Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : divine interVentures, Inc. (DVIN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: astyanax who wrote (33)	2/4/2000 10:23:00 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 246

Incredible news. I can't wait for the amended S-1. Who knows what other deals have been consummated since the initial filing. forbes.com February 04, 2000 One Week View CMGI's divine intervention By Penelope Patsuris NEW YORK. 5:45 PM EST-Today's news that CMGI is taking a 4.9% stake in divine interVentures isn't about a bunch of flush venture capital firms trying to increase their bandwidth of investments. Both companies are trying to create the new corporate structure necessary to support the Internet economy. By coming together, the firms will continue to promote their similar philosophies of a networked but separate family of companies. Both CMGI (nasdaq: CMGI) and Divine interVentures said it's too early to see exactly where the synergies between them lie. Chicago-based Divine interVentures is the six-month-old firm started by Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, who sold his own company, Platinum Technology, last summer to Computer Associates International (nyse: CA) for $3.5 billion. Along with CMGI, investors include Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT) and Dell Computer (nasdaq: DELL). The prestigious venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield started the trend of separate but networked companies with what it called a "keiretsu," the Japanese word that it defines as a network of shared information and knowledge. While CMGI's home page features the word keiretsu, the firm's executive vice president of marketing, Bill White, prefers to describe the CMGI family of 65 or so as "a network of self-reinforcing companies." CMGI's portfolio includes Chemdex (nasdaq: CMDX), Lycos (nasdaq: LCOS), AltaVista and Engage (nasdaq: ENGA). Like Kleiner Perkins and CMGI, Divine interVentures refers to its cooperative of startups as a "Zaibatsu," and it aims to access the Midwest's untapped intellectual capital. Whatever you want to call it, the above players are trying to pull together a group of companies that can benefit from one another by sharing expertise and exchanging products and services at reduced rates. But according to Filipowski, this motivation is not as straightforward as simply accelerating sales and growth. He describes his network of companies as a bid to create firms well positioned to attract both employees and investors in a manner that pre-Web corporations have failed to do. "We believe the current structures of organizations, the things we know as corporations, will be obsolete in ten years," said Filipowski. "This [Zaibatsu] is the only way a company can give its customers, employees and investors all of what they each want." A loose network of companies he contends will be more highly valued by the stock market and will therefore be better able to attract talent with its share value. "When a company is made up of so many very different parts, investors can't understand all the pieces or necessarily see how they fit together," he said. He pointed to how often a very valuable aspect of a company is not seen by the marketplace as such because it's overshadowed by another, poorly performing division. A network instead of a conglomerate gives the investor the ability to evaluate shares accurately and invest in exactly what they want to. "How would you like to be a Banc One employee and watch your shares drop because its credit-card business is floundering, when you work for [Banc One] Wingspan.com?" By the time Filipowski sold Platinum, it completed 70 acquisitions, but he vows to do things differently this time. "If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't have taken 100% ownership of all of those companies and brought them under one umbrella," said Filipowski. "That destroys the entrepreneurial value of any organization."

To: astyanax who wrote (33)	2/6/2000 3:34:00 AM
From: Edwin S. Fujinaka	Respond to of 246

The term Zaibatsu seems to imply money and power more than just a commercial alliance. Of course politicians the World over seem to wind up sucking up to the rich and powerful in one way or another. The politicians provide a useful service to these rich powerful entities, they can smooth the legal path to make things easier for whoever has their favor. I suspect that Bill Gates never could bring himself to play the game and He is suffering the consequences. If Gates was headquartered in Chicago He wouldn't have been able to ignore the political power structure. They wouldn't have tolerated that <G>. The Daley Family epitomizes the insiders political power with one son as Mayor and the other son in the Commerce Department in Washington DC. Pay careful attention to what happens to the laws that affect DVIN. Hopefully they won't notice us talking about it and come and fit us for those famous chicago cement shoes <G>. I saw that the head of DVIN was quoted as saying that his new DVIN would not make the mistake of trying to own 100% of their subsidiaries because that has a negative effect on the entreprenurial spirit within the subsidiary. I believe that Son has explicitly known that for almost the entirety of Softbank's existence. Son seems to want control (over 50%) of the ventures in his own backyard, but He seems to really only want around 25% of those ventures outside Japan so the owners will still agressively pursue the building of their companies. I could see a small softbank investment in DVIN so they could support their political activities and have the inside knowledge of how it is going. Although it appears that all of these internet zaibatsus are competing against each other in some areas, they probably have some common interests when it comes to politics and the law. If none of these guys will fund your idea, it's probably a really dumb idea <G>.