Portfolio News
Goldman Sachs vet joins online ad network
The Daily Deal
27 July 2009
Cindy Panchula, most recently a vice president in equity capital markets and technology, media and telecom investment banking at Goldman, Sachs & Co. (NYSE:GS), joined San Mateo, Calif.'s, Brand.net as vice president of finance.
Panchula said in a statement that the online ad network was "positioned for rapid growth." We inquired whether that growth would include M&A and received this e-mailed statement: "To date that [growth] has been 100% organic, and that will remain the core focus ... [the company has] preferred to hire engineers to build things from scratch exactly to their specifications."
If two-year-old Brand.net were to consider other options, it has an experienced dealmaker in its ranks now. At Goldman, Panchula led IPOs for technology companies including Baidu.com, Shopping.com, DataDomain and VistaPrint and executed M&A transactions for companies including eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY), Hotwire.com and National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:NSM).
The company's investors include InterWest Partners; Norwest Venture Partners; Dan Rosensweig, CEO of the Guitar Hero business unit at Activision Blizzard and former chief operating officer of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO); and Dave Strohm, general partner of Greylock Partners. As of August 2008, Brand.net raised $13 million in financing.
The ad company was founded by Yahoo! vets, including CEO Elizabeth Blair, who was senior vice president of business operations for Yahoo!'s global operating group from 2003 to 2007; and COO Andy Atherton, who as VP of global pricing and yield management, was responsible for monetizing Yahoo!'s $2 billion-plus annual worldwide portfolio of display advertising.
While companies have cut spending on online advertising, it's still a growing sector. EMarketer predicts companies will spend $24.5 billion on Internet advertising this year, which AdWeek notes is a 4.5% increase over 2008 spending. And there are plenty of companies vying for a piece of that business, including as we've noted previously, AOL LLC. With such heavyweight competition, it's no wonder Brand.net has bulked up its executive team. - Baz Hiralal
