OVP's latest 'missed deal' |
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OVP's latest 'missed deal'
One of my favorite elements of OVP's Web site is where the Kirkland venture capital firm tells the stories of deals that got away. There you can learn how OVP missed out on some pretty high-profile deals -- companies like Starbucks, Blue Nile and Amazon.com.
Well, today OVP added another one to the list: Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Networks In Motion. Earlier this month, the company announced that it was being gobbled up for $170 million by TeleCommunication Systems.
And while that might not be as a big of a miss as some of OVP's past mistakes, a $170 million exit in this climate is nothing to sneeze at.
Here's what partner Gerry Langeler had to say in today's post on the missed opportunity.
How many times does a guy have to make you money before you just take his word for being right? In 2005, we were approached by a former portfolio company CFO of ours, who had made us money twice before. He said he had joined a company that was going to be the best one yet.
He didn’t just ask us to invest, he begged us! He wanted to be the first OVP “three-peat” successful entrepreneur.
We knew the space (wireless, location services), we had independent calibration on the terrific CEO this CFO worked for. We even had the benefit that their first major account (Verizon) was one of our largest investors, so we had a back channel into how the company was viewed.
So, why didn’t we invest? Was it because one of our partners literally lost their demo phone? (clue to VCs - don't ever do this!)
No, we were worried the category would get commoditized and so pricing wouldn’t hold up. Sure enough, in 2009 up pops Motorola’s Droid phone offering a similar product as a free application. One of us (name withheld to protect the not-so innocent) even went so far as to write an internal email saying maybe we hadn’t missed the boat on Networks in Motion (NIM) after all.
That email was followed no more than a week later by the announcement that NIM had been acquired for an amount that would have made it a winner for OVP. (Was that CFO on our email string, chuckling in his beer?) So, we were analytically right, and financially wrong. In this business, as in life – timing is everything.
To get even… Oh, to heck with it, getting even isn’t working.
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