What has surprised you about Facebook – especially as it relates to ads lately? It is hard to pin down a general “right time” for a company to sell - it really depends on many factors, including what is going on for the company, the market, the competition, etc.ĭaily News Roundup Should Meta Stop Trying To Make Reels Happen? Competition And Privacy Are Two Sides Of One Coin In the case of, it was a really great fit with Valassis and the right time for the company to partner. Why was it the right time for to sell? When is it the right time for any company to sell for that matter? We invested in a company called SundaySky which is the creator of “ SmartVideo,” a newer, better, smarter way of using video to communicate with prospects and customers.ī, an ad network in which NVP was invested, recently sold to Valassis. We continue to meet with a lot of companies in these sectors – particularly mobile and video. There are still major advertising dollars continuing to shift toward video, social and mobile advertising.We invested this year in The Echo Nest, a company with a massive big data platform of songs and artists that enables app developers to build super smart music apps. We are also seeing the use of big data disrupting new markets. We have looked hard at some neat companies in this arena. We are certainly seeing big data being heavily applied for audience segmentation, real time bidding and dynamic marketing purposes. We like companies that apply big data in novel business approaches that disrupt existing online markets or create new online markets.Stay tuned here – we’ll be announcing shortly another investment in a company which leverages community generated content. We made all of these investments in the last 12 to 24 months. Examples of these companies are the online coupon company WhaleShark/RetailMeNot, the online retailer of customer-designed fine jewelry Gemvara, the innovative online retailer of vintage-inspired fashion and décor Modcloth, and the collaborative invention company Quirky. We like e-commerce companies that offer superior content/products to their customers because they actively involve their user communities in the creation of the very content/products that they offer.That said, we are pursuing investment opportunities around the consumer internet, e-commerce, ad tech, financial tech and information services sectors. We are always looking for exceptional teams with a disruptive business/technology approach to a large market. Has Norwest Venture Partners evolved its investment thesis in the past year?Īt its core, our investment thesis does not change over time. Turn is one such example of a team in ad tech that we backed – Turn operates in a crowded space with a lot of DSP and DMP competitors, but the company is executing well and is scaling rapidly. So, for us as investors, that puts a premium on us backing teams that not only have a strong product/market vision, but can also out-execute the competition. Now, as we just mentioned, each LUMAscape in the ad tech arena is extremely crowded – so crowded that it is really hard for any one firm in a sector to have breakout success and scale to a large outcome. The result is an ongoing, robust level of new company formation and opportunities for venture firms. We don’t believe that the investment opportunities in ad tech have played out, as the overall sector continues to enjoy healthy growth and there are innovative teams pursuing new ideas on a regular basis in ad tech. JEFF CROWE: Yes, we are looking at potential investments in ad tech all the time. The M&A levels in ad tech are going to continue to be elevated for some years to come, and the perceived shakeout will continue.”ĪdExchanger interviewed Crowe on a range of topics recently, including ad tech and venture capital trends.ĪdExchanger: Is Norwest making new investments in advertising technology today? These logos are appearing on the maps just as fast as or faster than they are leaving them. You need a magnifying glass to read all of the logos. He should know as Admeld ( acquired by Google) and ( acquired by Valassis) were NVP companies, and he and his venture firm remain significantly in the game with ad platform Turn.Įven though M&A has slowed in 2012, Crowe says, “Every ad tech sector is still chock-full of companies – just look at any LUMAscape. Norwest Venture Partners‘ Jeff Crowe doesn’t believe the shakeout of mergers and consolidation is over for ad technology.
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