Edit 1 – Techvibe just put together a more comprehensive list than mine – http://www.techvibes.com/blog/techvibes-comprehensive-list-of-canadian-tech-acquisitions-50-and-counting-2011-06-08. It is an even a bigger year than I thought!
Edit 2 – I have been corrected that the Coradiant acquisition was more likely $100m-$150m. Updated below. Bigger than I thought! Glad to see I was “under-reporting”
Interesting first 6 months to 2011. Check out this list of exits:
Radian6 – $326mm
Coradiant – $100mm (guess – this one has been tougher to size, some searching shows them to be around 100 employees with 10mm revenue?? That Akamai partnership feels pretty strategic though…)
Pushlife – $25mm
Tungle – $20mm (guess off of last raise/valuation)
PostRank – $15mm (consensus guess from asking around)
CoverItLive – $10mm (big guess)
tinyHippos – < $1mm (4 employees)
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About $495mm. Give or take $25mm depending on my math.
Firstly, this is a perfect example of how VC exit math works and the power of a fundmaker like Radian6.
But get this, we are exactly 6 months in and almost half way to…. well… July/August/December all kind of suck for doing deals… buuuutttt… maybe… maybe if I utter the amount… people will dream and we could maybe dreamily hit 1 BILLION DOLLARS in returns this year. Wow, 1 BILLION. Thats nine 0’s.
The Net Value of All Exits for 2011?? (by Adam Crowe, some rights reserved)
We’d need another big mama ala Radian6, and another 4 $20-$30mm exits. I could hazard a guess at a few companies that could exit for $20mm+ today and now, but the big, big question is, where will the big exit come from?
Kobo Books (@kobo)
They just raised $50mm. Not sure about the valuation, but we could size it at say $150mm – $300mm (I’d go higher because they are very young and having a $50mm raise means they have a vertigo inducing growth/revenue curve). And lets not forget the mainstream press chatting about an Apple acquisition. This could be a high 9 figure to billion dollar plus exit if something happens.
Freshbooks (@freshbooks)
They state over 2mm users on their home page. Lets say 10% are paying customers and they pay on average $30/month (looking at their pricing plans). 200k * $30/month * 12 months = $72mm in annual revenue. Even at 5% freemium conversion they are at $36mm. Thats a big customer base and a big chunky, sticky subscription revenue base.
Would love to hear from folks. What other startups do we have hanging about that could do a big exit? Am I missing any of the 2011 exits to date?
nice post here, Dan..and if I come up with a few more, I’ll post here…but in our neck of the woods, ie Hamilton, we’re still in the “angelCamp” areas…least in my way of thinking, eh!
Given that Kobo was spawned out of Indigo and is a pretty key piece of their long-term strategy, I somewhat doubt they would be willing to sell it off?
It’d feel weird if Indigo still controlled the company given the caliber of the team and the other investors/partners involved. I’ll see if I can get an answer from someone.
Dan, send me a DM on Twitter.
I believe the WSJ identified the Coradiant exit closer to $100-$150M. But it’s not technically a Canadian company, it’s HQ is in San Diego. It was founded here though and has a strong presence in Montreal. We can claim it just the same … number is definitely higher than what you’ve got though.
funny, that was the number I remember hearing and what I originally wrote when writing this (and how the halfway to $1B was at $500mm originally… not at $425mm :) ). But when I started searching more I couldn’t find the source, nor did anybody remember the original value, and the best I could find was 100 employees, $10mm revenue from a marketing db… sigh.
Great post!
Great post!
The $290 Million sale of MKS (based in Kitchener, Randall Howard is a founder dating back to the 80’s) in the spring this year puts that total a lot closer to $1 Billion.