Jon Spinney has been tracking M&A activity in the LBS world for about 4 years, kind of as a hobby. He has been good enough to make the information public; you can find the spreadsheet here. For many of us in the business, it has been a great resource and as interest in the location market grows, I find it one of the really good, free sources if information on who is buying what and for how much. Sometimes that historical perspective can be very useful. There's not much commentary on the why, but that can happen elsewhere.
For a variety of reasons, Jon has decided that he wants to pass on the management of the list and I have agreed to take it on an maintain it. Jon's blog on the transition is here. There's also a very cool graphic showing M&A activity by year that you may enjoy.
My involvement and goals will be much the same as Jon's.
I am doing it as a volunteer but will do my best to maintain it as a useful list
I will continue to make it available for free
So my thanks to Jon for all his good work. Take a look at the spreadsheet. Download it if you'd like to play with it. Mostly, please help me keep it current. If you see or hear of anything that should be included, let me know. As the "location" business spreads out, it's less clear what should and shouldn't be on the list but that's where judgment comes in. For better or worse, the list is now subject to mine, but I am open to input.
I was also thinking of doing a similar list of financings in the LBS space. that's a much more complex world, but let me know if that would be interesting. Or if it's already done elsewhere, let me know where.
I've been hearing about an underground discussion among the tech crowd called the Billie Ray Valentine Contest. I am not the originator of the contest but since it seems only to be passed on in the crowded hallways of tech conferences, I thought I'd explain it here.
Who is Billie Ray Valentine?
Billie Ray is the Eddie Murphy character in the movie Trading Places. Think Dan Ackroyd and "Lookin' Good, Billie Ray".
The story line in Trading Places is that the Duke Brothers (evil Investment Bankers) bet each other "the standard amount" ($1) that they can take a bum off the street and make him into a Wall Street Wonder. Billie Ray gets picked after he tries to rob their exclusive club and they proceed to make him into a star trader, to the detriment of Louis (Dan Ackroyd) and the benefit of the general viewing audience via copious coverage of Jamie Lee Curtis, back in the day before she was pushing digestive-friendly yogurt, if you know what I mean.
What's that got to do with Tech? Believe it or not, there is a feeling that the opinion makers of technology sometimes get it wrong. In fairness, a lot has to do with jealousy. But fairness is always a lot less fun than unfairness so here we go. Let's assign roles for the technology crowd:
Think of Duke #1 as a Tech Pundarrati (played by, say..Michael Arrington, but you could cast Om Malik, RWW or any number of others) and Duke #2 as a rock-star Angel (starring maybe Ron Conway, Dave McClure, etc.). They bet the standard amount that by Duke #1 doing some on-line drooling about the New New Thing and Duke #2 investing a modest amount ($20K, $10K, $10...does it matter?) in some useless company, they can launch it into the techno-stratosphere. Not sure who the Dan Ackroyd character is, and if you're wondering who the Jamie Lee Curtis character is, she doesn't exist, at least not in any tech crowds I am in.
The object of the game is: Who would you cast as Billie Ray Valentine?
I'll leave it to someone smarter than me to figure out how to run the game online but chime in in the comments if you want. Maybe it needs categories like the Academy Awards. I'm in the location business and I've heard a few nominations in that genre.
I have worked in the location business for 15 years, starting when you had to tell people what GPS was. I help companies involved with (or wanting to be involved with) the geo market in the areas of marketing strategy, M&A and Corporate Development. I blog sporadically.
