VC exits, IPO valuations and M&A activity

Ed Sim shared some insights recently on how trends in the capital markets affected exits and valuations of VC-backed companies.

I'm not posting any of his main conclusions here (pls click the link below) but one tangentially related tidbit that I found interesting was:

An interesting side note is that Veritas and Peoplesoft both went public in 1993 and were both acquired last week. This reminds me of a conversation I had this summer with a Veritas executive who said how difficult it was to scale beyond $1-2 billion in revenue and that size matters. There were a number of companies in that revenue band but very few above it like Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle.

Is this simply a power law in action?

Another aside: I found it interesting that Ed said "we did our own analysis". I had no idea VCs had the time or resources or even inclination to undertake this kind of research. I learn something new every day.

Link: BeyondVC: It takes time to build value