PEI Staff

I had lunch at Google yesterday. I mention this only because everybody else does. But it was really the news that PE professionals make more from fees than from carried interest that got me to share my schedule. I’ll explain shortly. For now, the item I’d like to share is that I had lunch at […]

This was originally posted on Fred Wilson’s blog I was meeting with a web entrepreneur yesterday. It’s something I do at least five to ten times a week. This entrepeneur said ‘but I worry that the coming downturn might have a negative impact on my business plan.’ Not ‘a possible coming downturn’, it was ‘the […]

Compensation … it’s what many of you seem focused on as the third quarter winds down – especially with all the uncertainty in the market these days. Earlier this week, I took a call from a candidate who wanted to know whether his firm was paying him “market” compensation. My first question was whether he […]

The “carried interest” earned by venture capitalists is no different from the equity earned by entrepreneurs or hired CEOs who run our companies. They have all their eggs in one basket — whereas we have our upside spread over many companies — but the analogy is strong. A CEO who joins a venture-backed company gets stock options […]

Consistent with Dan’s boomlet theory, recent market volatility probably won’t create a wave of new healthcare activity, but it should change the dynamics a bit. Healthcare has generated a steady stream of activity for several years, and the drivers in the healthcare business continue. And, with the amount of equity placed in the sector by […]

Last week, some talk show host commented that this year would be “bye-bye bonus” for financial service professionals. It got me thinking about how so many investment professionals take their bonus as an expected piece of their compensation, whether or not the firm has given them a specific “guarantee.” This time of year is always an interesting one in the […]

I believe the current credit crunch can actually help venture returns. Why? Because it will help build momentum for the technology IPO market, which is what really drives venture returns. Investors have finally demonstrated a willingness to buy technology IPOs. There were some 36 technology IPOs in 2006. I expect to see that number roughly […]

These are turbulent times for investors in private equity. The Dow can be down 300 points by lunch only to rebound an hour before the close of market. Debt markets, which once showed an insatiable appetite for risk, are becoming more conservative by the day. Spreads on announced public-to-private transactions have widened as investors question […]

There’s a new VC-entrepreneur newsletter that has been getting a lot of attention lately called TheFunded.com.  The Wall Street Journal had a profile of it last week and I find more and more entrepreneurs and VCs talking about it.  The concept is quite simple.  It’s a bit like what TripAdvisor is to travelers – entrepreneurs […]

Big buyout firms exploit the tax code, use debt financing to vacuum cash out of portfolio companies, fire legions of workers, and they may actually endanger the public pension funds they claim to bolster. Oh, and it’s possible they contributed to the bridge collapse in Minnesota. That’s the case Andy Stern, president of the Service […]