Media execs Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and News Corp. President Peter Chernin, are "trawling Silicon Valley in person in search of the next hot start-ups," the
Financial Times reports.
Chernin, apparently, has taken to meeting with entrepreneurs personally and pursuing local VCs for leads and contacts. Why? In News Corp.'s case, anyway, fishing season turned out pretty good last
year, when the conglomerate took over the social networking phenomenon MySpace and IGN.com, a video game news portal, for around $1.2 billion. MySpace, which cost less than IGN, was an absolute steal
at $580 million. As one Valley exec said, "From the media companies, News Corp is the one that is everywhere," even at "the smallest gathering. " Meanwhile, Microsoft's Ballmer said he recently
spent a full day meeting with chiefs of small start-ups to find companies it could either buy or form partnerships with. Expect Microsoft to be busy this summer, with $6 billion in cash ready to spend
on an all-out assault against Google, now its main competitor on the Web. Last year, the software giant purchased more than twenty small tech companies. M&A seems to be the exit strategy of the day
for many emerging tech firms, happy to take the money and get out rather than go with an IPO.
Read the whole story at Financial Times »
