Venture Capital Case Study

— Often, venture capital firms preserve an appropriate percentage of their funds to participate in follow-on fund raisings

Shareholders were led to believe that CA was more profitable than it was, and consequently suffered enormous losses. They had either paid more than they should have for the stock, or held on to it when, if they had known the truth, they would have sold it. 12 This extra compensation was at the expense of shareholders. 13 Richards’ actions would be considered unethical under the utilitarianism position, as his actions harms others, and under deontological positions, as he did not follow rules. In this sense, Richards’ actions would be regarded as much more serious under a deontological position, than under a teleological-parochialism position. 14 Accounting flexibility, or financial reporting choice, may also

Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.

Companies such as Enron from approximately 1996 to 2001 were thriving and the stock price rising constantly. Such a move on the company’s stock was attracted millions of investors who wanted to invest in a stable company they could trust. Little did they know that the company with over 60 Billion dollars in market capitalization at one point, was about to collapse. The company’s stock reached a high of approximately 90 dollars per share in 2000, and the following year shares plummeted to less than one dollar. As one can imagine, investors were terrified, millions lost the entire retirement savings, and other were just afraid to trust the financial markets. Enron, and others were taking advantage of the loose accounting regulations to recognize revenue improperly, make use of special purpose entities to create “fake” revenue, and weak corporate governance.

14) Disney’s variable costs are 30% of sales. The company is contemplating an advertising campaign that will cost $22,000. If sales are expected to increase $40,000, by how much will the company's net income increase?

Hart Venture Capital (HVC) specializes in providing venture capital for software development and Internet applications. Currently HVC has two investment opportunities: (1) Security Systems, a firm that needs additional capital to develop an Internet security software package, and (2) Market Analysis, a market research company that needs additional capital to develop a software package for conducting customer satisfaction surveys. In exchange for the Security Systems stock, the firm has asked HVC to provide $600,000 in year 1, $600,000 in year 2, and $350,000 in year 3. In exchange of their stock, Market Analysis has asked HVC to provide $500,000 in year 1, $350,000 in year 2,

One of the major risks facing Telco is their CEO is 70 years old and his son being the CTO could give rise to a conflict of interest. Bryant Dunetz had agreed to step down and allow Valhalla to search for a new CEO. This could be a risky endeavor because Dunetz may either refuse to step down after negotiations or the new CEO may not be a good fit. The other two major risk factors is they do not have a strong executive management team and their competition in this market space is ramping up and soon they will not be the top solutions provider for large corporate telecom equipment and services. With Valhalla having only 25% of the voting rights in the company after the capital issue, they may not have the ability to force their way with the future management. Meanwhile the average time of determining success of a venture capital investment is 18 months. Replacing the entire management team and vetting that process out would take up a significant chunk of that time. Lastly, Valhalla does have to move quickly to get Telco the capital they need to gain as much market share as quickly as possible. The

Mayfield charged a budget-based management fee to appeal to potential LPs. Because industry practice was traditionally a 2/20 based fee, Mayfield had a competitive advantage against other VCs as the budget-based fee was attractive because:

The stock market is what one would know as a collective group of buyers/sellers that trade stocks, also known as shares on a stock exchange. These securities are listed on the exchange itself and trade freely each and every day. On the exchange, stocks move hands day in and day out. Companies are able to get their stock listed on the exchange at any time that they want. There are other stocks, too...known as OTC stocks or over the counter stocks that go through a specific dealer. Larger companies tend to have their stocks listed on exchanges all throughout the world. Participants in the market can be anyone from your grandma, to retail investors, day traders, institutional investors, and so forth. One notable exchange is the NYSE; also known as The New York Stock Exchange. Moving forward, a stock market crash is when a decline of stock prices takes place throughout the stock market that results in a catastrophic loss of wealth via paper. The crashes are driven strictly by panic 9 times out of 10 a crash takes place. As a crash is happening, panic occurs; the panic keeps evolving and ends up like the snowball effect before you know it. A crash occurs when economic events take place. These events are always bad news... The behavior of traders follows, which leads to a crash when panic ensues. Crashes normally occur of a seven day period and may extend even further. Crashes happen in bear markets as the market is already weak to begin with. Once traders see a drop in prices,

Lastly, analysts face agency conflicts. They must maintain relations with the managers of the firms they cover. For this reason, they are prone to pick valuation heuristics tactically, to reach the numbers that will satisfy managers. According to Hersh Shefrin, the solution to agency conflicts involves the arrangement of incentives between principal and agent ; Behavioral phenomena need to be tackled using de- biasing methods.

Growth is usually associated with access to, and conservation of cash while maximising profitable business. People often see venture capital as the magic bullet to fix everything, but it isn't. Owners

Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche

1.What types of people are angel investors, and how are they different from venture capitalists?

1a: The key players in the market; and the types of investments available to both individual investors and institutional investors,

Our aim- to engage with SimVenture; a business simulation that allowed us to build and sell computers through our virtual company named ‘Genesis’. The formation and running of our virtual company integrated us with new venture creation and about being an entrepreneur. It reinforced concepts previously presented in our course lectures and engaged us in a competitive and volatile business environment. SimVenture ran for three virtual years with five members on its team- each with a different role in the company.