Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet points out that good startups are still able to get deals done, despite the tough economy. He tells The Deal that Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson and he, co-investors in Boxee, were very pleased with the
$6 million Series B that the media center software developer raised in August, led by new investor General Catalyst Partners.
"There is no such thing as good terms for an illiquid security based on a pie in the sky future scenario," says Will Ray. "I learned my lesson in the 1991 biotech meltdown." "I don't understand why anyone thinks they can still use a story line to create liquidity based on hyper-ritualizations." As for Private Equity, the story-lines have been overdone." "The silver lining in this story is that the public equity and credit markets could boom as investors bring their money back into liquid markets." Too much illiquid stuff has been sold and we are running out of billionaires and funds who want to risk their cash to own this stuff. "I don't see the public market participants inviting any private equity deals in for liquidity to make some guys rich and leave the investor holding Commercial Real Estate and IPO'S below their offering price--(based on my 20 years of Capital Markets experience, and 10 years valuing private equity portfolios,) eventually that means zero."