AirBnB Pivots to “Virtual Experiences”, Lands $1 Billion Down Round

Posted on April 12, 2020April 12, 2020 by Elon Theranos Esq.

AirBnB, the tech unicorn that monetizes your spare room has been hit hard by the Coronavirus academic. As the company and the phenomenon grew, more and more “investors” levered up to buy more properties to rent out short term. Some becoming so-called “super-hosts”, running dozens or even hundreds of rental units. There even emerged a phenomenon, of “STR arbitrage“, which is Short Term Rental Arbitrage: taking out long term leases on properties you don’t own,…

Unicorns Jump The Shark: WeWork IPO In Danger of being Shelved

Posted on September 10, 2019September 10, 2019 by Elon Theranos Esq.

For some reason the investing public seems to be giving the WeWork IPO a suboptimal reception. After multiple reductions in the IPO sticker price, from 40B down to 20B and now perhaps even less, the lead investor Softbank is recommending that the IPO be shelved. For some reason when the CEO cashes out 700 million ahead of the IPO in a company whose losses exceed total revenues people aren’t overly eager to put in more money….

Ola raises $300 million in a down-round

Posted on March 2, 2017March 2, 2017 by Elon Theranos Esq.

India’s Uber-wanna-be for cabs, Ola capitulated and took $300 million from existing hostage investor, Softbank at a $3.5B valuations, after 6 months of unsuccessfully scouring for $500M at a $5B valuation. They’ve raised $1.2B to date.

India: Funding rounds are revenue after all

Posted on June 7, 2016June 7, 2016 by Elon Theranos Esq.

The tag line for this site is “True Fact: Funding rounds are not revenue”, except in India, where a new tax code law has deemed that funding rounds that take place “at above fair value” are indeed income. The new rule applies to startups that have undergone a down round. If the preceding round was not from a VC firm registered with the Indian securities regulator (in other words it was from an angel…

Glassdoor CEO redefines down-round as “modest up round”.

Posted on June 3, 2016June 7, 2016 by Elon Theranos Esq.

In a $40 million dollar funding round at a lower share price (a.k.a “a down round”) Glassdoor CEO went on record to say “We view this as a slight up round” (I guess you can add diluting shares to inflate market cap to the alchemical bag of tricks in this wonderful New Economy). Still, with shares down 6.3% in this round, they are still clobbering their publicly traded Unicorn peers such as LinkedIn and Yelp….

Bids for Yahoo several Billions short of expectations

Posted on May 20, 2016May 20, 2016 by Elon Theranos Esq.

We’ll file this one under “down rounds” given that not long ago Yahoo spurned a $45 Billion offer from Microsoft, early bids for Yahoo are coming in the 2 or 3 billion range .Remember, Yahoo recently bought Tumblr for presumably $1 billion (does that mean all that “value added” by the acquisition has made Tumblr the entire company?).