The short answer is no. They will have an extremely successful IPO on launch day followed by volatility for a month. How they handle the volatility will determine how successful it will be long-term, but the first few months will be measured on “how” rather than “if it’ll be” successful. The longer answer is a bit more disconcerting and may make the long-term prospects for a Facebook IPO look something like what is happening with Groupon (pictured above). The fourth amendment to their S-1 filing with the SEC revealed some risks that many had speculated about but nobody knew for sure until Monday….

Everyone has startup fever again after Facebook’s huge purchase of Instagram last week, perfect timing for Path to announce a $30 million round of funding led by Redpoint. “We are delighted to announce that last week we closed a significant round of funding with a new set of investor partners,” CEO Dave Morin. “It is important to us to work with investment partners who share common values around quality and building for the long term. Our ‘Path’ has only just begun, and we are looking forward to continuing to bring world-class design and simplicity to the world of mobile personal…

Things didn’t look good for Bill Nguyen’s latest startup, Color. They announced their funding on March 23rd of last year and by the next day there were bloggers and tech journalists all asking pretty much the same question: “How does an iPhone photo-sharing app land that kind of money before showing that they have something special?” When a satirical pitch deck emerges making fun of your app and more specifically the people who invested in it, things are bound to get ugly. It’s been a year since the launch. Did the app prove to be successful? Did they prove the silly naysayers wrong? Are they on the…

Investing in technology is always a gamble. It goes up and down, both in the amount of money invested as well as the number of investors themselves. We’ve recently seen a large influx of money being invested that has been replaced by a more recent freeze due to America’s financial woes. That can be expected. What isn’t as expected (and much more alarming) is the increase in the number of employees at the tech companies themselves cashing out their shares. There’s nothing better than inside information. Insider trading may be illegal, but when employees with equity sell of their shares, it’s a sign…

Shares of online real estate service Zillow more than doubled in their initial public offering on Wednesday, following the same path as other prominent Internet companies that have recently gone public. Zillow priced its offering at $20 per share on Tuesday night, but demand pushed shares up to $57 upon opening on Wednesday. Shares briefly soared above $60 before settling back to around $38 per share in midday trading. Zillow’s initial public offering follows filings by a slew high-profile Internet companies such as Groupon, LinkedIn, and Zynga. Some of these companies have continued to…

There is an opportunity to learn from our mistakes before they can do real damage. That opportunity is Groupon, and the opportunity presents itself in the form of an upcoming IPO that needs to fail for the sake of the rest of the internet. Sounds weird, I know, but hear me out. The GrouPonzi Scheme When Groupon was able to raise a billion dollars in funding, many (including me) applauded it as a sign of a company that was doing the right things with their money and demonstrating responsibility. Granted, it was based upon an assumption that the investors looked at the books and found them to be sound. Why…