Need a Lyft?

If you’re looking for a new iPad, Apple is offering up a couple of new options.

A new 10.5” iPad Air ($499), and a 7.9” iPad mini ($399), both with retina displays, the A12 Bionic chip, and support for the first-gen Apple pencil.

For those keeping score, that mini has the same screen size as the previous generation. 9to5Mac writes that the Air is “a halfway house between the $329 iPad and $799+ iPad Pro tiers.”

On the dealmaking and moneyraising fronts, there’s also news from this Monday.

Fidelity National Information Services Inc. said it has agreed to acuire Worldpay Inc for roughly $35 billion in cash and stock, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Why do we care?

This deal would build a global payments giant and back-end financial services business in a sector “under pressure to cut costs, develop new products and add customers.”

The combined FIS and Worldpay expects to generate $500 million in additional revenue and annual cost cuts of about $400 million through combining their one-stop shop services to process online and in-store payments and manage transactions in multiple currencies. The enlarged group, which expects to have annual revenue of about $12.3 billion, also will offer services to manage fraud and advanced data analytics, the companies said.

 FIS helps banks process credit-card transactions, service auto loans and handle back-office functions for money managers among a range of services that it offers. The company says its technology is used in managing transactions involving more than $9 trillion annually.

Finally, if you’re looking for a lift, ride-share company Lyft today disclosed it hopes to raise over $2 billion in its IPO, at an initial market cap that could top $19 billion. 

Lyft is expecting to offer 30.77 million shares valued at between $62 and $68 per share, and its IPO road-show is expected to kick off today.

Might be cheaper to ride a scooter.

Happy Float, Facebook

Happy IPO day, Facebook.

I’m not an “insider” of any sorts, so I won’t be gaining from any of the early Facebook IPO action.  I’m on the fence as to whether or not I might try to buy some “FB” shares on the open market through my Schwab account…not because I’m not interested in owning any Facebook stock, but because like a lot of investors, I want it to be a conscious, responsible investment, and one never knows what’s going to happen on IPO days.

But know this: I’m very bullish on Facebook, both its past and its future.  I’ve never seen an Internet property bring so many people together from so many different places in the world, across economic and social strata, and keep them coming back.

If you’re as bullish, but not ready to gamble on IPO day, you might give some thought to investing in the Facebook “pick and shovel” plays.

Stand back, look at the Facebook ecosystem, and rather than place all your bets on the Facebook IPO “come” line, instead spread some bets across the board and benefit from all the other players who stand to benefit from Facebook’s continued growth and adoption around the world.

The Zyngas, whose gaming ecosystem helped the Facebook tribe spread around the world.  The Dachis Corps and Buddy Medias, which are helping make the Facebook platform work well for marketers (and focusing well beyond the social graph ads that GM announced it would abandon earlier this week).

And, to be sure, hundreds of others.

Regardless of whether or not you’re a Facebook fan, and heaven knows sentiment about them can run to the extremes, if you’re a good Western capitalist, you have to be excited.

This is the classic American success story, where young kid has great idea, develops that idea in his dorm room and later small house in Silicon Valley, and eventually changes the world.

And make no mistake about that: Facebook has forever changed the world.

Just ask the folks in Egypt, or Tunisia, or Russia, or any other locale or organization that has benefited from the lower center of gravity Facebook has created that makes organizing in mass quantities as simple as a few clicks.

There is a good reason that Facebook is NOT available in China — fear of transparency and open communications.

If it were available, China would be a very different place than it is today, and it makes me thankful that the kind of open innovation and entrepreneurialism we have here in the U.S. is still alive and well.

And that, in the end, may well be the most important reason for celebrating Facebook’s entry into the public markets.

Big ideas can still have big impacts, and Silicon Valley (and, more broadly, the United States) is one of those places in the world that you can find the capital, the talent, and the political and regulatory playing field  to make those big ideas a reality.

Happy IPO day, Facebook.

From Russia With Bailouts

Das vi dan ya.

That’s “goodbye” in Russia.  So I should probably learn hello.

Answers.com explained it’s dobro pozalovat.

So, dobro pozalovat to Yandex, the Russian search engine, which followed short on the heels of LinkedIn’s IPO and went public earlier today on the Nasdaq, raising some $1.3B (dollars, not rubles).

Apparently, the issue was some 17 times oversubscribed, surprising considering that Yandex only has about 64% market share (although it is still the largest Web site in Russia).

Also a done deal: Twitter buys TweetDeck for roughly $40M.  This has been rumored for some time, but apparently it’s really happened this time.  Really.  Seriously.  #ftw

Is this the beginning of a great Twitter consolidation?

When a TweetDeck falls in the virtual Twitter forest, does it even make a sound???

Well, I’m just glad to see someone out there’s making some deals.

After watching HBO’s docudrama rendition of Aaron Ross Sorkin’s 2010 book about the financial crisis, Too Big To Fail, last evening, one might start to wonder.

I read the book.

The movie’s probably easier to consume in many ways, minus all the boring financial mumbo jumbo details, although it nearly made me ill to replay that denouement from the fall of 2008.

But, I have to say, William Hurt made for a wonderful SecTreas Henry Paulson, understated and steely, and James Woods cracked me up as vulgar Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers.  And Paul Giamatti as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke…another classic performance by Giamatti.

The movie seemed to raise a central question: Was Paulson the hero who saved the day or the insider who protected the interests of his industry?

You get to watch the film (or read your history book, if you’re so inclined) and be your own judge.

But kudos to the HBO team for making a compelling film about what could have easily become a trite and boring re-enactment.

It was anything but boring…now, having seen it and completely paranoid, if I could only figure out a way to move all my retirement savings into a small bomb shelter immune from market movements if not the elements!

LinkedIn Floats

Whoa. How about that IPO for LinkedIn that floated earlier today at the NYSE?

Perhaps business social networking is sexy, after all.

At least, so it seems, to investors.

A few days before its IPO, LinkedIn raised its offering price some 30%, to a range of between $42 and $45 per share.

Then, I see this coverage on TechCrunch indicating they started trading at $83 per share, before rocketing past the $100 market and even into the $130s, before settling back into the $105 range.

As Leena Rao points out, even at $83 a share LinkedIn is looking at a $7.8 billion market cap.

I was watching the talking heads yesterday on CNBC about whether or not this new way of social and tech-related IPO interest suggested a “tech bubble,” to which I just laughed out loud.

Putting aside whether or not you believe LinkedIn’s float came at too high a price, comparing today’s environment to the tech bubble of the late 1990s is absurd on its face.

I remember those 1999 IPO valuations, where a Web metrics report and a PowerPoint seemed to justify hundreds of millions in value.  LinkedIn, on the other hand, along with a number of the emerging social plays, are actual revenue-generating companies who benefited from the Internet cloud build-out since the bubble burst.

Lower storage and computing costs, higher and more ubiquitous broadband access, open source and lower cost development tools and platforms, and yes, a great diversity of venture capital…all are factors that helped pave the way to this digital renaissance.

But make no mistake, compared to many Internet outfits in 1999, the GroupOns and Facebooks and LinkedIns of the world are generating cash, which is always helpful to a viable and ongoing business concern!

And speaking of viable concerns, the latest IBM SmartCamp was held in Austin, Texas, earlier this week, and though I was too busy to attend, the event was covered on LiveStream.

SecureWaters has a patented technology that monitors, detects, and identifies toxins in surface water, and sells a smarter, real-time early warning electronic monitor and alarm system.

You can see their one-minute elevator pitch here.

IBM SmartCamp is an exclusive event aimed at identifying early stage entrepreneurs developing business ventures that align with IBM’s Smarter Planet vision.

Applications are still being taken for the New York City event on June 28-29, but you to have applied by June 3, so if interested, get those applications in!