investment

January 30th, 2011

Short Trip in KL

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Made a last min trip to KL for an important meeting (very fruitful). Closed 2 deals while traveling. Unfortunately, I cannot say what it is here yet but I am very excited!

Still have 2 pending transactions, one looks like will have to close next week (during CNY) and one will definitely be after CNY.

Just send my family back to Singapore in the afternoon and now waiting for my flight back to Beijing. Still have lots of work today back in China…

Update 3rd Feb: one of the deal was just announced: Softbank took 35% stake in PPLIVE for US$250m. (also known as PPTV)

Update 27th Feb: another deal was announced: 24券网宣布获得千万级美元注资 (24quan.com is a GroupOn-clone in China)

March 15th, 2009

The End of Wall Street’s Bloom

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Stuck with day-to-day fire fighting, I finally got around to read the excellent article by Michael Lewis.

It is a wonderful article of how the whole financial sector breakdown, to the world we have today, in simple terms of how CDO and CDS adds to the mess we are in. (I understand CDO, but I never fully grasp the implication of CDS until I read this article)

Actually, I was made aware of something called “sub-prime problem” in US in late 2006 by a very smart investor I worked with. He told it is going to be the biggest problem the world going to face and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how a lending problem in US could lead to a worldwide breakdown. I also remember sitting down with some analysts over lunch in mid 2007 trying to make sense of this subprime thing, and we never got it except to get out of the market.

I remember asking “If something going to crash, then someone somewhere going to made money”. I don’t know how back then and wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. I didn’t bother to dig further either (not my field anyway).

But it all make sense now and I wish I did ask a lot more questions then.


[I wrote the following and then deleted it, and then wth, I am not giving out anything that is important anyway]

While I lost money in the crisis, I am a little proud I wrote the following in 15th Aug 2007 for an investment report I made for my investor.

“The other risk is timing of the IPO. Many market analysts believe that the US market has being growing for too long and the housing loans problem will bring a major correction to the US market within this year. We must be prepared that the (COMPANY) may not be able to go IPO in 2008 as planned.”

May 21st, 2008

Deal Flow Is Dead, Long Live Thesis Driven Investing

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This flow-centric business model made a tremendous amount of sense when the venture industry was relatively small and immature.  Back then, there were only a handful of competitors and funds were relatively modest in size.  For example, in 1980 there were only 183 venture capital firms and each firm had an average of only $41.6M under management.  Given this, as well as the immaturity of venture capital as an asset class in 1980, it’s probably safe to say that venture capital in 1980 was a true “buyer’s market” with more demand for capital than supply.   Perhaps more importantly, the investable landscape for venture capital, particularly technology venture capital, was both “thin” and “shallow”.  It was “thin” in that there were only a few sectors one could invest in.  It was “shallow” in that each sector was quite small and often only composed of a few companies. link »

For the rest of the industry, deal-flow based business models are now unsustainable thanks to two simple facts: 1. The venture industry simply is too big and too competitive for any firm to sit back wait for deals to come to them.  2. There is so much money in the industry now that any firm that is waiting for “hot” deal flow will likely find itself in the midst of a ruinous bidding war. link »

– from Burnham’s Beat: Deal Flow Is Dead, Long Live Thesis Driven Investing via sharedcopy.com