Last week I had the privilege of meeting with the senior leadership of one of the Federal Reserve Banks. For close to three hours we discussed the middle-market financing environment and the ramifications for smaller companies. Not only was it an incredible opportunity to interact with the people charged with overseeing monetary policy, it also gave me a chance to look back on the last few years and see a few trends more clearly. 

We started the meeting by detailing the types of institutions providing middle-market financing today and the various types of lending structures they offer. What was quickly evident is that lending in the middle market is currently dominated by non-bank capital sources. 

Certainly for companies with...

I never met a great entrepreneur who was afraid of failure. Or who didn’t take over-sized risks to win big. This is why many get fired.

I spent the first 10 years of my career at A.T. Kearney, a long way from the risk taking that is Silicon Valley. Kearney, at 85, is one of the oldest consulting firms in the world. It is a tight partnership and people are rarely let go. Employees grow and develop, and some leave to become industry executives. But part of the culture is that managers shy away from firing colleagues.

I almost got fired a few times. And I probably would have been a better entrepreneur if I had. Except for some great clients, who loved my maverick nature, and a great friend and mentor, Bob Duffy, who is still at the firm and has been there since I was in kin...

For the last 18 months, we’ve been extolling the virtues of unitranche debt. This structure has gained substantial popularity over the last few years as an ideal replacement for the cash flow senior debt that banks and CLOs no longer supplied as eagerly to the middle market following the 2008 credit crisis.

With the ability to combine both the senior and junior portions of the capital structure in to a single debt instrument, the unitranche structure provided similar leverage to a traditional senior cash flow/mezzanine structure, with the same weighted average cost of capital, yet with often more favorable terms for amortization, prepayment penalties and covenant packages.

But all this may be changing - and mezzanine may, once again, be the beneficiary.

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‘Tis the season for MBA students to begin looking for summer internships, and students at the MIT Sloan School of Management are no exception. In fact, just last week they took their annual “tech trek” to Silicon Valley to shake hands, flash smiles, and otherwise engage with executives at companies like Facebook, Intel, and eBay.

One of those students was Craig Hosang, a 25-year-old who last worked as a product manager in the office of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Hosang is now getting an MBA partly becaus...

Last August, 8-year-old CouchSurfing, a social networking Web site whose members offer their homes to travelers free of charge, dropped its non-profit status and became a “B Corp” or “benefit corporation,” announcing $7.6 million in funding from Omidyar Network and Benchmark Capital as it made the transition.

In the cookie cutter legal world of Silicon Valley, where the overwhelming majority of companies are organized as C-Corps, CouchSurfing’s new corporate status was a novelty. Was this some new trend?

Yes, actually. B Corps – socially responsible businesses certified by a non-...

Back in 2008 and 2009 I took an in-depth look at the performance of funds of funds and, well, found them lacking. I raised the question of whether they were worth the added layer of management fees and, in many cases, carried interest.

This year I revisit the subject with a larger, 80-fund, pre-vintage 2007 database at my disposal. For the first time my sample includes 14 funds of funds (or equivalents) from Chicago-based Adams Street Partners, thanks largely to data supplied by its long-time client, Montana Boa...

European venture fundraising figures were down 15% from $5,765.01 million in 73 funds in 2010 to $4,923.05 million in 46 funds last year, according to data from Thomson Reuters. While figures were down, there were still some notable fundraisings from well-established European venture players who haven’t let the economic crisis grind them (or their coffers) down.

Germany takes first place in European fundraising securing $1,531.28 million capital in 14 funds in 2011 compared to $999.75 million in 13 funds in 2010. This was an increase of 53% year on ye...