ArpexCapital

The lack of IPOs for VC-backed firms is one of the things crushing the US venture capital industry. To its credit, the NVCA is trying to proactively address the issue. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is as much a regulatory issue (although, yes, Sarbanes-Oxley is overkill) as it is a free market one. In other words, there are less IPOs for VC-backed firms because VC-backed firms are not generating sufficient cash flow to justify IPOs.
The explosion of IPOs during the dot-com boom was an aberration. Dan Primack from peHUB has a good post on the issue today.

Visa’s Brazilian affiliate plans a US $4.5 billion IPO. If they complete it, it would rank as, by far, the largest IPO in the world this year (China Zhongwang Holdings, Asia’s biggest maker of aluminium extrusion products, is marketing a Hong Kong IPO to raise $1.58 billion). In fact, if compared to US IPOs, it would rank as the 6th largest ever, right in between Conoco ($4.4b) and CIT Group ($4.6b).
Given the interest in Brazilian deals (see the recently oversubscribed Telemar bond offering), it should bring a huge amount of foreign investor interest and, perhaps, re-light the fire underneath the Bovespa. I am not an optimist about the current world economy but these huge IPO deals tend to affect sentiment, especially regarding the exchange on which the IPOs take place. The rebound in IPOs on the Bovespa will come, sooner or later, and this is a positive step toward that.
All good news for investors in VC/PE in Brazil.

VisaNet to Proceed With Brazil IPO Plans in June, Valor Says
By Laura Price
April 23 (Bloomberg) — Visa Inc.’s Brazilian affiliate plans to sell as much as 10 billion reais ($4.5 billion) of shares in an initial public offering in June, Valor Economico reported…

Banco Bradesco SA is VisaNet’s biggest shareholder, followed by Banco do Brasil SA and Banco Santander SA, Valor said.

As soon as my wife and I had our first baby, my time available to spend on work, much less fitness/spirituality/hobbies, contracted greatly. It continues to to contract.

Before I had kids, I could stay up for 48 hours straight on a project; I could focus on one thing maniacally until it was completed; I could expend whatever physical and mental resources were required to achieve a given goal. Now, much those resources need to be spent on family. It is a wonderful thing but, if I am not efficient, I will fall behind rapidly in my professional life.

Efficiency is a constant struggle for me and I have accepted that it is about daily progress, not perfection. One thing that helps me is organizing my information intake. Specifically, I use iGoogle as my homepage; it has my gmail, facebook and linkedin, as well as feeds to what I read daily or weekly.

There are three things I read every day:

Fred Wilson’s Blog
The Wall Street Journal
The VC section of the NY Times Dealbook Blog

Venture Beat

Brad Feld’s Blog

The ABVCAP Conference was well worth the trip. Representatives from every aspect of the VC community in Brazil attended. It was possible (inevitable) to run into everyone because it was a relatively small physical space in the Grand Hyatt.
As I mentioned in my Tweet yesterday, this is a unique time and a unique place to be in VC in Brazil. The VC ecosystem in Brazil is nascent and by participating you are not only working with startup companies but a startup industry. It adds a level of excitement and the feeling that we are helping to advance the country of Brazil as well small businesses.
The feeling of opportunity and possibility, however, is balanced with the issue of accessing capital for funds. Just like VCs in the US, Brazilian VCs lack sufficient capital right now – LPs all over the world have pulled back and there simply is not much money available from non-government sources for VC funds. It’s true in the US and it’s true here.

From 10,000 feet up, one can see that the first phase of VC in Brazil is over. Many of the funds raised in the early part of the decade are fully invested and there is a search for new capital. Managers have learned many lessons about VC in the first phase and are ready to apply these lessons in the second phase — this will make the next phase go more smoothly, I believe, and lead to approaches to investing that are more similar (for better or worse) to the US model.