Broadcom has anounced the acquisition of Provigent for $313 million.    Before continuing my intermittent series examining the management teams of exits, I'll note a couple of features that may have helped Provigent to a happy conclusion.  First, contra many Israeli startups, these guys moved the HQ and their CEO to the US.  And they did it fairly early on.  Many another company has foundered as they try to keep control with the technical group and make do with a sales office here.  Here is the second salient fact: these guys were founded in 2000.  It took longer that a usual VC timeline to get to this point. 

Now on to the team.  Dan Charash is the CEO there.  CEO and a co-founder from the early days of the company.  They've had the R&D side under the leadership of Jonathan Friedman since losing co-founder Guy Resheff in 2006.  Jonathan was promoted from within the R&D group.  And he just promoted again into the COO role after Victor Koretsky left in December.  Victor and a number of the sales leaders were recruited in from outside at varoius times in Provigent's story.  I am professionally obligated to note the great contribution recruiting in additional talent must have surely made. 

So, here is a founder and first-time CEO who steered this company to success through 10 tumultous years.  Hooray. 

I see via Robin Wauters that internet powerhouse Groupon has added a CFO.  Amazon veteran Jason Childs seems like an excellent fit for their business.  Beefing up their finance side makes sense as a preliminary to an eventual IPO, as does his investor relations experience. 

Now here come the interesting part: my cursory glance at his background didn't reveal any expreience taking a company public.  Usually this is at or near the top of the list of requirements when companies are looking for a CFO to take them through an IPO.  He hasn't done it, but I expect that he can.  And I applaud Groupon's hiring acumen and whoever there realized that a candidate doesn't have to have done precisely the task for which he or she is being hired to be capable of doing it.  Bravo. 

The New York Times brings the science.  Just like in pricing houses, what looks reasonable in CEO compensation depends upon with what one is comparing.  Here is some actual data showing that comp committees tend to chose the higher paying company for their peer group, other things being equal.  Nice confirmation of what anybody who's had to put together one of those spreadsheets knows. 

FusionOne's sale for $75 million, $35M of which is in earn-out form, was announced earlier this week.  They'd reportedly raised $140M which would make this result less than stellar, but that $140 seems to have come from 2000.  And the current owners, who are presumably collecting that $75M aren't the ones who paid that $140M, it looks like they paid $6M.  That looks much more like a success.  Apparently when a new CEO, Mike Mullica came onboard in January of 2008, he was able to convince new investors that the previous investors money had built something that would someday be worth something. He followed that up by bringing in some coleagues from his days at Openwave and making it come true. 

Anyway, great news for them. 

Just a quick note to clarify what I now see is a bit of muddle in that last post.  I find that boards hiring CEOs frequently are happy to point out that we're in a new economy when discussing how little cash the CEO should be happy with.  My frustration is that these same board memebers seem to forget that we are in a new economy when it comes to CEO candidates consideration of the likelihood of wealth creation based on a massive exit.  Also problematic is the inclination to forget that these candidates frequently have other birds in their hands,