Quibi, an exciting new media streaming service launched by some of the savviest players in the media business, closed down in late October after only six months.
Was it a casualty of COVID or was it an ill-advised venture that got its comeuppance with a dash of COVID on the side?
As a startup, it is fair to take a jockey, horse, course approach to evaluating the product, no?
As I write, Americans are being vaccinated against the COVID19 virus within the same zip code in which I sit. It began four hours ago.
For some reason it reminds me of D-Day, the radio reports wherein our countrymen listened with anticipation:
“This morning, under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces supported by strong air forces began landing Allied armies on the northern coast of France.”
Within five days, more than 326,000 Allied troops would have landed with more than 100,000 tons of equipment and Paris would be liberated two and a half months later with the Germans destroyed within a year.
I wish the same fate to COVID.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced some substantial changes to “harmonize and improve” what they called a “patchwork” of rules pertaining to how companies can raise funding from the public — both accredited and un-accredited investors.
This action did not get much play in the press, but I spotted it and read it carefully. There is a lot of good news, but for the entrepreneur set there is a real gem.
Here is a link to their press release (an extremely difficult document to read and understand):
The bottom line is this: a company can now raise up to $5,000,000 (versus the prior $1,070,000) via a web based fundraising campaign with a registered firm without having to file the usual substantial SEC required registration filings. [You have to make prudent disclosures as you would in any offering, but this is a simpler, easier, bigger deal.]
Comes now our pals at Facebook who are under the microscope of a bunch of state Attorneys General to be busted up and reformed for a myriad of reasons.
In the specific instance of the state AGs, it is for smothering small businesses. This is different.
My name is Mark Zuck and I do not approve this message. Look into my eyes. We did nothing wrong. Do not listen to the Big Red Car. I will take him to a junkyard and crush him into a cube of red metal.
At the same time, Facebook is being sued by the Department of Justice for improperly filling a number of jobs — 2,600 high paying jobs — through the use of H-1B visas.
This is the week that was as it relates to Initial Public Offerings. Well, last week also.
Amongst the IPO royalty is a company called “DoorDash” (DASH) that hit the IPO switch on Wednesday and was up almost 90% on its first day of public trading.
DD had already re-priced its IPO price based on demand twice during the lead up to their birth as a public company, so the deal was pretty rich.
Texans voted for a constitutional ban against imposing a state income tax in an election held in November 2019. The situation until then had been murky on the issue of a personal income tax relying upon something called the “Bob Bullock Amendment” which allowed the Legislature to set a personal income tax, but only if voters approved it via a statewide referendum and if the new revenue was used exclusively for school property tax cuts and education programs.
Which leads us to the question — how does Texas fund itself?
I am chatting the other day with a chap in the aftermath of the election and how he sees the implication of future tax increases on the country. He is a smart chap with an MBA from a fine school and he is a wizard businessman, but he is a liberal.
We get focused on the issue of corporate taxes and he says, “I get it that corporations really don’t pay those taxes.” He looks at me with his chin out like he is bluffing at Texas Hold ‘Em and thinks that makes him look confident.
I smile because it is a new thought he has never expressed before, so I say, “How so?” And he explains it thusly.
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