And this shift will also determine whether some of them can become billion-dollar startups on their own, or become a high-valuation acquisition target for large enterprise software companies such as SAP and Oracle.
While many startup founders would probably rather watch paint dry (or build their companies) than dive into complex tax code changes, the provisions in the bill could greatly improve the ability of startups to invest in growth activity, and could drive meaningfully positive impacts to valuations, acquisition prices, capital markets participation and venture returns.
Cisco's shares had dropped earlier in the week after an article in Barron's questioned the company's high valuation and acquisition strategy.
Earlier in the week, its shares fell after an article in Barron's questioned the company's high valuation and acquisition strategy.
Groupon once enjoyed a skyrocket valuation, rebuffed acquisition offers from Google and had a bubbly IPO with shares popping 40% and valuing the company at nearly $18 billion.
Well as Christine Heron points out, Instagram may have been using the A-list investment to drive up the company's valuation during acquisition negotiations, and vice versa.
Both late-stage valuations and acquisition price tags are going up.
Now that the hype machine has spun down, winners have been declared, and there have been a few valuations and acquisitions to benchmark, we can clearly see that the results have been nothing short of disappointing.
For those of you out there who want a quick breakdown of the basics, here is my abridged version of how to calculate an acquisition valuation: Acqui-hire value + return of investor capital + premium = total acquisition valuation.
We're allowed into the boardrooms of Facebook and DropBox and SalesForce, places usually hidden behind obscure jargon like "valuation" and "blended acquisition costs".
Acquisitions include payments gateway Braintree, which was sold to eBay for $800 million; the sale of a 51% by Finnish gaming company SuperCell to Softbank for $1.53 billion, representing a $3 billion valuation; and the acquisition of MoPub by Twitter for a reported $350 million.
