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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MileHigh who wrote (15585)	2/14/1999 10:02:00 AM
From: REH	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

2/14/99 - Most Silicon Valley Ventures Beat the Odds Feb. 14 (San Jose Mercury News/KRTBN)--Invite Silicon Valley"s venture-backed companies to a five-year reckoning, and you"ll get a class reunion that spans the spectrum between flourishing and faltering. Front and center would be the big successes, flanked by solid careerists and a few eccentric dreamers. Among the no-shows would be the dropouts and the bankrupt. And during the festivities, the crowd would pause to remember departed classmates. Five years ago, in the final quarter of 1993, venture capitalists invested $261 million in 63 Silicon Valley companies, an upbeat quarter then -- though less than one-fourth the pace of last quarter. Whatever happened to those ventures? How many prospered and how many stumbled? And what sets apart success from failure? To answer those questions, the Mercury News examined the fate of those 63 companies, nearly two-thirds of which survive independently. One result: a snapshot of the way the pre-Internet generation has evolved. The history of those companies suggests that no one single factor determines success or failure. Instead, their fate hinged on a variety of crosscurrents -- the market niche, the management team and the embrace of key customers. First, the numbers: A total of 26, or more than 40 percent, went public, bringing their investors and founders almost instant wealth. Sixteen, including three of the public companies, merged with other companies. Only six are dead. Though the story isn"t over, those numbers handily beat the usual VC odds. If the class had followed the rule of thumb, it would have had half the number of public successes and two or three times the number of failures. The biggest single success is probably Rambus Inc., a Mountain View chip technology company that went public in May 1997 at $12 a share and finished Friday at $74.13 giving it a market cap of $1.71 billion. A crucial factor in Rambus" success was winning the imprimatur of Intel Corp., the valley"s most influential chip maker, which said it would use the company"s technology with its higher-speed chips. reh