Mentor Graphics: LBO Recommended

Our third company in the EDA review is Mentor Graphics (MENT). As I said in the Cadence piece, if any company in the EDA industry is perfect for an LBO, it is Mentor Graphics. It has at least two excellent franchises – DFM and PCB design – and other players in the industry would be

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Cadence: Buyout Rumors Persist

I have regularly commented on the EDA industry and discussed specific companies in the past, including Cadence, Mentor, Magma, and Synopsys. Today I come back to look at Cadence again, and examine what has changed since. During the summer Cadence (CDNS) was rumored to be in buyout discussions with Blackstone and KKR, which I said

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Indian Entrepreneurship Blogs

Here are some of the blogs that report or reflect on the Indian entrepreneurship phenomenon. I tend to keep an eye on these (and others), along with numerous offline conversations, to stay on top of the trends developing in the business. Venture Woods: India’s leading VC and Entrepreneurship blog with a vast host of experienced

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Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 3)

SM: Was Saber under American Airlines or on its own? JK: Saber, by that time, was a public company. It was not controlled by American Airlines anymore. The Chief Financial officer at United had the idea that the airline industry needed to form its own competitor to Travelocity and Saber, otherwise the industry would be

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Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 11)

SM: So services as a key strategic initiative you think is still in beta! EB: Well, this was a core opportunity. In the Spring of 2005, at an annual strategy board meeting, it was decided that a key goal for the company would be in the subscription area. We had not been able to execute

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Cracking the Very Small Business Market: PayCycle CEO Jim Heeger (Part 11)

SM: I was reading an article about how a lot of startups are using credit cards to finance their early days. American Express is a very common way of financing startups, and I have used it myself. JH: Rene used to use that as well. It was a big day when he got his name

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Web 3.0 & McClatchy (Part 4)

Acquisition Targets McClatchy’s strongest asset is CareerBuilder. Though CareerBuilder is the number one job site in the US it lacks community features and McClatchy along with its partners could consider acquiring professional networkin sites like LinkedIn, Xing, etc., which have very good community features to enhance CareerBuilder. Sequoia Capital, Greylock, the European Founders Fund, and

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VC Compensation & Returns

As part of the VC-Entrepreneur Compensation disbalance discussion, my friend Sunil Bhargava of Tandem Entrepreneurs (check out what they do) sent me the following chart, showing some concrete data on VC compensation, and Private Equity industry performance: VC Compensations: Rising