Introducing VentureBoard, a marketplace for start-ups

Matt Marshall | October 10th, 2006

VentureBeat is pleased to introduce VentureBoard, a marketplace for the technology start-up community of Silicon Valley and other regions.

VentureBoard serves two main purposes, and we think it is particularly relevant for the post-YouTube acquisition era.

(1) It is a place where individuals or emerging tech companies can advertise their products, assets or teams for sale and where established companies can find them.

(2) It is a place for service providers, such as financial, debt, accounting, legal and PR companies, to advertise their services, and for emerging companies to locate services they need.

Over the past year, it has become clear that the really big IPOs and sales that used to happen in IT are now few and far between. YouTube’s acquisition by Google is big news in part because it is so rare.

VentureBoard serves thousands of other entrepreneurs, who have built a cool prototype or product, and are now looking for a buyer (and not necessarily going out of business).

Also, it gives the large network of service providers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere a place where they can advertise their offerings — legal, accounting, marketing, office space, and so on — to the start-up community.

ventureboard.bmpAlready, three companies have posted “for sale” listings at VentureBoard (see listings for Open Communications, Zookoda and Nuvvo), and some service providers have listed too. Listings cost $149. We’ll place the most recent listings on the homepage, too, above the Google Maps on the right.

See more details in the “About” section of VentureBoard. You’ll find an FAQ, tips and other issues about listing company assets for sale.

Also worth reading is Brian McConnell’s piece today at VentureBeat’s contributors area. He explains how the idea for VentureBoard came about, and why he wants an alternative to eBay.

We’ve seen a number of Web 2.0 companies list themselves on eBay recently. Fact is, YouTube is an exception. The median acquisition price for venture-backed companies was a mere $47.15 million last year, according to industry tracker VentureOne. That’s pretty low. It is a buyer’s market, because there are so many entrepreneurs who have built cool technologies. It is time entrepreneurs have a way to get exposure to their ideas and plans, and VentureBoard is a way.

Here’s another notable fact: Before the Skype deal, the last time a venture-backed company was bought for more than $1 billion was in 2001, when publicly traded Ciena Corp. bought telecom start-up Cyras Systems for $1.15 billion. This rarity is challenging the venture capital model. Even with MySpace’s robust sale to NewsCorp last year, it wasn’t enough to even push the performance of its major venture backer, VantagePoint into positive territory (see VentureBeat’s story today). Sevin Rosen Funds, another venture firm, has thrown in the towel on raising another fund, saying the environment is “terrible.” Entrepreneurs need different buyers and backers.

They’ve also been telling VentureBeat that they want an alternative to eBay, which requires a seller to accept the highest bidder and live by a specific close date. TechCrunch recently ran a table of these companies:
ebaysales.gif

“Ebay smells a little bit of desperation, Nick McNaughton, founder of Zookoda told us, explaining why he was avoiding the auction site. “We felt it wasn’t allowing us to control our own destiny. We wanted to have a dialogue with our potential acquirer. We wanted to get to know the people. The money side is important, but it is not the most important. We wanted an opportunity for Zookoda to be taken to a good home, cherished, and nurtured and taken to the next step.” He has listed Zookoda for sale at his own site too.

Let us know what you think of VentureBoard, and how we can improve it. We will point to the more relevant listings as they appear, and will develop the Board over time.

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  1. October 10th, 2006
    11:30 am

    GigaOM » VentureBoard Gives Startups Another Option said:

    [...] The assumed options for today’s hordes of tech startups are the rare IPO, acquisition by a large tech or media company, or death. Those are terribly stark terms. Matt Marshall of VentureBeat(née SiliconBeat) just called to say he is trying to help fill the gap with an exit market of his own: VentureBoard. Nice! [...]

  2. October 10th, 2006
    3:23 pm

    VentureBeat » Introducing VentureBoard, a marketplace for start-ups at blackrimglasses.com said:

    [...] VentureBeat » Introducing VentureBoard, a marketplace for start-ups: oh wow! Its garage.com all over again. And we saw how well that ended. Or maybe this is the inverse. Same difference: valuation on nothing but air. I’m beginning to believe Jason Fried’s whole thing: build a product that people pay for. Or maybe that’s just me being cynical. Probably both truth and cynicism in one. [...]

  3. October 10th, 2006
    7:15 pm

    RadioHandi: Up For Sale At VentureBoard -- Alec Saunders .LOG said:

    [...] An interesting experiment is under way over at Venture Beat.  Matt Marshall’s newest creation, VentureBoard, is an outgrowth of VentureBeat, designed to facilitate emerging techology-related transactions. VentureBoard is an experimental forum for emerging technology-related transactions.. We have some ideas about how companies, both buyers and sellers of assets, can create and pursue opportunities initiated on VentureBoard, and are interested to see how this evolves. [...]

  4. October 10th, 2006
    7:52 pm

    Venture Midwest » Under Pressure or Ice Ice Baby? said:

    [...] Hello Readers. Ignorant, slothful, clueless - attach any of these adjectives to my refusal to comment on the newly created behemoth, GoogleTube. Thousands of superior bloggers, journalists, analysts, professors, entrepreneurs, coffee slangers have already commented on the possible ramifications of the first major acquisition in years. Still no IPO, but a significant hurdle for post bubble internet commerce. Without a series of strict ultimatums from American Venture Network’s own T.O., no comments would have appeared. Note to possible abducters: Hours of techno and drum n’ bass rot Andy’s brain. More exciting news is VentureBeat’s release of VentureBoard: A Marketplace for Start-ups. Aside from the YouTube acquistion, many entrepreneurs have valuable products available for more modest sums. VentureBoard enables users to barter, sell, research the array of services within the technology marketplace - legal, finance, angel, etc. Unfortunately the site requires a $149 listing fee, so I will not provide further detail. And no for a shameless advertisement… American Venture Network released a similar service last month entitled American Venture Capital Exchange. The “capital” is accessible to anyone without cost and includes discussions on technology, classifieds, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, marketing, advertising, venture capital…As suggested by the blog title of “Under Pressure or Ice Ice Baby?” - decisions are difficult. Fortunately, history has proved I can enjoy Vanilla Ice and have my Queen too. [...]

  5. October 10th, 2006
    8:03 pm

    Folksonomy.org said:

    VentureBeat Launches VentureBoard

    VentureBeat, a blog about private companies and venture capital, has launched VentureBoard, a “marketplace for the technology start-up community of Silicon Valley and other regions.” VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall states that the board does two t…

  6. October 10th, 2006
    10:15 pm

    Standard Deviations » Startups For Sale: VentureBoard said:

    [...] VentureBeat has launched VentureBoard, “a marketplace for startups”: [...]

  7. October 12th, 2006
    4:42 pm

    網站創業家 vs. 地下樂團 (Mr. 6) said:

    [...] 最近VentureBeat提出一個叫做「VentureBoard」新服務，為小型網站公司提供一個線上買賣市場，在上面買服務、在上面找股東、最後在上面賣掉自己整間公司。顯然，他們看到已有好幾家網站公司選擇在eBay上面把自己賣掉（如Kiko、jux2、DigForIt），但在eBay只能死板的作基本買賣交易，事實上關心這種事情的人也希望同時有其他的服務，譬如投資公司部份股權、多認識此公司、討論區、或法律、財務、行銷等其他專業服務(professional services)，於是「VentureBoard」讓有公司的可以賣公司，有錢的可以買公司，有服務的可以賣服務，所有有興趣的人都可以常常上來聽聽風聲。 [...]

  8. October 16th, 2006
    7:18 pm

    The Wannabe Venture Capitalist » Deal Flow: For the Week Ending October 16, 2006 said:

    [...] VC News: - Sevin Rosen halts latest fund - VentureBeat launches VentureBoard [...]

  9. October 30th, 2006
    4:51 pm

    Plasma Diary - An aggregation of latest updates in Gizmo World! » VentureBeat Launches VentureBoard said:

    [...] VentureBeat Launches VentureBoard By Administrator VentureBeat — Introducing VentureBoard, a marketplace for start-ups Matt Marshall, the former Mercury News journalist who left his career at the Merc to start his own news site VentureBeat, has launched a new marketplace for startups called VentureBoard. According to Marshall VentureBoard does two things: “(1) It is a place where individuals or emerging tech companies can advertise their products, assets or teams for sale and where established companies can find them. (2) It is a place for service providers, such as financial, debt, accounting, legal and PR companies, to advertise their services, and for emerging companies to locate services they need.” Despite the recent news of companies like JumpCut and YouTube being bought out, the reality of the situation is that there are far more internet companies than can be effectively acquired and creating an online marketplace as an alternative to eBay would seem to make some sense. I wonder if this could also become a fertile new place for VCs to prospect for businesses to invest in as well. Good luck on your venture Matt and it will be interesting to see how this one goes. [...]

  10. November 3rd, 2006
    5:31 pm

    VentureBeat » Update on VentureBeat jobs said:

    [...] Since launching our $100,000 plus VentureBeat JobBoard this week, we’ve had several more job listings come in. [...]

9 Comments

  1. October 10th, 2006
    10:51 pm

    David Scott Lewis said:

    Matt, it’s not exactly clear, even from the FAQ, if teams can be “rented” rather than “sold.” For example, our company would be delighted in working with ISVs and provide them with R&D and engineering services development teams, primarily (but not exclusively) in areas like ATCA and related board development (and, quite frankly, just about all things embedded), plus AJAX, LAMP, SaaS, SOA (relatively simple stuff, like point-to-point integration and legacy systems conversion).

    We have teams in place doing this and ready to do more, so is this the kind of thing that can be listed on VentureBoard? What makes our situation somewhat unique, besides our special ties to Tsinghua (China’s MIT; our CEO is the head of outsourcing at Tsinghua and we’re the outsourcing hub for the university — with more to be announced), is that our teams for “rent” can be converted to teams for “sale” since we’re willing (and prefer) a BOT — Build-Operate-Transfer - model. In essence, the “rented” team and be “bought” if the client so chooses (and we handle all the messy stuff about doing business in China, besides the obvious staffing issues).

    What do you think? Are we a good candidate for listing on VentureBoard? Also, it adds a lot of global flavor to VB since we’re a U.S. headquartered operation, but with 95% of our development done within the confines of Tsinghua University. Should we give it a shot and see what happens? We can consider it an experiment for both parties.

  2. October 11th, 2006
    12:31 pm

    GaryV said:

    Matt

    Nice move in adding Venture Board. Some different content is good to differentiate from the others, such as Gigaom and Techcrunch, reporting in the new technology space.

  3. October 11th, 2006
    1:13 pm

    courtney benson said:

    Great idea but I have not received the password. Signed-up earlier today. Let me know if there’s a problem

    Thanks!

  4. October 11th, 2006
    3:56 pm

    Matt Marshall said:

    Hey folks, we received emails from a number of people who have not received passwords during the signup process. It appears there is a problem mainly with people using corporate domain email addresses. We’re working to resolve this as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you’d like to send us a listing by email, please do so, by contacting venturebeat at gmail dot com.

  5. October 17th, 2006
    4:44 am

    Shantanu said:

    Neat idea…I am thinking of what implications it has for VCs

  6. October 3rd, 2007
    3:38 pm

    Angelpm said:

    Nizoral

  7. December 28th, 2007
    5:47 pm

    hunters said:

    twin manga gallery

  8. April 7th, 2008
    1:55 pm

    vertiereuxult said:

    Мне на почту ( helga_krasavitsa@mail.ru ) пришло примерно 300 писем!!
    С такими адрессами - seigam@in-da-start-up.blogspot.com , zig11@in-da-start-up.blogspot.com , unaba@in-da-start-up.blogspot.com … и т.д. их просто очень много!
    Я уже устала все удалять :( Пожалуйста перестаньте мне слать ети письма, в которых написано про какието иностранные таблетки !!!
    Благодарю =\

  9. April 9th, 2008
    4:57 am

    vertiereuxult said:

    Всем доброго времени суток!
    Ув администрация форума in-da-start-up.blogspot.com,
    скажите пожалуйста
    что сделать, чтобы я смогла найти нужную мне информацию на вашем форуме? я незнаю как ето сделать :(
    Спасибки))

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