As head of Central Newspapers‘ venture capital investments, I sent quarterly reports to the CEO and other senior executives. This one — dated July 12, 2000 — went to Chip Weil, Tom MacGillivray, Eric Tooker, Bill Toner, Karen Feldkamp and Chris Mitchell.
Attached is an updated Investment Summary and an updated Investment Matrix, which include current CNI Ventures’ Internet and technology investments to date. New to this list are JobScience, Legacy.com and Everstream
The memo also notes that indirect investments — the Sandler Capital funds, assets received as a result of the Homefair sale — are included in the summary.
The attachments are the interesting part. The Investment Update Summary lists the portfolio company by company: EntryPoint, WaveShift, Event 411, E-ink, BrightStreet, StreamSearch, GAMUT [SmartTV], JobScience, Everstream and Legacy.com, with $8,882,998 in invested capital against a current valuation of $9,119,411. Add the realized, partially realized and publicly traded holdings — Microsoft, Homestore and the Sandler funds — and total investments come to $25,613,452.
The Investment Matrix, which I created, is the most interesting document because it asked more than “what is it worth?” Each company was tracked against its target market, its relationship to CNI’s businesses, our working relations with the company, and which other media companies were in the deal — Knight Ridder, McClatchy, Tribune Ventures, Cox, Hearst, Gannett, the Washington Post. On E-Ink:
Development of an electronic newspaper and the business models to support product[s]
And the entry for EntryPoint, our oldest holding, is a reminder that not everything worked:
Dormant. PointCast technology; assets were purchased by an IdeaLab company
A $200,000 investment carried at $13,571.