Facebook and 30 high-profile "shots»

Many used to think that the most impressive venture project of recent decades - a notion the American Mark Zuckerberg, who managed to unite at the moment more than 500 million Internet users in a social network. Bubbleface? The success story of Facebook is really impressive because of its capitalization analysts estimate at $ 33.5 billion based on transactions with the company's shares on the OTC market at $ 72-76 apiece, depending on the size of the package. But who knows what fate would net if Mark Zuckerberg had sold it two years after its founding in 2006, the company Viacom. She offered a $ 750 million or company Yahoo - for a $ 1 billion in this case, perhaps, Facebook would become part of a search engine or from the new owners would not find suitable ideas for further development. Or they would have faced difficulties in financing it and hastened to IPO. But the founding father of the young instead of selling the business began to develop it, and already after only a year Microsoft bought 1.6% stake in Facebook for $ 240 million, estimating the company at $ 15 billion in market capitalization following the network has grown continuously, and this summer, Elevation Partners bought a small package, evaluating the whole company at $ 23 billion might be? While this network is by far the most promising and recently was to go on Facebook have more users than the search engine Google. But net profit Facebook does not disclose. On the basis of the declared by the company revenue of $ 700 million, and assuming that Facebook is the same margin as that of Google, the ratio of the capitalization and earnings (price to earning) of Mark Zuckerberg is over 82. By the way, Google's P / E ratio of 22. The mean value of P / E over the past century for the index S & P-500 was 15, though on the eve of the dotcom boom and reached 44. Now for the securities in the index average is slightly above 16. That is, for nonpublic companies such as Facebook, its market capitalization may well be adequately inflated. Putting it mildly. Especially considering that in the near future, Facebook is going to IPO. History knows many examples when the promise of becoming public, disappointed, and their cap was melting in his eyes. In short, the company's market capitalization to evaluate several passes of strategic investors, especially when it comes to startups, it is hardly correct. Not to mention the fact that Facebook is no clear business model to turn users into dollars, as there is none of the social network. And then no Twitter, no LinkedIn is no exception. Therefore, preparing the list of the most expensive venture projects, "F." relied on the already committed transactions in the venture capital industry, and were interested in the deal by selling the companies complete the transaction and sometimes M & A. The costly failure. While the most expensive deal since 1999, is the purchase of Cisco venture project Cerent market fiber optic communications. The company was founded in 1997 and two years later sold for $ 6.9 billion "For us, this means going to buy a whole new market", - commented on the deal optimistic business development director Ammar Hanafi Cisco. Cisco then needed in this business, as Cerent, as expected, that this technology will allow it to Cerent skim the cream off the coming boom in the industry. It is worth recalling that the late 1990s, during the dot-com, businesspeople have lost all sense of reality, but still Ammar Hanafi was asked not too generous price was paid for the company, the proceeds of which on the eve of the purchase of $ 10 million a year? Cisco Manager replied that not too much, it's "fair price, given the success and strategic perspective." In other words, Cisco ventured on a grand scale. At first things went well, and renamed the unit developed. Soon, however, Cisco began to lose share in the "optical" market. On the question of whether the company intends to close the technology to transport equipment for optical networks, managers say 'No'. However, recently it became known that Cisco closed the plant in Petaluma - the city where Cerent appeared as a venture project. Perhaps due to the closure of the transfer of production to other markets with more favorable terms. But experts suspect that even if Cisco will not close and bought 11 years ago, the technology is so expensive purchase was still unnecessary extravagance. Purchases during the dot-com at all indicative - and unnecessary extravagance, and loud failures. Almost a textbook example of Chromatis Networks. This is a developer of optical equipment bought just three years after the creation of a $ 4.77 billion a year later, the buyer - Lucent Technologies - was forced to close this unit: it turned out that its products are only two buyers. Many companies do not have survived the dotcom crash, but there are examples of remarkable revival. It is, in particular, the number two in our rankings. The merger of Healtheon WebMD and became one of the iconic but controversial events of the period. Prior to the merger Healtheon successfully completed IPO, its shares on the first day of trading rose sharply, and over the next few weeks the company has risen by 700%. In 1999 - in celebration - merged with WebMD. It was a logical step, since the company directly competing with each other. The merger with WebMD cost shareholders Healtheon $ 4,8 billion shares of the merged company at the peak of the bubble rose to $ 100, but by the end of 2001 already cost $ 3. Next three years, the company showed a loss of a total of almost $ 10 billion and returned to the timid return only for the year 2004. But then everything went surprisingly well. For five years - from October 2005 - the year of return on investments in securities of the company exceeded 100%, while Google over this period rose by 68% and the NASDAQ gained 12%. The project is now operating under the name of WebMD and is an online portal through which people can find out the reasons for his illness, ask for advice, talk on the topic of their anxieties with the community and so on. In general, rating venture projects clearly shows that even 10 years after the dot-com madness investors very wary of start-ups, carefully selected items for acquisitions and quite stingy. The read Venture purchased in recent years for big money. Perhaps, including Skype. Diamonds in the industry. In 2005, the now world-famous project was bought by eBay Skype for $ 2.5 billion four years later, in the autumn of 2009, eBay has decided to sell 65% stake in the company, finding no effective way of synergies, for $ 2.75 billion thus eBay to earn good money - the company valued at 1.7 times higher than in 2005. But the story does not end in the near future you will see the debut of Skype in the public market - in August of this year, Skype filed for an IPO. Let's see, perhaps, the owners of Skype back in 2005 and rushed to the sale of their offspring, and market capitalization will appreciate this "free calls" two to three times more expensive. Another jewel in the venture capital industry has become Youtube. Perhaps the most lucrative of all known venture projects in history, given that a half years after the creation of the developers have successfully sold it to Google for $ 1.65 billion, but it is clear that since the purchase capitalization has grown considerably Youtube, it hardly grows at a slower pace than the capitalization of the same Facebook. An example of Skype and Youtube shows that acquired venture are valuable in themselves, they can be considered as portfolio investment. There are no less promising venture projects, to assess the profitability of investments in which it is difficult. A good example - Android. In July 2005, after only 22 months since its inception, the owners of Android Inc sold his company to Google, the amount of the transaction were not disclosed. Then, few people knew about Android. But three years later, having invested in the project more money, Google introduced a new market mobile operating system. Another question is what platform itself has been developed based on the free Linux. Whatever it was, the proportion of "android" phones is growing steadily and now is estimated to own Google, amounts to more than 17%. It is clear that Google did a remarkably good investment, probably paying for a company relatively little money. Top 30 venture capital "shots" including the "blank" Project Founded in the year of acquisition (merger) Transaction amount, $ billion Homeland Venture Buyer What does the company Cerent 1997 1999 6.90 U.S. Cisco Systems Communications products provider for WebMD 1996 1999 4 80 U.S. Healtheon health services for Internet-based Chromatis Networks 1997 2000 4.76 U.S. Lucent Technologies Optical equipment Siara Systems 1998 2000 4.50 U.S. Redback Networks Platform managed services for networks, Sirocco Systems 1999 2000 3.49 U.S. Sycamore Networks High-speed networking for telecommunications service providers Hyperion Solutions 1981 2007 USA 3.30 Oracle Flexible software Xros 1996 2000 USA 3.23 Nortel Networks Optical switching means WebEx 1996 2007 3.20 U.S. Cisco Systems Web conferencing DoubleClick 1996 3.10 2008 USA Google Advertising Internet Qtera 1997 2000 USA 3.00 Nortel Networks Fiber-optic systems for telecommunications service providers Cygnus Solutions 2.90 1989 2000 USA Red Hat technologies including proprietary, open-source Skype 2003 2005 2.50 Luxembourg eBay software for data and telephony FDR Holdings 1997 2010 2.16 Norway Noble Drilling oil wells Tradex Technologies 1996 2000 1.86 U.S. Ariba Technologies Software for e-commerce on a "business-to-business» Broadband Access Systems 1998 2000 USA 1.84 ADC Telecommunications Integrated Switching Reliant Pharmaceuticals in 1999 1.65 2007 U.S. GlaxoSmithKline drugs to treat cardiovascular disease YouTube 2005 2006 1.65 U.S. Google View and share video online DSP Communications 1991 1999 1.60 U.S. Intel hardware and software for the wireless telephone industry EqualLogic 2001 2008 1 40 U.S. Dell Software solutions for enterprise data storage Newport Communications 1996 2000 1.26 U.S. semiconductor solutions Broadcom Giga A / S Denmark 1988 2000 1.25 Intel chips optical communications Riverbed Technologies 1998 2000 USA 1.20 Aether Systems Optimize bandwidth WAN Cyras Systems 1998 2001 U.S. 1.15 Ciena Optical Technology Prio 1994 2000 1.06 U.S. InfoSpace Online buyers incentive program with a virtual delivery system SnapTrack 1995 2000 1.03 U.S. Qualcomm satellite global positioning technology Octane Software 1.00 1997 2000 United States E. Piphany application software software and services market for customer relationship management Visiontech 1996 2001 1.00 Broadcom chips Israel for compression and decompression audio-/videofaylov Spring Tide Networks 1998 2000 0.96 U.S. Lucent Technologies equipment for carrier-class network service providers SupplierMarket.com 1999 2009 0 92 U.S. Ariba Technologies E-commerce Silicon Spice 1996 2000 USA 0.88 Broadcom programmable semiconductors for telecommunications Source: Venture Business News according Dowjohnes, VentureSource