Top venture firms of 1998
By Cheryl J. Myers [email protected]
Red Herring magazine supplement, July 1999 issue
COPYRIGHT =C2=A9 1998 RED HERRING COMMUNICATIONS.
The venture capital business is risky, but it's easy to forget that fact
when Internet companies with virtually no earnings are raising record
amounts of cash through initial public offerings, and when private
technology companies are acquired for similarly impressive amounts. While
IPOs saw some rocky times last year, many VC firms still earned impressiv=
e
returns through their portfolio companies' IPOs.
Departing from the method used in last year's issue, this time Going Publ=
ic
ranks 1998's top VC firms by the percentage gain of the stock of its
technology portfolio IPOs from the time of the IPO until year-end. We cho=
se
this measure rather than market capitalization gain so as not to exclude
smaller issues with remarkable percentage gains. One drawback of this
method, under current market conditions, is that the stock of companies t=
hat
went public later in the year had less time to appreciate; the method als=
o
disregards mergers and acquisitions -- often a lucrative exit strategy fo=
r
VCs but one that cannot be compared using the same criteria. Our latest
rankings, which were compiled by Venture Economics, are based solely on
venture-backed IPOs and exclude companies that conduct most of their
business outside the United States, as we have done in the past.
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full article and rankings available at
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue68S/vc/vc-feature-vc98-home.html
Tushar J. Mehta
email: [email protected]
voicemail: (206) 405-2335