Each week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex Wilhelm -- try to de-obfuscate the opaque and arcane world of startup finance with the help of someone from the industry. This week, Trinity Ventures' Dan Scholnick was in the studio to assist us.
And what a week it has been. First, the Uber goat rodeo continued with investors sending public nasty-grams to one another. According to our guest, this sort of squabble isn't precisely rare, but to see so much aired in public by a company of Uber's scale is not daily fare.
If Uber could have a week in which it didn't have some sort of meltdown, we'd appreciate it, because there are other things to talk about.
Moving along, Rovio, the company behind the massively popular Angry Birds franchise, is said to have an IPO cooking. The firm recently posted quick revenue growth and rising (adjusted) EBITDA. Media reports indicate that Rovio could raise $400 million at a $2 billion valuation. The firm is not expected to list here in the United States, but instead in Europe, where it's based.
Finally, we took a minute to discuss MongoDB's privately filed IPO, something that these pages recently broke. The firm raised modest sums in its youth, including its minute Series A from 2008, a period not known for its venture profligacy. The crew seems bullish on its chances.