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Lorenzo Carver
CEO , Liquid Scenarios (bpCentral, Inc.) (Owner)
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Business owner
Member since: September 13, 2008
CEO , Liquid Scenarios (bpCentral, Inc.) (Owner)
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Business owner
Member since: September 13, 2008
About Lorenzo
Bio
Lorenzo Carver, MS, MBA, CPA, is the inventor of bpCentral's Carver Import Algorithm, which enables importing financial reports in seconds, without data tagging or manual data entry, and converting them into interactive models anyone can use immediately. He has developed over 200 strategic plans for information technology and life sciences companies and participated in over $1 billion in financing rounds as an advisor and planner. Noted as one of the Top 100 Free Sites by PC Magazine, Lorenzo authored and produced an online sample business plan used by well over 3,000,000 students, teachers and entrepreneurs. He conceived, designed, developed and coded an award winning small business valuation program used by thousands of entrepreneurs and advisors worldwide in 1999. Some other highlights include the following -
- Designed and launched the first mobile product that enables modeling financing scenarios, acquisition and IPO scenarios on a handheld
- Designed and launched two of the first software products in the world certified for Vista
- In the summer of 2007, at a Microsoft event in front of a live audience, a 12-year old used a server version of Liquid Scenarios running on a beta of Windows Server 2008 to price over 100 exit scenarios, determine how much option holders would get across each of the sales values and whether or not warrant holders would convert on a cashless basis or if their warrant would expire worthless. This same analysis traditionally would take a CFO/CPA/CFA or venture fund analyst a week to complete. Using Liquid Scenarios the child was able to perform the same analysis in a matter of minutes
- Microsoft subsequently published a case study showing how an investment banker used a desktop version of Liquid Scenarios to achieve a 23,000% (230X) increase in productivity
- In the fall of 2007, Liquid Scenarios Server 2008 became the first financial business intelligence solution in the world certified on Microsoft's Windows Server 2008, ahead of BEA Systems and Hyperion (now Oracle)
- Developed strategic business plans for Alienware (acquired by Dell), ConstructionNet (acquired by McGraw Hill), developers of the first music DRM solution deployed by major record labels in the US, the founder of Chiron, a founder of Register.com, the first portable thin tissue scanning device to receive 510K clearance in the US, numerous subsidiaries acquired and disposed of by WellPoint (WLP), with many former clients appearing on the Inc. 500 list
- Turned $80K of business plan service proceeds into $72 million in market cap over the course of 10 months
- Used stock-only compensation to recruit an entire executive team, including the former CEO of a $6 billion revenue NYSE traded company and a former faculty member of the Defense Research Staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Provided assurance and advisory services at Arthur Andersen's Enterprise Group on clients, IPOs and projects including Vermeer Technologies (the creators of FrontPage, acquired by Microsoft) Genome Therapeutics IPO, Hybridon's IPO, Open Software Foundation, multiple venture capital funds, Boston Acoustics (Nasdaq, BOSA), Concord Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: CCRD) and Goldhirsh Publishing (original publisher of Inc. Magazine, now owned Mansueto Venture, publishers of fast company)
Education
| Northeastern University Graduate School of Business , MBA |
| Northeastern University Graduate School of Professional Accounting , MS |
| Indiana Institute of Technology , BS |
| Berklee College of Music Two Year Certificate in Music |
Lorenzo's connections (275)
| Tim Regan | CEO, CampusRock |
| Manoj Biswas | Inspirations C & S, Web Development |
| Matt Weeks | CEO and Founder, EyeTMedia |
| Mark Evans | Managing Principal, Bancroft Research Group |
| Eric Schmitz | RVP Network Development, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield |
| doug murphy | sweet jean media |
| matt emmi | OneButton |
| Gil Curletto | Enabling Manager, Intel |
| Sina Simantob | President, Sinco International |
| Doyle Albee | President, Metzger Associates |
View all »
Lorenzo's comments (84)
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That was a great interview.
on The venture capital industry isn't broken (November 10, 2009)
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Also, I just read the proposed legislation. This isn't really changing anything - the exemption relates to 404(b) - which in its simplest is additional auditing of management's assertions [404(a)] concerning internal controls. Small companies have effectively been exempt from that provision [404(b)] (but are and will remain subject to all of the other costly provisions).
on Get ready for lots of small IPOs (November 07, 2009)
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Great article Matt. However, a "market cap" of $75 million is very, very small no matter how you measure it. Still, how you measure it does matter with respect to if this relief (which is welcome) will result in quality deals getting out the door. If its number of shares outstanding X offering price (or bid price), it may make a nice space for biotech companies that have lost favor with private money but need to buy time, but not a lot of other companies relying on the venture model (even with NASDAQ small cap requirements, it’s a tight range of value before all of a sudden their audit and legal fees double). As a result, the costs of going public for these companies (which also impacts value) probably won’t change materially. If the market cap ceiling is based on the value of shares held by the public (or the float * offering or bid price), that would of course open the door to a lot more companies and provide meaningful financial relief. Either way, this is progress. But the beneficiaries (for better or for worse) are probably very, very small pubicly traded companies with little or no real trading volume. Perhaps the Senate will increase the limit to under $200 million :)
on Get ready for lots of small IPOs (November 07, 2009)
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Gary, that’s a timely suggestion and question. As you may recall, there were several VCs (some of them quite successful and famous, such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson) that attempted to make venture type returns accessible to retail investors by way of a publicly traded vehicle (similar to a mutual fund). One of the reasons your comment is timely is that Congress just backed down off a new proposed reporting requirement for venture funds. A major issue for turning a venture fund into a public entity is how do you measure net asset value (NAV) for a class of securities that are so uncertain for most of their early lives? This change in unrealized value would account for most of the initial “earnings” of any fund. To put those challenges into perspective, think Enron. Historically, VCs have tried to be conservative with respect to value, which is a safer bet. Until relatively recent accounting rules (the same rules blamed in part for the volatility of earnings at Ford, Lehman and so-forth), VCs kept their investments at cost unless something really bad happened or something really good happened. Another challenge involves how do you keep certain strategic information private and still comply with the disclosure and financial reporting requirements of a publicly traded company? That being said, I’ve always believed there’s a place for such a model (a mutual fund for high-growth early stage bets), but haven’t really seen it executed successfully on a large scale in our country. An easier alternative, I believe, might be to simply have debt issues (zero coupon venture bonds) priced to deliver a comparable return to what people look for a alternative assets to return (14% per year or so)?
on Is it time for private company marketplaces? (November 02, 2009)
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Michael, that’s very interesting. I think you are implicitly referring to two different (but related) types of risks. One would be the risk of fraud, which you might say is ultimately a quality of earnings issue and the other is the risk of a variation in returns compared to the “risk free rate” (lots of ways to measure, but an easy one to understand and test is the Sharpes ratio). In periods of great liquidity for early stage companies, one could argue that the risk of fraud is comparable to what it is for public companies (it’s a matter of how many people are involve, how much money is involved and what’s really important to the participants and society). Remember when the metrics of page views, users and visits first became proxies for valuation back in the mid 1990s? I can assure you from personal experience across a wide range of companies during that time that those statistics, which were driving financial decisions (investment decisions), were often massaged to say the least in order to justify higher valuations. With an IPO within just a few years of starting a realistic objective, and peers that may have made millions in months at “lesser” companies, the lines between marketing puffery and securities fraud can start to blur.
“Fifteen million dollars is not money. It's a motive with a universal adaptor on it.”
That being said, I personally agree that investing in “3 guys from MIT” should outperform most indexes, assuming you can make enough bets (50 to 100) and there’s a source of capital to finance later stage growth and liquidity (which brings you back to some kind of public marketplace ultimately).
on Is it time for private company marketplaces? (November 02, 2009)
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Video showing a VC, a bestselling technology author, CFO and entrepreneur explaining how Liquid Scenarios helps them conquer uncertainty
Posted: September 14, 2008
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Posted: September 14, 2008
(579 views)
