Malvern-based clinical trial SaaS (& services) firm Y Prime gets $5 million investment

Tom Paine

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Florida-based Ballast Point Ventures announced last week a $5 million investment in Malvern-based Y Prime, a provider of software products and professional services aimed at optimizing the management and performance of global clinical trials. Y Prime was founded in 2006 by Shawn Blackburn and Jaime Cook, who had prior experience at both Cephalon and Perceptive Informatics.

One aspect of Y Prime's technology platform is that it is designed to help customers conduct “adaptive trials,” a method of running clinical trials that allows for immediate changes to be made during a trial. This technology provides customers with a means of quickly reacting to potential changes in a study without incurring costly delays and change orders, Ballast Point said in its release.

Y Prime's software products include Interactive Response Technology (IRT), eMonitoring Visit Report (eMVR), Patient Reported Outcome (ePro), Clinical Trial Management Systems (CTMS), and Clinical Supply Forecasting and Logistics (eCSF). Y Prime refers to its cloud-based offerings as being a "Software With a Service" platform, emphasizing the service component it brings to the party. The company appears to have about 30 employees, according to a photo layout on its website (although its LinkedIn Page shows 39). A note on the Chester County Economic Development Council's website indicates that Y Prime had 2012 revenue of $5.5 million.

Links 9/5/2013: Court declines to review Comcast/Tennis Channel ruling

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Comcast: Court Declines To Review Tennis Channel Call (Multichannel News)

Zuora Lands $50 Million Series E on Back of “Subscription Economy” (All Things D)
Zuora competes with Aria Systems, which has its R&D center in Broomall.

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New SAP-Accenture partnership will give customers one throat to choke (PC World)

Salesforce.com, Workday Keep Cloud Momentum Rolling (Information Week)

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Philadelphia CIOs Reveal Fourth-Quarter Hiring Plans
(PR Newswire)

Valuations: How much is Verizon's landline business worth?

Tom Paine

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The value the market places on Verizon's ( (NYSE: VZ) non-wireless business (essentially, what is considered the landline business) has been difficult to determine. But perhaps its recent agreement to buy out Vodafone's stake in Verizon Wireless provides some clues. Then again, perhaps not.

The Vodafone deal values Verizon Wireless at about $290 billion. By that measure, Verizon's 55% stake would then presumably be valued at $159.5 billion.

The market cap for Verizon (which includes its Verizon Wireless stake) is about $134 billion. Acording to Capital IQ, Verizon's enterprise value, a measure that typically equates to market cap plus debt, minority interest and preferred shares, minus total cash and cash equivalents, is $184.1 billion.

Verizon's non-wireless assets include its advanced fiber FiOS footprint, its legacy copper telephone footprint, and a strong enterprise business, which includes its Terramark enterprise cloud business acquired in 2011.

At times, there has been speculation that the landline business could be spun off. Another, perhaps more likely, alternative would be an increased use of the wireless network to supplement, and in some cases replace the copper network using 4G LTE. The single ownership of the two businesses should make a more integrated approach to managing them possible. Broadband Reports' Karl Bode does suggest that Verizon may consider selling (or dumping) some non-core area, copper-based networks, as it did previously to Frontier and Fairpoint.

There has been considerable debate as to whether Verizon's FiOS investment, which has been somewhere in the $20 billion range, has paid off.

Links 9/4/2013: ASUG News on SAP Americas' Cardenuto: Mantra is he can't manage Americas from Newtown Square

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Catching Up with SAP Americas’ President Rodolpho Cardenuto (ASUG News)
"His mantra is that he can’t manage the Americas from Newtown Square."

How SAP achieved LEED Platinum certification for their headquarters in Pennsylvania (Enterprise Irregulars)


CoreDial Secures $1.5 Million Senior Credit Facility From Silicon Valley Bank (PR Web)

SevOne Launches New Application Performance Appliance (Marketwire)

Sorry, Comcast and Verizon customers: RCN delivers faster Netflix (Ars Technica)
In Boston area, anyway.

Hilarious Fake Cable Ad Censored in Canada (Broadband Reports)

BlackBerry Seeks Sale By November: Report (Fox Business)

Inside 1&1′s New Hosting Services and Approach (Data Center Knowledge)
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University of Delaware gets $10 million gift from Gore-Tex co-inventor (Philadelphia Business Journal)


Done deal: region loses another independent hospital
(Philadelphia Business Journal)

Links 9/3/2013: Nokia sells handset business to Microsoft

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Nokia to sell handset business to Microsoft for $7.2 billion
(Reuters)

Finns Mourn Loss of Icon Nokia as Microsoft Takes Over
(Bloomberg)


Comcast vision paying off $7,000 in '72 IPO would now be $6.2M. (Philadelphia Inquirer)


Maker of software for online MD talks raises $10m more (Boston Globe)
Safeguard Scientifics leads with $7.5 million.

CBS Wins Carriage Battle With Time Warner Cable (Analysis) (Hollywood Reporter)

Cord-cutting reality: Pay-TV industry loses 217,000 subscribers (LA Times: Company Town)


Facebook Forges Ahead With Mobile Rich Media Ads Via PointRoll Agreement (MediaPost News)

Lithium Technologies extends pre-IPO life (Fortune Tech)
Raises another $50 million. SAP Ventures was a participant in Lithium's $53 million round
last year.

New Phiily Tech News feed on cloud computing news

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Philly Tech News. You can sign up for email or RSS delivery of the Philly Tech News Cloud News feed here.

Links 9/2/2013: Verizon's wireless buyout set: PA Cyber Charter School charged with fraud

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Amazon Web Services, IBM battle over high-profile CIA cloud contract (Washington Post)

Verizon poised for historic $130 billion Vodafone deal (Reuters)

Verizon Doubles Down on U.S. as AT&T Seeks a Hedge in Europe (Bloomberg)


PA Cyber Charter School founder Trombetta pleads not guilty to fraud, tax charges (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

CBS Reaches Accord to End Blackout on Time Warner Cable
(Bloomberg)

TV Market Tough to Crack for OLED Makers (Wall Street Journal: Digits)

Vending Machines Get Smart to Accommodate the Cashless
(Bloomberg)
Mentions Malvern-based USA Technologies as a competitor.

Bucks CEO has a winning touch (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Joe DiStefano on TE Connectivity CEO Thomas Lynch.

Philly Tech People News 9/1/2013

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William Levering Appointed Chief Financial Officer of NextDocs
(OpenView Venture Partners News)

QVC Promotes Alex Miller to Senior Vice President Digital Commerce (PR Newswire)

QVC Promotes Dave Caputo to Senior Vice President TV Production and Operations (PR Newswire)

Echo Therapeutics Announces Management Changes
Robert Doman to Assume Role of Executive Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer
(PR Newswire)

Andy Roane Joins Yoh as Vice President of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (Business Wire)

Michael Carroll Named President of Metter Interactive (PR Web)

Penn.-Based PMA Companies Appoints Chief Information Officer (Insurance Journal)

Verizon board to vote Monday on Vodafone deal: sources (Reuters)

Two VC firms, Bessemer & OpenView, offer up analyses of public cloud companies and their valuations

Tom Paine

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Two interesting items from about a month ago which I have meant to mention:

First, VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners released the BVP Cloud Computing Index, and a downloadable chart it says is updated weekly showing the key metrics of 30 leading public cloud computing companies as defined by Bessemer (there is certainly often room for debate about what is or isn't a cloud computing company). No Philly companies are included, although clinical trial software company Medidata Solutions has a fairly large presence dating mostly from its 2008 acquisition of Conshohocken-based Fast Track Systems. Kenexa presumably would have been on it had it not been acquired by IBM, and Radnor-based QlikTech really isn't a cloud computing company at this time; its products are offered primarily through on-premise software. Legacy companies such as SAP AG and Unisys are a long way from being considered pure cloud plays.

One data point in the metrics is the Enterprise Value/Revenue ratio for the 30 companies, which has a median of 6.7x and a mean of 7.9x. So when you hear about SaaS companies doing IPOs with EV/Revenue ratios of 10x or considerably more in some cases, it shouldn't be surprising.

The other item is an article in the Wall Street Journal about Adam Marcus, Managing Director of Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners, the VC firm that has made significant investments in Philly area startups Monetate, NextDocs and Xtium. Marcus compiled a list of 96 public SaaS companies and noted that two-thirds of them are located outside of Silicon Valley.

Marcus finds the Bay Area tech ecosystem expensive, unstable in terms of employee retention and having valuations too high in comparison to other regions, according to the Journal. He said OpenView doesn't invest in San Francisco companies. Perhaps more attractive valuations and less hypercompetition among investors explain in part why OpenView made its trio of investments in the Philadelphia area. Others disagree with Marcus' assessment, pointing out that the most of the more valuable SaaS companies remained clustered in the Bay Area, the article points out.

Update to Philly Tech News Young Companies to Watch coming

Tom Paine

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I'm going to be working on an update to Philly Tech News Young Companies to Watch over the next few weeks. There is a great deal of new information to add and I think the results will be very interesting.

If anyone has any information they wish to pass along to me that might provide more enlightenment about their own company or someone else's, please email me. Confidence will always be maintained if requested (as long as the NSA isn't reading my emails).

Thanks.