/apple/infographic-the-selling-power-of-the-ipad/#comment-599257

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Twitter Starts Selling Its Data By The Tweet

firehose spray water

Twitter, which previously sold access to its "firehose" -- all of the tweets created on the platform in real time -- only to a select few big tech companies like Google and Microsoft and some developers, is now moving to more fine-grained, metered pricing for anyone willing to pony up.

For this, Twitter is actually working through Gnip, a startup which provides an API to access social networking data, and is the only authorized reseller of Twitter's data firehose. The two are creating a joint product called "Power Track", which lets you access the firehose at 10 cents per thousand tweets.

This is a smart move. While Google and Microsoft are willing to pay a flat, fat fee to get all the firehose to plug it into their search engines, plenty of people like application developers and social media marketers want only a few tweets on a certain topic. This allows Twitter to respond to customer demand, broaden the market for its firehose and make more money, which is what it's all about for the company in 2011. By working with Gnip, it also looks friendly to its developer ecosystem, which has been tricky for the company in the past.

Don't Miss: 11 Ways To Use Twitter Lists To Increase Brand Visibility →

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Twitter Starts Selling Its Data By The Tweet

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Monday, December 27, 2010

Selling Your Company

It is Monday so it is time for another MBA Mondays post. We are a few weeks into a series on mergers and acquisitions. The first week we covered the basics of mergers and acquisitions. Last week we talked about asset sales.

This week we are going to start a conversation about selling your company. I will kick off the conversation by laying out the key issues in a company sale. Then we are going to do something new on MBA Mondays; case studies. I will invite a few guest posts from entrepreneurs who have sold their companies. That will hopefully start next week.

I think the key issues for you, your investors, and your Board to consider when you are selling your company are:

Price
Consideration

Reps, Warranties, and Escrow

Integration plan

Stay packages

Governmental approvals

Breakup fees

Timing

Price is the amount the buyer will pay for the business. It is the most important issue and also the simplest.
Consideration is the mechanism the buyer will use to deliver the purchase price. The simplest form of consideration is cash in your local currency. That is also the most common form of consideration. Another common form of consideration is the acquirer's stock. That could be publicly traded liquid stock or it could be illiquid private company stock. Buyers can also pay with debt obligations, earn out plans, and a host of other esoteric and less common forms of consideration.

Reps and Warranties are the legal promises and obligations you will take on as a seller. A portion of the purchase price is usually held back and escrowed for some period of time to backstop the reps and warranties. The escrow is usually a percentage of the purchase price. Ten percent is common but I've seen as little as 5% and as high as 25%.

The integration plan is the way the buyer plans to operate your business post acquisition. Many sellers don't think this matters too much but I think it is critical. If you think about the interests of all the stakeholders in the business, not just the shareholders, then the integration plan becomes a very important part of the overall deal.

Stay packages are compensation plans put together by the buyer for your team. There may even be a stay package for you if the buyer wants you to stick around and most of the time they should. These packages are a combination of cash and stock that vests over a stay period. It is common that some of the consideration may be applied to stay packages, particularly unvested employee stock in your company.

The government, and not just your country's government, may be required to approve the sale. This is not common for small deals. Anything sub $100mm would be very unlikely to require governmental approvals. Really big deals, like billion dollar plus transactions, often run into these issues. Big powerful companies that the government worries may have monopolistic properties will usually face governmental approvals for their acquisitions.

If your business will face negative consequences if the sale is announced and then does not close, you will want to ask the buyer to pay a breakup fee if the transaction does not close. Most buyers will resist agreeing to breakup fees but they do exist in many deals, particularly very large deals.

Timing is another important issue that many sellers don't focus on. Sale transactions are very distracting for the senior team and often for the entire team. A long protracted sale transaction can be very harmful to the business and its stakeholders. You can put time commitments into the letter of intent to sell the company and you can expect the buyer to live up to them.

These are the most important issues in my experience when selling a business. For the next few Mondays we will focus on some real world case studies that will highlight many of these issues.