Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Legg Mason Inc

Square Expected To Be Put At A $4 Billion Valuation

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:46:56 +0000

Square is preparing to raise another round of funding that would put them at a $4 billion valuation according to sources with AllThingsD. This would quadruple Square’s valuation since 10 months ago when they raised $100 million, putting them at a $1 billion valuation. Square was founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and the service focuses on accepting credit card payments through smartphones and tablets.

The rumors about Square raising a new round of funding started when Owen Thomas noticed Square CEO Jack Dorsey and Square COO Keith Rabois were in Boston and Baltimore where many institutional investors are based. Thomas called Legg Mason and they confirmed that they were looking into Square.

Square raised a total of $137 million in funding from KPCB, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Visa, and Richard Branson. Square is processing $4 billion in annual transactions as of last month and they charge 2.75% per swiped transaction and 3.5% plus 15 cents per keyed-in transaction.

Rumor: Ning Being Shopped Around For $150 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:09:50 +0000

Ning has recently been shopping around themselves for roughly $150 million according to sources with AllThingsD. Ning, co-founded by Marc Andreessen, gave a pitch to Google, Groupon, and several private equity companies.

The sale would be a break-even for investors. Venture capitalists have put in about $120 million into Ning since the company was founded in 2004. Investors in Ning include Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Legg Mason, Allen & Company, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Rumor has it that AOL, Demand Media, and GoDaddy approached Ning with interest in an acquisition. The companies are interested in Ning’s technology, which has the ability to create custom social networks. Ning had 400% year-on-year revenue growth. They went from 17,000 to more than 100,000 subscribers with about 60 million monthly active users.

Zillow Files For $51.75 Million IPO

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:09:07 +0000

Real estate search engine company Zillow.com has filed an S-1, which means that the company is going public on the stock market. Zillow is aiming to raise $51.75 million. Currently this is a placeholder amount and is subject to change.

Citigroup, Allen & Company, ThinkEquity, Needham & Company, and First Washington Corporation are underwriters in the IPO. Zillow received about 19 million unique visitors in March and they are currently listing about 100 million U.S. homes. Zillow hit $10.6 million in revenues in 2008, $17.5 million in 2009, and $30.5 million in 2010. However income has been at a loss over the last 3 years.

In March 2011 Zillow was used over 8 million times on a mobile device. Over 1.4 million homes are viewed on mobile devices per day. Zillow is expecting the revenue growth rate to decline due to the maturation of their business. The costs are also expected to rise as they continue to invest in product development, marketing, and partnerships. Zillow raised about $87 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures, PAR Capital Management, and Legg Mason.

[TechCrunch]

Ning Now Valuated At $500 Million. It’s True: “There’s Absolutely No Bubble In Technology.”

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:23:20 +0000

“We raised the money to enable us to keep scaling given our accelerating growth (over 230,000 networks on Ning now, growing at over 1,000 per day) and to make sure we have plenty of firepower to survive the oncoming nuclear winter. At current growth rates, we donâ€™t need it to get to cash flow positive, but having lived through the last crunch, itâ€™s good to be conservative with these things.”
-Marc Andreessen, founder of Ning [quote source: VentureBeat]

I have to admit that when I started writing for Pulse 2.0 about a year and a half ago, I used to think that another bubble would happen again. So many companies were getting funding again like we were back in the late 90′s. Since then Facebook became valuated at $15 billion, Feedburner got bought for $100 million, YouTube got bought for $1.7 billion, and the list goes on. Just when we thought VC spending was slowing down again, Ning raised $60 million and is now valuated at a half-billion dollars.

Ning is a company that builds custom social networks for a large client-base. The company was started by a co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen. Allen & Company is investor that plugged in the $60 million. Ning’s third round was $44 million, provided by Legg Mason. Legg Mason also is a major shareholder in Yahoo!

Ning plans to use this funding to build it’s infrastructure for scaling purpose.

In an interview that Peter Thiel (early investor in Facebook) had with Kara Swisher of AllThingsD, he stated with confidence that there’s absolutely no bubble in technology.Â At first I was a skeptic of this quote, but now I’m a full believer.

Information Source:
[1] VentureBeat: Social network creator Ning raises $60M at $500M valuation by Anthony Ha
[2] AllThingsD: Kara Visits Founders Fundâ€™s Peter Thiel by Kara Swisher

Ning Hits 200,000 Custom Social Networks

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:44:14 +0000

Ning Background
Ning is a company that creates custom social network platforms for small businesses and enterprises.Â The company was founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini.Â Ning is Marc’s third startup company.Â Marc previously founded Netscape and Opsware.Â On Marc’s personal blog, he posted that he was delighted that Ning crossed the creation of 200,000 social networks.Â Ning means “peace” in Chinese.

Ning Statistics
Over 70% of the social networks created using Ning are active.Â Of the 200,000 social networks created using Ning, less than 1% are related to adult content.Â Based on the current growth rate, Ning anticipates reaching 300,000 social networks in the next few weeks [Source: pmarca.com].

Funding
Ning’s total funding is at $44 million.Â The funding was provided by both Andreessen and Legg Mason Inc.

[Information Source: DigitalPodcast]

Amazon.com Invests In Bill Me Later; Online Bill Payment Market Heating Up

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:32:09 +0000

Amazon.com announced today that they are investing in Bill Me Later, Inc. Not only that, but Amazon is also signing a agreement with the online billing company as well. eBay and PayPal has thus far proved the synergy of combining an online retailer with an online billing payment company. Over 90% of all eBay auctions are paid via PayPal so it made sense for eBay to buy them for $1.5 billion.

â€œBill Me Later has developed a very customer-centric method to make online shopping even easier,â€ stated Matt Swann, VP of payments at Amazon.com. â€œWe are pleased to make the convenience of Bill Me Later available to our tens of millions of Amazon customers [source: Amazon.com press release].â€

The investment terms were not disclosed, but the company has $200 million in funding capital according to TechCrunch. Bill Me Later investors include Chase Paymentech, Azure Capital Partners, First Data Corp, Crosspoint Venture Partners, GRP Partners, CIT Group Inc., Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, Citigroup, Equifax, T. Rowe Price, and Legg Mason Inc.

â€œAmazon.com and Bill Me Later share the same commitment to making shopping easy for consumers,â€ stated Gary Marino, the CEO of Bill Me Later. â€œJust as Amazon invented a new and better way for people to shop online, Bill Me Later has created a new and better way for people to pay for purchases online.â€

Before joining Bill Me Later, Marino was an EVP, Chief Credit Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer of consumer lending at First USA/Bank One.