Roundup: Ancestry IPO, exec pay cap in Congress, Verizon’s sub-$99 smartphones
Ancestry.com files for a $75 million IPO – The company, which traces its roots back to Ancestry Magazine and 1983, has collected nearly $400 million to date — $95 in investment rounds, and another $300 million from the sale of a majority stake to Spectrum Equity Investors in 2007. Now, with a claimed $197.6 million in 2008 revenue, and $8 million in profits on $99 million in revenue for the first half of this year, Ancestry is finally cleared for takeoff. PaidContent.org riffles through the paperwork.
Mobile company acquisitions replace Valley investments – Silicon Valley companies invested a high of $1.17 billion in mobile companies in 2007, with another $90,000 put into acquisitions. But in 2008, investment dropped to $851 million. Instead, Valley firms put more than $600 million into acquisitions. Mobile Monday Silicon Valley has posted six pages of chartsngrafs that summarizes investment patterns over the past ten years.
Congress tries to cap financial execs’ pay — The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday that aims to limite executive compensation at large financial institutions with assets over $1 billion. Private equity and venture capital firms will not be affected, reports PEHub.
Photobucket founders leave News Corp. – Alex Welch and Darren Crystal launched their their photo hosting site six years ago, and sold it to Rupert Murdoch’s empire for around $300 million in May 2007. Both founders have announced that they will leave at the end of August, but not even TechCrunch has been able to find out what they’re up to next.
Mobile ad network Jumptap claims to be growing faster than everyone else — The company’s claimed 2.3 billion available monthly impresssions to 22 million unique users place it behind presumed leader AdMob’s 7 billion claim, but Jumptap is at least in the same ballpark as AdMob now. Jumptap issued a press release today in which the company claimed that it expects a 200 percent increase in bookings during Q3 and Q4. Going by a recent Nielsen report, Jumptap reaches 42% of all American moble Web users.
Verizon drops almost all smartphones to below $99 — In an obvious counter to Apple’s $99 iPhone 3G sold by AT&T, Verizon is dropping prices of most of its BlackBerry and HTC phones to $99 or lower. The $299.99 BlackBerry Tour is an exception, but you can now get a Curve for $49.99. Boy Genius Report sifted through the entire store.
