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 : Net Perceptions, Inc. (NETP) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ynot who wrote (1031)	6/4/1999 1:26:00 PM
From: $Mogul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2908

NETP is in good company. ...... Venture capitalists feel the need for speed By Alex Gove Redherring.com June 1, 1999 You thought you had it rough. According to Adam Dell of Crosspoint Venture Partners, the hot topic among venture capitalists is how busy they are. But Mr. Dell is not complaining -- he is simply reacting to a problem that has become endemic to the venture business: so many deals, so little time. "We are bombarded by so many deals and so much information," Mr. Dell said at Red Herring's Venture 99 conference in Squaw Valley, California. "It's difficult to be strategic as opposed to simply reactive." Crosspoint is not the only VC firm facing this problem. At a panel of venture capitalists, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, Art Marks from New Enterprise Associates, Bob Kagle from Benchmark Capital, Geoffrey Yang of IVP, and Rich Shapero, also of Crosspoint, all bemoaned the business's increasingly fast pace. Competition has obviously heated up. In the past month, three VCs have approached me to ask how fast other venture capitalists are responding to deals. The fear behind their questions was almost palpable. Each VC acknowledged that due diligence has become a thing of the past. Hearing that another firm is interested in a deal has become almost enough of a reason to invest. (That goes double if the rumored suitor is either Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers or Benchmark Capital.) NO PRESSURE, MAN Mr. Dell did not say that Crosspoint feels pressured by its competitors, but the company has tried to increase its response time by concentrating its efforts in a few key areas: e-commerce exchanges, destination sites that "own" the customer (more on that later), and Web casting. Crosspoint does not restrict its bets to these sectors, but by clearly defining and researching segments in which it is interested, it believes it will be able to make more informed investment decisions in a shorter time frame. In order to speed up the process even further, Mr. Dell evaluates deals in terms of "value chains." A value chain is a network of companies that participate in the production, distribution, and sale of a good or service. In the case of a book and a buyer, for example, a few key members of the value chain might include EarthLink (Nasdaq: ELNK), which provides Internet access; Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), which might provide a person's home page; NetGravity (Nasdaq: NETG), which serves up ads for book vendors on sites like Yahoo; Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), which sells the book; Net Perceptions (Nasdaq: NETP), whose software helps Amazon.com evaluate its customer; and United Parcel Service (UPS), which delivers the book.