It's been a while

Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 12:49 pm

There are lots of things to talk about in M&A and at little ol’ Peachtree. We’ve signed up a few deals and closed one transaction thus far (ok, you got me…it is really a straggler from 2009). Most importantly, we are in the final throes of joining FINRA and getting our broker-dealer license. Watch out Goldman Sachs, because I’m going to be gunning straight for the Mark McGuire of investment banking. I am actually going to be gunning for every investment bank that said to their customers “at least you got 100 cents on the dollar” for all the risk they took buying up these toxic assets and allowing insurance companies via the taxpayer to foot the bill. That’s like saying at least you got $500K from the SPIC to everyone who lost their money with Bernie Madoff.

That is just terrible advice. These guys are not the smartest guys in the room, they are a bunch of pin-heads and I am going to mount a social media publicity campaign to prove it.

Peachtree Media Advisors, Inc. is the new honest investment bank that will soon be able to provide all of the products and services of a bulge bracket. Keep your eye out for us. This firm is going to use digital media tools to lower transaction and marketing fees substantially, while providing significantly better service with more transparent and provide better service for all consumer facing securities products. Most importantly, we’re going to provide regular people, money mangers and financial institutions with sound investment advice in simplified formats while taking responsibility for our actions.

Back to the fundamentals. A safe and honest place to put your money and truly receive sound financial advice. No “trickery” here and clients will never be advised to purchase an insurance policy alongside a AAA-rated product. The word genius is the last word that comes to mind. Scumbag is more like it.

Posted in Investment Banking | Leave a Comment »

DST Investments: Earth to Russia or Earth to U-S?

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 pm

I am not claiming to know any more than you about the Russian Internet-focused investment group, Digital Sky Technologies (DST). Yet it doesn’t even take a curious reader to notice a headline or two about DST’s noteworthy stake of roughly 5% in Facebook, and its fresh investment in Zynga.

I discovered two things from my recent visit to DST’s website. Having invested around $1 billion in digital over the past several years, the firm certainly qualifies as a big player in the investment space, although not one of the all-time biggest, when judging by investment size. My second observation was that the DST guys have demonstrated a “classic” taste in investments by choosing proven, established, trademark kinds of companies. In addition to Facebook, these investors have placed their money in ”@mail.ru,” Russia’s largest free email service; “Vkontakte.ru,” a simplistic knock-off of Facebook in terms of content, but just as popular as the real thing among Russian youth; Forticom, which owns “Odnoklassniki.ru,” among others (this social network is positioned with “Vkontakte” pretty much like MySpace is with Facebook).

The “Vkontakte” site, like a fake bag missing some defining trinkets, resembles more of a computer program than the virtual universe that Facebook managed to create. The Russian site doesn’t have as many features as Facebook or any of the social applications we are constantly being bombarded with as users. Perhaps it isn’t too unreasonable to claim that nothing meaningful has been gained from any of the 300,000 active social apps on Facebook. Yet the presence of this staggering figure implies that users must be using the apps, either by choice or maybe even “by accident,” as dozens of app invitations tend to surface on people’s homepages, begging for a click. Zynga, DST’s most recent investment, owns 5 out of the top 10 apps on the site, including FarmVille, which many network users publicly claim to have gotten sucked into. So it follows that Zynga has been growing more and more interlinked with Facebook, probably inspiring DST through its association with Facebook to also invest.

At the same time, DST must have considered the recent favorable trends in the Applications sub-sector of digital media, which Zynga relates strongly to, especially when considering the company in the context of its connection with Facebook. The Web and social applications category dominated in terms of category deal value in 2009 with $2.8 billion, as well as in terms of deal volume, which also increased by a substantial 63% over the prior year. Consequentially, DST was likely to see this point in time as a good one to invest in a social media application- related company.

Thus, it seems evident that DST’s investment strategy is quite logical, and the widespread speculation about the firm being poised to become an even bigger player in the investment field in 2010 is not irrational. DST Investments: Earth to U-S.

Posted in Digital Media, Investment Banking, Venture Capital | Leave a Comment »

Twitter — I mean, Web 2.0 — Expo

Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 5:20 pm

Peachtree has lately busied itself making rounds at November conferences. Following a successful ad:tech NY 2009, we attended the Web 2.0 Expo last week in New York. Introducing myself to other attendees at these conferences is always fun; the term “investment bank” more often than not elicits a response of discombobulation invariably followed by a valiant attempt to decipher the code: “Oh, like real estate investments.” Anyway, I digress. Since Elena has already provided a comprehensive recap of the ad:tech proceedings, I’m skipping over ad:tech to offer some Web 2.0 musings.

In contrast to ad:tech, which consisted of advertising, advertising, and (gasp) more advertising, Web 2.0 explored a plethora of topics ranging from social media to mobile to government 2.0. And in case you were wondering, yes, much of the attention centered upon Twitter and Facebook, resident darlings of Web 2.0 as we know it. To make sure you didn’t miss Twitter, the folks at Web 2.0 were so kind as to provide a theater-sized live Twitter feed behind the podium during keynote sessions.

Baratunde Thurstone, comedian and web editor of The Onion, then fed the Twitter-hungry attendees (“the twitterati”) a serving of hashtag lunch during a Wednesday keynote, which they promptly ate up. In case you aren’t familiar with Twitterspeak, hashtags are a way of grouping tweets (#dogs would be a way of identifying your tweet as dogs-related), and also what Thurston calls ”mini grassroots movements.” Possibly offering more comedy than substance, Thurston used case studies of, amongst others, #SwineFlu, #WorldsThinnestBooks, and #RejectedPalinTitles to demonstrate the viral nature of hashtags. If you can spare fifteen minutes of your life, the complete presentation is here.

Alas, the conference did not pass without hashtags rearing its ugly head as well. The aforementioned live Twitter feed enabled audience members to broadcast tweets on-screen by applying the #w2e hashtag. As tweets flooded the feed during keynotes, the experiment not only illuminated the power of Web 2.0 technology but also served as a fantastic medium for instant feedback — that is, until Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd started speaking too fast for the crowd’s liking during her keynote entitled, “Streams of Content, Limited Attention.” What began as several tweets requesting a slower place quickly escalated into full-blown ridicule of her presentation skills complete with incessant laughter as members of the twitterati excitedly joined the spectacle. Funny maybe, for the twitterati, but certainly rude and humiliating to Danah, who could not see the tweets behind her and later blogged that her presentation “sucked.”

Of course, some other things happened at Web 2.0 as well. Anil Dash delighted that the government is finally warming to embrace new media and Gina Trapini kind of explained how Google Wave works, but make no mistake, Twitter and its band of twitterati brought out the best and worst of Web 2.0 Expo. Which, actually, serves as a microcosm for the world we live in today.

Posted in Digital Media, Events | Leave a Comment »

Why is Everyone Picking on Social Media?

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 11:13 pm

Ad-tech SF was a solid event that is still one of the better shows for meeting people in the industry and listening to diverse panel opinions. Ad-tech seems to be one of the few shows to focus on the industry as a whole, as opposed to other shows which stroke the egos of meglo-maniac event coordinators while focusing on their biggest sponsors. Without saying any names, it was truly refreshing to see this year’s ad-tech event.

One of the panels discussed the state of the industry and seemed to really have a problem with social media. The panel was moderated by Randall Rothenberg and included Jeff Berman of Myspace, Rishad “the man” Tobaccowala, Carol Kruse of Coca Cola and Neil Ashe, CBS Interactive. Besides Jeff Berman, the panel treated social media like a cute little toy that really could not be a marketing tool for a big brand. One of the panelists, I believe Rishad, said that social media was neither social nor media. Even though he made a good point. Ouch. In addition, Carol Kruse spoke about the now famous Coca Cola Facebook page, and basically said that outside of Susan Boyle, she really did not see what social media could do for big brands. One person even said, “I cringe every time I hear the term viral marketing.”

Social Media could very well be the Rudy of the digital media world, but I’m gonna stick with it. More importantly, it was sad to see big bad Coca Cola poo poo social media. Well, I shouldn’t say poo poo, Carol said they were in a learning phase and that it was too early for them to start allocating serious dollars to social media. But as a marketing juggernaut, Coca Cola should be everywhere eyeballs are. Especially a significantly higher proportion of younger eyeballs.

I do not think this is the beginning of the end for Coke, but I think it is the end of their dominance. This type of stubborness leaves the door wide open for other products to introduce themselves to consumers at a fraction of the cost. I may just have to let all of my closest friends know about this delightful beverage I had called Honest Tea with lunch today. Media is not the only thing becoming personalized and everyone roots for the underdog.

Posted in Digital Media | Leave a Comment »

Sectors

Popular Tags