From All Things D:
Still doubtful about the whole cloud computing thing? Here’s a new metric that should probably change your mind. The combined market capitalization of the Top 30 cloud computing companies is now north of $100 billion.And:
Who says so? Bessemer Venture Partners, that’s who. The venture capital firm known for backing cloud companies like Box and Eloqua has tallied up the valuations of 30 different cloud and software-as-a-service companies that have gone public. And here’s another interesting metric that should get your attention: If they were traded as an index, their shares are up by 168 percent since the start of 2012, beating both the Nasdaq and the Standard & Poor’s 500.
BVP partner Byron Deeter announced the Cloud Index in a blog post today.
The numbers, Deeter argues, slam the door shut on the argument still made by some software companies that running software in the cloud is a fad. “With 30 large public companies collectively representing more than $100 billion in market capitalization and $12.5 billion in estimated 2013 revenue, the cloud computing industry has officially come of age,” he writes.
So, who’s on the list? Well-known cloud companies like Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, Workday and NetSuite form the index’s backbone, with a combined $67.4 billion, but it also includes other more recent entries, like Marketo and Rally Software, both of which bowed in IPOs earlier this year.
There’s also a few you may not have heard of, or which you might not consider to be cloud software companies at first glance. One is AthenaHealth, a company that sells a cloud-based service aimed at managing medical records and running doctors’ offices. Another is LifeLock, the company that helps consumers protect their personal information from misuse....MORE
As I said in 2008, "Ya gotta love these guys for putting this on their website".
Here's our 2012 repost:
Bessemer Venture Partners' Anti-Portfolio
With Bessemer's Jeremy Levine cracking the Top Ten in this year's Forbes' Midas List of tech investors I thought I should reprise one of my favorite posts. From Bessemer Venture Partners:
Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation's oldest venture capital firm, carrying on an unbroken practice of venture capital investing that stretches back to 1911. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.
Over the course of our history, we did invest in a wig company, a french-fry company, and the Lahaina, Ka'anapali & Pacific Railroad. However, we chose to decline these investments, each of which we had the opportunity to invest in, and each of which later blossomed into a tremendously successful company.
Our reasons for passing on these investments varied. In some cases, we were making a conscious act of generosity to another, younger venture firm, down on their luck, who we felt could really use a billion dollars in gains. In other cases, our partners had already run out of spaces on the year's Schedule D and feared that another entry would require them to attach a separate sheet.
Whatever the reason, we would like to honor these companies -- our "anti-portfolio" -- whose phenomenal success inspires us in our ongoing endeavors to build growing businesses. Or, to put it another way: if we had invested in any of these companies, we might not still be working.
Apollo Computer | |
 | (acquired by Hewlett Packard) BVP's Felda Hardymon was offered a small position in the company's last private round, and waved it away: too small a position, he thought, at too high a price. In less than a year it was worth 17x. |
 | BVP had the opportunity to invest in pre-IPO secondary stock in Apple at a $60M valuation. BVP's Neill Brownstein called it "outrageously expensive." |
 | In 1994, Gil Schwed pitched his idea to BVP's David Cowan, who said that Gil would never get distribution in the US. The next year, Check Point got a huge Sun OEM deal and sold $25M of firewall software. |
 | "Stamps? Coins? Comic books? You've GOT to be kidding," thought Cowan. "No-brainer pass." |
 | Incredibly, BVP passed on Federal Express seven times. |
 | Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”...MUCH MORE |
