ChannelAdvisor provides software-as-a-service solutions to help retailers and manufacturers integrate, manage, and optimize their merchandise sales across hundreds of online channels, including Amazon, Google, eBay, Bing, Groupon, and Facebook. Customers can build customized solutions or use the “managed services” for help implementing campaigns.

“The e-commerce market has grown significantly over the last several years, as consumers have increasingly shifted their retail purchases from traditional brick and mortar stores to online stores and marketplaces,” the company said in the filing. “This trend has created many opportunities for retailers and manufacturers, but at the same time has resulted in additional complexity and challenges. Retailers and manufacturers seeking new avenues to expand their online sales must manage product data and transactions across hundreds of highly fragmented online channels where data attributes vary, requirements change frequently, and the pace of innovation is rapid and increasing.

The filing also cited a Forrester report that found online consumer spending is expected to increase to $1.1 trillion in 2016, which will grow the need for tools that help merchants navigate the “complex and fragmented” market. ChannelAdvisor’s software supports the full spectrum of e-commerce vendors, including marketplaces, paid search providers, companion shoppers, flex feeds, and social shopping companies. Services like inventory management, reporting and analytics, and content optimization help vendors get the most of their online sales.

According to the S-1, ChannelAdvisor had over 1,900 customers worldwide as of December 31, 2012, and in 2012 alone its customers processed over $3.5 billion in gross merchandise value through the platform.

ChannelAdvisor was founded in 2001 and has raised $75 million to date. Investors include eBay, Advanced Technology Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, Southern Capital Ventures, and New Enterprise Associates. ChannelAdvisor is based in North Carolina.

ChannelAdvisor S-1

Photo Credit: ChannelAdvisor Facebook 

SurveyMonkey makes it simple to create web surveys. It offers tools to design surveys, collect responses, and analyze the data. The company has been around since 1999 and now has more than 14 million users, including huge Fortune 100 brands like Facebook, Audi, and Samsung. The business runs on a subscription model and generates significant profits.

Despite its solid numbers, SurveyMonkey does not have plans to go public. It initiated this “debt and equity recapitalization” to give employees and investors the opportunity to cash out.

“There are a lot of good reasons to go public, but we don’t have them,” said CEO Dave Goldberg in an interview with VentureBeat. “Liquidity is the only reason, and we were able to do this transaction and get people liquidity without going public. We felt if we could raise this money privately and stay private, that it was a better outcome for the company and still good for the shareholder.”

All of the $800 million will go to shareholders, as SurveyMonkey has enough cash to support its own growth and acquisition agenda. Goldberg led this round in conjunction with Tiger Global Management at a valuation of $1.35 billion. Google Inc (not Google Ventures) is also becoming a shareholder. Google is a strategic investor that will be instrumental in supporting SurveyMonkey’s plans for international expansion.

Goldberg said that this is a “pretty unusual” transaction for a Silicon Valley company and was complicated to orchestrate. While many companies are shying away from IPOs or seeking secondary financing, this type of deal on this scope is not feasible for a majority of Internet businesses.

SurveyMonkey, however, has enough consistent revenue that investors and shareholders are comfortable with debt financing because they know it will be paid back. SurveyMonkey raised $100 million in debt financing in 2010, led by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. The debt portion of this $800 million round is anticipated to close in February. It will bring the total capital raised, across equity and debt financing, to $900 million.

Trading started at $9.25 and by midday surpassed $12 and expectations. Yesterday, SolarCity lowered the price of its IPO to $8, down from the $13-$15 range set in November, raising $92 million. Initially, it hoped to surpass $200 million in its IPO. 

The stock, however, took off. This is partly attributable to SolarCity chairman Elon Musk, along with fellow board member Draper Fisher Jurveston, indicating their intent to buy a significant portion of the shares.

Tech IPOs have had mixed results this year. Consumer tech companies like Facebook and Yelp saw their stock go down after their IPOs, while enterprise companies such as Palo Alto Networks and Workday fared well in the public market. But U.S. green tech companies have had a rough year in 2012. The Bloomberg Global Large Solar Index (BISOLAR) of 17 companies declined 36 percent in 2012 as a global oversupply pushed down prices for solar panels by 28 percent.

SolarCity, on the other hand, benefits from cheaper solar panels because it is a financier and leaser, rather than manufacturer. Current clients include Stanford University, Walmart, Ebay, the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Intel.

Shares debuted on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SCTY. Underwriters for the deal include Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Needham & Company, and Roth Capital Partners.

Prior to the IPO, SolarCity raised a whopping $455 million in venture capital.

While seemingly every other popular tech startup is aching to go public, Evernote is playing it slow and steady.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin said he hoped to make the company “IPO-ready” by the end of 2013 while speaking to a group of developers and investors in Tokyo yesterday, the New York Times reports. Once that happens, he still wants to wait several years before going public to truly take advantage of the freedom being private allows.

“This is the time the company can take the most risks, for the next couple of years,” Libin said. “Once you’re a large public company, it’s also very difficult to take big risks, because you have to take report to the market every quarter and the market will punish you for failure.”

The company has 30 million users now, but by the end of next year Libin hopes to reach more than 100 million users and have near $100 million in revenues, the NYT reports.

His statement comes a little over two weeks after the company landed a massive $70 million funding round, which valued it at $1 billion. At the time, Libin said that he could see Evernote being worth $100 billion or more as a public company. Now though, he seems more interested in taking the company places public investors wouldn’t allow.

“Our goal is to take those risks now, and once we figure out the best business model, then we’ll go public, we’ll I.P.O.,” he said. “The whole point is not to be forced into an I.P.O.”

Libin’s stance is particularly interesting today, as Facebook’s IPO dominates the news cycle. Facebook’s offering will earn it billions, but this morning’s surprisingly weak stock performance is already raising questions. By staying private, Evernote can continue to innovate without the scrutiny of the public.

Evernote offers a suite of digital note-taking products with the goal of letting you remember everything. The core Evernote app lets you save pretty much anything — including text, pictures, and other files — to the cloud, which is then accessible from desktop and mobile devices. All of Evernote’s apps are free to use, but the company offers premium features at $5 per month (or $45 per year) rate that gives you larger upload capabilities, offline access, and more.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Evernote has now raised around $166 million.

Photo: Libin at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit 2011/Devindra Hardawar

Right now, it’s illegal for a startup to solicit investors on platforms like Twitter or Kickstarter. But the JOBS Act would change that. For startups raising $1 million or less, anyone can now buy up to $10,000 or 10 percent of the annual income (whichever is less) in equity. (Anyone who wants to get in on the ground floor of my bonsai pets business, send your checks to WeWork Midtown, care of VentureBeat.)

One of the principle drivers behind the IPO filings of Facebook and Zynga was the 500-shareholder rule, a vestige of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, which said that any company with more than 500 shareholders has to open its financials to the SEC like a public company. But under the JOBS Act, anyone who gives $10,000 or less will not count toward this limit. The act also raises the shareholder limit from 500 to 1,000.

Startups can opt to raise as much as $2 million in this manner; but if they go the crowdfunding route, they will have to provide audited financial statements to their investors. And while raising capital from the crowd is pretty nifty on Kickstarter, it has some drawbacks for startups. Here are some highlights from our FAQ on crowdfunding:

First, startups must understand that minority stockholders have certain significant rights under state law, including voting rights, the right to inspect the company’s books and records, the right to bring a derivative claim on behalf of the company, and certain protections against oppression by the controlling stockholders. Indeed, the more stockholders a startup has, the greater the likelihood that a disgruntled stockholder will cause problems, including filing lawsuits.

Second, having hundreds of stockholders is an administrative nightmare and will be time consuming and costly. Presumably, each stockholder will be required to execute a subscription agreement and/or stockholders’ agreement to address key issues such as transfer restrictions, rights of first refusal, and drag-along rights. There will also be administrative issues relating to voting and stock transfer issues.

Third, startups will likely have difficulty raising funds from VCs and other sophisticated investors if they have hundreds of unsophisticated stockholders. Needless to say, few sophisticated investors will want to sit on the board of directors of such a company due to the risks of lawsuits relating to director liability, and I would assume D&O liability insurance rates will skyrocket for these companies.

The JOBS Act also makes it easier for small companies to go public by increasing the offering threshold for companies exemepted from SEC regulation from $5 to $50 million on companies. Additional regulations will be phased in over a five-year period for companies that stay under $1 billion in revenue.

This is a huge win for companies like SecondMarket. Companies can now stay private with twice as many investors and go public with a much smaller revenue stream. That will mean big growth in the small and medium cap IPOs that SecondMarket is counting on to replace the revenue it is losing when Facebook goes public.

Google+, the company’s latest social networking initiative, gives users a good amount of privacy in that it allows you to set restrictions on which people see what updates. But, much like Twitter, users will have a public presence that can be found using Google+.

Google+’s help section frames the issue this way:

The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.

Keep in mind that your full name and gender are the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

Another way Google+ helps with managing privacy is that it allows profiles to be omitted from Google search results. To turn off being in search results, go to the bottom on your profile, click “Search visibility”, then un-check “Help others find my profile in search results.”

Google initially announced that it would delete private profiles back in March, but it was unclear just what the purpose of the move was. Now we know it was to create a better template for Google+ users to work off. Anyone who wants the chance to play in the Google+ sandbox will do so in public.

Do you have any issues with your Google profile being public?

Zipcar is looking to sell around 6.7 million shares when it finally goes public, meaning it could raise somewhere between $93 million and $107 million excluding underwriting costs — higher than its original estimate of a $75 million IPO. Existing Zipcar shareholders are also selling around 1.7 million shares — though none of the proceeds from those sales will go to Zipcar, according to the filing.

There were some questions as to when the company would finally go public after it closed a $21 million funding round led by Meritech capital in December. That funding was designed to clean up its balance sheet and make the stock more appealing to public investors.

The service is available in most cities — cars are kept at various locations across a city in special parking spots. Users sign up for a subscription and then schedule a time and a car to pick up. They receive a card that activates the car and are free to drive it during their scheduled time.

The company has racked up some pretty hefty board members ahead of the IPO. Former AOL CEO and co-founder Steve Case joined Zipcar’s board as part of the most recent funding round. John Mahoney, CFO of office supply chain Staples, is joining the board as well. The company also added Meg Whitman, former eBay chief executive and now partner at storied venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in February.

The updated filing also indicated that Zipcar brought in $186 million in revenue in 2010, up 42 percent from $131 million in 2009. The company still lost $14 million in 2010 — compared to a loss of around $4 million in 2009. That loss comes from Zipcar’s aggressive acquisition strategy — it has bought several car-sharing services to ramp up its operations in other cities. Zipcar most recently picked up London car-sharing service Streetcar and acquired a minority stake in Spanish car-sharing service Avancar. Zipcar also acquired American rival Flexcar in 2007.

To date, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company has raised $59 million to finance its operations.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Pandora, an online radio station, has filed to go public to raise $100 million, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Pandora runs an online service that lets its users pick genres, songs and musical groups and then builds a radio station that caters to that style of music. Users can access the service through a website or a desktop application. Pandora also has applications for the iPhone, Google’s Android mobile operating system and other mobile devices.

Pandora has consistently lost money for the past three years, but that loss tapered off between its 2009 and 2010 fiscal years, according to the filing. Pandora lost $28.2 million in 2009 and $17 million in 2010. The company’s revenue more than doubled between 2009 and 2010 — Pandora brought in $55 million in revenue in 2010, mostly from advertising, compared to only $19 million in 2009.

But the company has been profitable for the past two quarters. Pandora made $1.6 million in the second quarter of its 2011 fiscal year and $1 million in the third quarter, according to the regulatory filing. The company has brought in $90.1 million in revenue as of the first three months of its 2011 fiscal year and has lost only around $300,000.

Advertising has accounted for more than 90 percent of the online radio’s revenue for most of the site’s life, according to the filing. Advertising revenue has dropped to around 87 percent of the company’s total revenue throughout 2010.

Subscription revenue was up by nearly 500 percent between 2009 and 2010. Subscriptions cost $36 per year and wipe out advertising on the site and applications. Pandora brought in about $5 million from subscriptions in 2010, compared to $1.1 million in 2009. The online radio site has more than 80 million users in the United States and 800,000 songs in its online database, according to the filing.

Pandora announced in April 2009 that it has passed the 50 million-user mark and has raised $56 million from investors like GGV Capital and Allen & Company. Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan are listed as the lead underwriters for the IPO. The company is based in Oakland, Calif.