On Deck for Wednesday: LogMeIn IPO

The Globe has this story about the pending IPO of Woburn-based LogMeIn, a company that makes remote access software for PCs (and also sells a popular iPhone app.) This would be the third venture-backed firm to go out in 2009, following OpenTable and SolarWinds.

Big winners if the company succeeds in raising $100m+ from the public market? Prism VentureWorks and Polaris Venture Partners, two Boston-area VC firms that have been out in the market trying to raise their next funds. Woody Benson represents Prism on the LogMeIn board, and Dave Barrett represents Polaris. And of course, many LogMeIn employees will do well, including CEO Michael Simon.

I mentioned LogMeIn in a Globe column last month about iPhone apps.

Seeking Alpha has this piece analyzing the offering.

Most recent Globe column: The A123 Systems Back-Story

My most recent Globe column delves into the back-story of A123 Systems, the Watertown battery company that is smack in the middle of the plug-in hybrid frenzy, and apparently preparing to go public (though one might ask what's taking them so long with the S-1?)

Here's the opening:

The third time that Ric Fulop asked Howard Anderson to invest in one of his start-ups, there was no good reason for Anderson to say yes. Fulop was forming a company that would reinvent the battery, but Anderson, founder of the Boston forecasting firm the Yankee Group, had already lost millions by investing in Fulop's previous ventures.
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Fulop had come to the United States from Venezuela, where he'd started two companies while still in his teens, and then dropped out of Babson College to dive head-first into the entrepreneurial mosh pit of the late 1990s.

He started a company to stream software to PCs. He started a company to make equipment that would increase the bandwidth of high-speed Internet connections. A third start-up, Broadband2Wireless, aimed to use a network of antennas on rooftops to bring a zippier Internet access alternative to big cities.

The three companies, which together sucked up more than $100 million in funding, all failed. Broadband2Wireless, which filed for Chapter 11 protection about a year after its founding, acquired the nickname "Broadband2Cashless."

I wrote about Broadband2Wireless here, in 2001. And I wrote about Anderson's exit from the VC world here, in 2005. (Can't seem to find the column that chronicled the death of B2W, but this one mentions the CEO's resignation.)

The weekly video for the column is here:

The A123 Systems IPO: Signed, Sealed ... But Not Yet Delivered

Two unnamed sources with close ties to A123 Systems, the Watertown maker of next-gen lithium ion batteries for Black and Decker cordless tools and plug-in hybrid cars, tell me that the company's IPO filing is essentially complete. Once the first quarter numbers are finalized, an S-1 is likely to arrive in the SEC's inbox sometime in the next month or so. The offering could value the company at more than $1 billion. Road show is planned for September; Goldman, JP Morgan, and Merrill are underwriting, I'm told.

A123 Systems has raised more than $150 million since it was founded in 2001. Among the biggest winners from a successful IPO would be North Bridge Venture Partners and Sycamore Networks chairman Desh Deshpande. (North Bridge has a cool video case study on A123.) Sequoia Capital and General Electric are also investors.

Will Wall Street have an appetite for a battery IPO in September? We'll see...

A123 Systems' PR rep, Keith Watson, says, "The company can't comment on anything related to an IPO."

(In the photo is George W. Bush with A123 CEO David Vieau, standing next to a plug-in hybrid Prius that A123's Hymotion division converted. White House photo by Paul Morse.)

VMware Delivers 2007's Best First-Day IPO Performance

VMware, based in Palo Alto but owned by EMC of Hopkinton, went public today. The IPO price was $29, and the stock closed at $51, according to The Wall Street Journal. From the piece:

"Considering their light competition and extreme growth continuing, this may still be a reasonable valuation," said Scott Sweet, managing director of IPOBoutique.com, an IPO-research service in Tampa, Fla., of the company's first-day's gains. Mr. Sweet received shares in the offering for his personal account, but sold them in early trading Tuesday.

Rachel Chalmers, an analyst at technology-research firm the 451 Group, says VMware's virtualization software can reduce office space dedicated to hardware, cut down on the amount of air-conditioning needed to keep servers cool and run upgrades and do maintenance without having to shut down machines. VMware began shipping a new product last year that targets desktop computers, which she says is the next market frontier for virtualization. The company estimates that only 1% of the world's business desktops are currently using virtualization software.

Since its founding in 1998, "VMware has grown faster than any other software company we have come across," says Ms. Chalmers, whose husband is employed by another virtualization-software firm, XenSource.

The Journal also offers a primer on what VMware does, calling it "an unsexy technology with a sexy stock price."