Actua Corporation
Actua Corporation was a venture capital firm. During the dot com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of over $50 billion. The company was originally known as Internet Capital Group, Inc. and changed its name to Actua Corporation in September 2014. In April 2018, the company underwent liquidation.
Incubator
In March 1996, Ken Fox, director of West Coast operations at Safeguard Scientifics, and Buck Buckley, a former vice president of acquisitions for Safeguard Scientifics, formed Internet Capital Group (ICG), a venture capital firm focused on business-to-business e-commerce. Fox saw the opportunity as "the biggest wealth-creation opportunity the world has ever seen". Following the "keiretsu" model used by Safeguard Scientifics, the company was heavily involved in the operations of the companies in which it invested and the start-ups would do business with each other. One of ICG's first investments was a website called Water Online. Under the guidance of ICG, in late 1997, Water Online hired Mark Walsh, head of AOL's B2B division, as CEO. The company changed its name to VerticalNet, expanded, and became a public company, albeit with limited revenue. Unlike traditional venture capitalists, Buckley and Fox envisioned that ICG would hold most of its investments for ten years or longer.
Liquidation
In February 2013, the company sold its stake in Channel Intelligence to Google for $60 million in proceeds. In December 2013, the company sold Procurian to Accenture for $375 million. In September 2014, when the company changed its name to Actua Corporation, its stock was trading around $20 per share and was worth approximately $700 million. In October 2016, the company sold Govdelivery to Vista Equity Partners for $153 million. In December 2017, the company sold its interests in VelocityEHS and Bolt Solutions for $328 million. In January 2018, the company sold FolioDynamix for net proceeds of $166.3 million. In April 2018, the company underwent liquidation.
