IPO Bill to Open up capital markets for Small Business

Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) voted in a dramatically bipartisan manor in favor of H.R. 3606, the “Reopening American Capital Markets to Emerging Growth Companies Act of 2011.” The vote to move this legislation forward to the full House for consideration was 54-1.
This legislation provides a regulatory on-ramp for emerging growth companies seeking to go public on the U.S. market and allows these companies to better communicate with potential investors pre- and post-IPO. The NVCA has long supported this bill - as well as the Senate version, S. 1933, and we expressed this support jointly with the NYSE in a letter to the HFSC Chairman Bachus and Ranking Member Frank, sent yesterday. Of particular note, we applaud the bipartisan approach and leadership shown during the Committee process by Congressmen Stephen Fincher (R-TN) and John Carney (D-DE) on the bill, which was reflected in the nearly unanimous vote of approval. We remain extremely encouraged by the strong and growing bipartisan support for this bill and hope the full House will quickly add its weight behind this measure.

As mentioned, S. 1933, introduced by Senators Schumer (D-NY), Toomey, (R-PA) Warner (D-VA) and Crapo (R-ID) is under consideration by the Senate Banking Committee. We hope that yesterday's strong action will encourage that committee to also move forward expeditiously.

As the venture-backed IPO market remains slow in terms of volume in 2012, we believe that these bills will encourage more companies to pursue an IPO without sacrificing investor safety or confidence. We will keep you apprised of all developments here at NVCAccess.

IPO Bill HR 3606 Passes House Committee

Major Breakthrough in Alzheimer's Disease from Case Western Reserve University

Report Tallies $7.7 Billion In SoCal IT Exits In 2011

A new report released today tallies up $7.7 billion in IT exits in 2011, the highest since 2000, for Southern California IT firms. The report--compiled by Ocean Road Partners--included both venture-backed and self-financed information technology companies. According to the report, the biggest exit during 2011 was for Greent Dot, which provided liquidity of $2 billion for its pre-IPO investors, the highest of any exit since 2000. The exit was the eighth highest in the database, according to Ocean Road Partners. Green Dot's backers included Sequoia Capital, Total Technology Ventures, and the Tech Coast Angels.

Compared with 2010, the report found an increase of 296 percent over exits in 2010, when $2.6 billion in liquidity was generated in the sector. Both years were well above 2009, which had a low of only $475M in exits. During 2011, the analysis identified 73 exits by companies, with an average value of approximately $106M. Among other major 2011 exits listed were Riot Games ($400 million) and HauteLook ($270 million). The report also tallied six companies having IPOs, the most since 2005; those firms included RealD, Cornerstone OnDemand, Demand Media, ReachLocal and Inphi Corp.

Read more here: Report Tallies $7.7 Billion In SoCal IT Exits In 2011 | socalTECH.com

[VIDEO] The Ultimate Herd - Big Data overtakes Social Media

With the filing of the Facebook IPO, it looks like the social media space is maturing. Now comes the question: who is going to deal with all this data that social media is generating? how are we going to measure the live reaction of consumers to events? A whole slew of new startups are tackling three new areas:

• “Big Data”, which involves ramping up the processing power of sorting through mountains of consumer data. 
• “Machine-to-Machine” communications. These new technologies include sensors on home fuel tanks that can signal to oil-delivery companies when they need refilling.
• “Internet of Things”, Internet-connected devices that collect data and communicate with other physical devices. 

"Big Data" development relies on the constantly dropping costs of hardware and storage. But processing power to run this data on simultaneous or live basis is a whole new discipline that scientists, mathematicians and programmers are innovating in with new algorythms.

"Machine-to-Machine" relies on the advent of communicating devices and robotics. This can start from a simple chip on a product and move all the way to sophisticated robots that can execute a complex emergency process.

"Internet of Things" can be considered a subset of the previous category, however due to its broad base of consumers on the internet, it is starting to become its own category.

Where are we going with this? is this transparency going to take our lives to a whole new level of "The Herd Mentality"? we are certainly going in that direction, and rapidly...