Om pointed me towards Mark Evans post about Vonage.
The talk last night at the Pulver Palo Alto dinner was that there is no way Citron wants to sell Vonage and that he wants to ring the bell on Wall Street for personal reasons. There was also discussion that Vonage is running on its own cash generated by subscribers and not burning through the VC cash as some people may think.
I think Vonage does want the IPO as that will create the greatest amount of wealth for the founders, but if their growth slows due to the MSO’s getting more aggressive as they will in 2005, the market may look rosier if they roll up a few of their competitors with their cash thus making for a bigger company. But remember, bigger isn’t always better.
Vonage also is about to embark on a very aggressive advertising campaign. They will need cash for that too. The question is can they compete with the MSO’s in this arena.
That begs the question, should any VoIP player advertise on cable and support the competition’s ability to eat them alive? If the cable operators want to run commercials all day long what’s to stop them from using their open avails while the other companies have to spend a negotiated rate.