Tom Taulli

The origins of E-LOAN hark back to 1992, when the founders started a brick-and-mortar loan brokerage business. By 1996, they saw the power of the Net and went digital. The company attracted top venture capitalists and strategic investors. Inevitably, the company had a high-profile IPO. However, as interest rates surged and Net stocks collapsed, the […]

For the most part, fiber optics became widespread in the long-haul network. A long-haul network connects metropolitan areas around the world and involves the transmission of huge amounts of voice and data traffic. Actually, it was the long-haul networks that were initially beset by congestion problems. Of course, the cost of increasing the capacity of […]

George Bernard Shaw once said, “The lack of money is the root of all evil.” The same can be said about many public Internet companies nowadays. When the equity markets were humming, it was no problem to raise money. In some cases, companies were able to raise in excess of a billion dollars in a […]

Yesterday, I mentioned several companies that could be targets of rollups in the Internet sector. This raises the question: Who will launch the rollups? Well, there will be a smattering of companies. Perhaps a majority will be traditional companies that need to add Internet capabilities. One that looks promising is Primedia . In fact, yesterday […]

Some of the greatest fortunes of all-time have been the result of rollups. “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt consolidated the railroads; Andrew Carnegie consolidated steel; and of course, John D. Rockefeller became the first billionaire as a result of the consolidation of the oil industry. And, yes, many modern-day moguls have become superrich from consolidation. A prime […]

So goes Nasdaq, so goes IPOs. And, of course, both are going down. Simply put, last week’s IPO market was ugly. A variety of companies decided to withdraw their IPOs. Examples include ThruPoint, a consulting firm for networking systems (the company even has a significant alliance with Cisco); ObjectSpace, a business-to-business software firm (then again, […]

Not long ago, life was much simpler. By investing in such companies as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Lucent meant not only security, but above-average returns. It was a no-brainer. Of course, bear markets can be brutal. In bear markets, nothing is safe. In fact, in the past year, we have seen a variety of mega-meltdowns […]

At the current rate of the slowdown in the IPO market, there may be nothing to write about very soon. So long as Nasdaq continues its woes, the IPO market will be a stark place indeed. Yet, there are some interesting prospects for next week. Take a look at Optical Communication Products. Hey, with a […]

The big promise of wireless is mobile commerce (m-commerce). But to make this happen, wireless must become location-based. For example, your phone may be able to locate the nearest Starbucks if you need a caffeine break. Location-based wireless is the focus of @Road . The company’s flagship technology is called LocationSmart. The technology hits four […]

At home, I have two jars of change. Usually, when it is time to go to Las Vegas, I try to use up the change. Another person who had jars of change was Jens Molbak, who was an analyst at Morgan Stanley (yes, even high-priced bankers deal with such mundane things). While studying for his […]

For me, the word “cosine” conjures up bad memories of trigonometry classes in high school. However, the company CoSine may present better memories. Then again, you practically need to be a math whiz to figure out what the company does. Basically, CoSine develops the IPSX 9000 switch. What does it do? Well, the technology allows […]

The spike in oil prices definitely raises the awareness for alternative energy sources. In fact, there are other reasons besides higher oil prices. For example, the U.S. government (as well as a variety of states) have adopted laws to regulate vehicle emissions. In fact, California wants to mandate zero emission levels by 2003. Or look […]