Sherwood Partners in the Media

Sherwood Partners has been growing fast, so it's not surprising that we've found ourselves in the media on a regular basis. Have a look at the articles and inserts below:

  • 'Undertaker' of failed start-ups retools as intensive care unit




    by Constance Loizos
    Mercury News

    Sitting at a long, plain table in the small conference room of Sherwood Partners, a restructuring firm tucked away from passersby on University Avenue, co-founder Marty Pichinson ran a hand through his thatch of gray and black hair and smiled brightly. ``Our business is blessed,'' he said. ``It never dies.''

  • Martin Pichinson is a regular on ROB-TV, Canada's All Business News Station







    Martin Pichinson is a regular on Canada’s Premier Business Television Show “Squeeze Play”. He focuses and discusses the highlights of technology and how it is changing the ways we live.

  • Repairing a damaged reputation



    How new CEOs can recover from a corporate scandal
    by Debby Young
    Electronic Business Online

    Marty Pichinson, cofounder of consultancy Sherwood Partners, suggests that the best way to restore trust is to make promises in small increments and then deliver on every promise made. "Making a series of promises on which you are certain you can deliver, and then communicating your progress on an ongoing basis, goes a long way toward reestablishing corporate believability."

  • Sherwood Partners expands



    Industry Wrapups

    San Francisco Business Times

    Sherwood Partners, a Palo Alto-based consulting firm often working with venture-backed companies, has opened a Boston office. The new office is headed by Brian Horgan, who was a co-founder of Orix Venture Finance, which provides debt financing to venture-backed tech companies. He was previously head of the East Coast office of Greyrock Capital, a venture finance affiliate of Bank of America.

  • Winning the Relationship Game



    Some ace relationship builders tell us why it's vital to turn business acquaintances into trusted partners and friends -- and how to do it.
    by David Lid Sky
    Fast Company

    You constantly have to be thinking about how and where you can build and strengthen relationships. As for the where, that means working in coffee, lunch, dinner, or drinks with current or potential contacts on every travel opportunity. Or you can truly go the extra mile. When consultant Martin Pichinson sought to expand his business to Silicon Valley from his base in L.A., he jumped at every chance to strike connections with potential business partners in his new location. "If someone called me up and said, 'I may have a deal for you, when are you going to be here next?' I'd try to be there the next morning," says Pichinson, president of consulting firm Sherwood Partners Inc. "I'd take a 5:45 a.m. flight up and be at their offices at 8:15 to go to breakfast. You have to quickly cement any opportunity that arises, or your competition will." After 11 years of making connections, Pichinson moved his headquarters to Palo Alto and does much of his business there.

  • Venture capital recovers



    After three difficult years, money is again flowing to the venture-capital industry. Can it curb its exuberance this time?

    The Economist

    IT SEEMS like only yesterday that start-up companies, preferably doing something internet-related, and the sleek-suited venture capitalists who funded them, were all the rage. They could scarcely be less trendy now. Since the dotcom craze collapsed, many of the firms born during the boom years have died, or else stagger on as shadows of their former selves. Martin Pichinson, an insolvency specialist who has built a reputation as the "company undertaker" of America's Silicon Valley, recently said that around 7,000 companies are still waiting for the receivers to arrive. Not surprisingly, the money available for investments in start-up companies slowed to a trickle after the bubble burst.

  • Dot-Com Liquidator Cool on Tech Sector Rebound



    from All Things Considered

    National Public Radio

    The high-tech sector is showing some improvement lately, but betting on technology remains a risky business. Marty Pichinson heads Sherwood Partners, a firm in San Jose, Calif., that specializes in liquidating the assets of failed dot-com companies. He speaks with NPR's Steve Inskeep.

  • Hey, Californian! Does Microsoft owe you?




    by Byron Acohido
    USA Today

    Sherwood Partners founder Marty Pichinson, renowned across Silicon Valley for handling the liquidation of 150 start-ups since 1999, recently retained SRC to see if his creditor clients have anything coming from Microsoft. SRC is tracking former bookkeepers, checking with software resellers and analyzing Microsoft licensing archives. It wants to document any Microsoft software purchased by Pichinson's dead dot-coms. Yellen estimates there might be as many as 80,000 liquidated Windows PCs for which Microsoft could owe millions in refunds.

  • Venture capitalists are sticking with established companies




    by John Cook
    Seattle Post-Intelligencer

    Sherwood Partners co-founder Martin Pichinson, a restructuring expert who runs a venture capital consulting business in Palo Alto, Calif., expects as many as 75 percent of [venture-backed] companies to go out of business. He said it is up to the venture capitalists to "get rid of the junk" in their portfolios. "Sometimes you need to clean your house before the company comes over and the next party starts," said Pichinson, who has shut down more than 140 high-tech companies in the past four years. "I do think there needs to be a final cleansing so VCs can determine that what they are working on is either going to live or going to die."

  • Tech Undertaker: Business troubleshooter takes aim at high-tech woes




    by Michael Liedtke
    Associated Press

    Amid rising hopes for a high-tech turnaround, there's this sobering sign: Martin Pichinson -- a man who has buried nearly 150 failed startups since 1999 -- has swooped into Silicon Valley like a vulture lurking over a pack of wounded animals.

  • The Terminator




    by David Lidsky
    Fortune

    Marty Pichinson has built a reputation shutting down failed companies. Can he apply what he's learned to saving others?

  • The Doctor Is In





    Milestone Group

    Milestone: What are the three most common reasons Sherwood gets a call to help a company? Pichinson: One, to validate certain processes, operational or financial, within a company. Two, to extend runways, specifically because technology is not the norm of business and has very few validation points. Our job is to extend runways and bring efficiencies to the business building process. We have clients that have 32 months of runway; why do they need Sherwood? That’s the first question people always ask the CEO. Sherwood increases your runway by a minimum of 20% and many times much more. We believe that we are management’s best friend. What happens if your product finally gets traction at the 34th month? Better we be there now to protect your future, and your ability to have a future, than to call me at the 28th month to assist in the wind-down process. Which is, sadly, the third reason you call Sherwood: to create some kind way of closure.

  • Domestic Discounter JetBlue to JFK Rescue




    by Dalia Fahmy
    The New York Post

    Marty Pichinson, a frequent business traveler and technology consultant at Sherwood Partners, said he flies JetBlue as often as he can to save money. "I used to go to Newark, but now I go to JFK," he noted. "I'd rather buy a new suit or a fountain pen than give an airline money for horrible food." Pichinson is one of 2 million JetBlue customers who flew through Kennedy Airport in the past year, making up the bulk of the 3 million new passengers who helped lift traffic at the airport by 10 percent to 30.7 million.

  • Korea's Incoming President Takes Steps to Reassure Foreign Investors




    by Don Kirk
    New York Times

    ..."Korea has been a world-class place to invest in," said Martin Pichinson, chief executive of Sherwood Partners, a consulting firm in Los Angeles and San Francisco. "They've recently destroyed it. You have a new leader speaking against the United States." While Mr. Roh may make headway with foreign businesspeople in Seoul, Mr. Pichinson said, it is less clear whether distant investors with little firsthand knowledge of the country will take much comfort from Mr. Roh's change of tack. "Korea has created an unstable zone," he said, and for now, he said, his advice to investors is to "do nothing" in the country.

  • Turnaround Specialists to Make Their Case to Venture Firms’ LPs



    Is tending to ailing companies a wise use of VCs' time
    by Russ Garland
    The Venture Capital Analyst

    Sherwood Partners, which has garnered a lot of media attention for its liquidation work, claims to be developing a more holistic approach to working with venture-backed technology companies, said founder and President Martin D. Pichinson. He said he is expanding his firm from 25 to 40 employees, including a psychiatrist who specializes in corporate issues. Sherwood is looking for referrals from VCs and would take a success fee in cash or equity from the company. The business is evolving, Mr. Pichinson said, but the key is that venture firms need him so that partners can spend their time more productively by letting Sherwood guide some of their toughest cases. “We’re building more time to get things done,” he said. Within the last month, Mr. Pichinson said, venture firms have begun asking Sherwood to take a look at their portfolios.

  • Snip Snip: More Companies Save Money At Employees' Expense




    by Cheryl Winkour and Lynn Cowan
    The Wall Street Journal

    Whatever they do, companies should make cutbacks in one swoop, not cut medical benefits one week, the company picnic the next and jobs weeks after that, said Martin Pichinson, co-founder and principal of Sherwood Partners Inc., Los Angeles, an adviser to troubled and fast-growth companies. Doing it bit by bit pours more salt on employees' wounds every time there's a change, he said." Piecemeal never did work and it won't work."

  • The Devolution of the CEO and Evolution of the CCO   (PDF)




    by Martin Pichinson
    Venture Capital Journal

    The chief concept officer is the person wth the vision, possibly the founder, who takes the dream and begins to mold it into reality. At this stage the goal is not to run a business. The focus at the early stage should be the development and maturing to the future product not on securing deals or marketing a conceptual product (duties suited for CEO's).

  • Venture Capital Fund Raising Falls to 21-Year Low




    by Michael Liedtke


    The high-tech bust of the past 2½ years has cast a pall over a venture capital industry trying to cope with an unprecedented streak of losses. "We are really at a standstill," said Martin Pichinson, chief executive for Sherwood Partners, a firm that helps venture capitalists save struggling startups. "I don't think you are going to see much money coming into the industry for three or four years." With such dim prospects, venture capitalists have had little reason to raise money, particularly since the industry is sitting on an estimated $80 billion in funds left over from the boom days.

  • Venture Capital: The man who helps lay to rest dot-coms




    by John Cook
    Seattle Post-Intelligencer

    Martin Pichinson has been called a lot of names...But Pichinson, a 56-year-old corporate shutdown specialist who has closed nearly 100 dot-coms in the past three years, likes to think of himself more as a caregiver assisting a company as it takes its final breath. "To me, ending someone's pain and misery is important," said Pichinson, co-founder and president of Sherwood Partners in Los Angeles. "We don't feel like we are undertakers. We are more on the side of a hospice."

  • Behind the Grim Reaper’s Slaying of Kozmo.com




    by Adam Fendelman
    ePrairie.com

    Martin Pichinson is the kind of dream weaver you can hate and then learn to love. He lurks like an eagle over corporations, converting them into corpses, and has predicated a business on advising some 100 companies on "gentle" shut-down measures. To name a couple hitting home to Chicagoans, Pichinson's Los Angeles-based Sherwood Partners has done the dirty work for Chicago-based BrightSage, an e-commerce spin-off of Chicago-based EthnicGrocer, as well as the much-loved Kozmo.com.

  • Gateway Seeks to Revive Sales, Reinvent Itself



    With its share of the PC market slipping fast, its strategy includes extending 'beyond the box'
    by Terril Yue Jones
    Los Angeles Times

    The company's revenue has plummeted from $9.6 billion in 2000 to an estimated $4.4 billion this year. Chief Executive Ted Waitt has acknowledged that Gateway must rack up strong sales during the holiday shopping season if it is to have any hope of keeping its full-year loss under $250 million. Those dismal results would come on top of a staggering $1.03-billion deficit for 2001. "We really need a strong couple of weeks as we exit this quarter," said Waitt, who founded Gateway 17 years ago out of an Iowa farmhouse. But there are no guarantees that the company can pull it off. Price pressure from rivals Dell Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are slicing PC profit margins paper-thin. And with its share of the cutthroat PC market slipping uncontrollably, some analysts are predicting Gateway's eventual demise, despite the $1 billion to $1.2 billion in cash that the company currently has on hand. "Gateway is probably more valuable dead than alive," said Los Angeles technology consultant Martin Pichinson.

  • In some high-tech firms, strategy is to stay alive and wait




    by Chris Gaither
    The Boston Globe

    It is the entrepreneurial equivalent of cryonic freezing. Someday, when the ailing telecommunications industry revives, the fiber-optic devices made by SpectraLane Inc. may help dramatically speed the flow of data through next-generation networks. But for now, the secretive Silicon Valley start-up, which once employed 40 people, has been placed in a state of suspended animation to avoid running out of cash, according to the venture capitalists financing it. Though few companies will admit to doing it, the deep-freeze strategy, known as mothballing, has become the latest trend in Silicon Valley survival management. It also highlights the creative methods that have spawned a vocabulary all their own - from mothballing to moonlighting and from hibernations to shotgun-wedding mergers - as investors attempt to keep companies alive during the worst technology-spending slump in decades.

  • Behind the Grim Reaper’s Slaying of Kozmo.com




    by Adam Fendelman
    ePrairie.com

    Martin Pichinson is the kind of dream weaver you can hate and then learn to love. He lurks like an eagle over corporations, converting them into corpses, and has predicated a business on advising some 100 companies on "gentle" shut-down measures. To name a couple hitting home to Chicagoans, Pichinson's Los Angeles-based Sherwood Partners has done the dirty work for Chicago-based BrightSage, an e-commerce spin-off of Chicago-based EthnicGrocer, as well as the much-loved Kozmo.com.

  • Wisdom of the Terminator




    by Leslie Walker
    The Washington Post

    Martin Pichinson, professional liquidator of dot-coms, knows a thing or two about failure. He cut his business teeth in the entertainment industry jump-starting troubled acts (he landed the Miracles a multimillion-dollar contract after Smokey Robinson quit), became a Mr. Fix-It in the retail industry (where he turned around Famous Amos Cookies), and then carved a career advising, and often shepherding into oblivion, ailing high-tech firms. He has laid to rest more than 70 dot-coms with assets totaling nearly $3 billion, including Kozmo.com, iChristian and AllAdvantage.com.

  • Rules for Survival in the Flagging Telecommunications Industry



    Rules for Survival in the Flagging Telecommunications Industry

    Total Telecom

    Back in April of this year, I predicted that sensational falls were coming for the telecommunications industry. At that time, there were already significant signs that the industry was heading for a freefall. The industry that looked so bright with so many VC-backed companies is now only a lingering memory. Telecom firms now lead all industries in job cutting and reengineering and have held that dubious distinction for most of the past year.

  • As tech executives focus on books, business languishes




    by Jim Christie and Peter Henderson
    Reuters

    ...Some start-ups are hiring professional auditors early, and venture capitalists, who already had tightened funding for start-ups, are more thoroughly auditing portfolio companies. Venture firms would do well to dig. Start-ups often do not have financial officers, and so their books are often full of accounting irregularities, according to restructuring consultant Martin Pichinson of Sherwood Partners Inc.

  • Telecom troubles spell doom for Pluris




    by Jennifer Files
    Mercury News

    ...About 20 of Pluris' former employees are now shutting down the company. Investors hired Sherwood Partners from Los Angeles, which has sold off assets of more than 100 companies since the tech bubble burst. With so many firms closing these days, computers and office equipment won't bring a high price, but Sherwood hopes that some networking company still will pay a hefty price for Pluris technology. Now, no less than during Pluris' life as a company, timing is crucial, according to Sherwood CEO Marty Pichinson. ``It's not like a fine wine,'' he said. ``It doesn't get better and better as time goes by.''

  • Fade away




    by Katherine Goncharoff
    The Deal.com

    Pluris Inc. raised $215 million in venture capital from 85 funds over a five-year period since its founding in 1997. But June 8, all those investors had it with the Cupertino, Calif.-based maker of network routers for the Internet, which had yet to release a product. The VC funds didn't put Pluris into bankruptcy. They just shut it down. And they hired Martin D. Pichinson, a former personal manager to entertainers such as The Miracles and Lou Rawls, to do it. Venture capitalists have played out the Pluris situation scores of times over the past two years. Pichinson alone handled at least 76 shutdowns in 2001.

  • $215 million later, start-up Pluris shuts down




    by Ben Heskett
    CNET News

    Pluris, a once promising company, burned through $215 million during the past few years as it attempted to build a high-end router that was intended to outclass similar products from competitors such as Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems. Now Pluris has ceased operations and turned its assets over to San Francisco-based Sherwood Partners, which will sell them for the benefit of creditors, according to a Pluris executive.

  • $251M contract for Lockheed Martin




    by Andrew F. Hamm
    Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

    Lockheed Martin's space systems division has signed a $251 million federal contract to maintain and produce military weather satellites through 2012, putting it in prime position to grab a $1 billion contract to produce the next generation of the orbiting monitors. The contracts are important to Silicon Valley, especially in a down economy, says Martin Pichinson, chief executive officer of business consultant firm Sherwood Partners Inc.

  • Face value: Deaths in the valley



    These are lucrative times for bankruptcy specialists such as Marty Pichinson

    Economist.com

    After the partying of the late 1990s, restructuring specialists such as Mr Pichinson are the morning-after cure. Sherwood's niche is in the venture-capital industry, which, at the height of the boom, sunk tens of billions of dollars a year into what seemed to be promising young firms. Mr Pichinson enters the frame when those investments go so far awry that a bit of outside advice might help. Occasionally, he can fix things. But most of the time, he shuts companies down because, in four out of five cases, "they can go away, and nobody would notice the difference."

  • Companies hibernate to avoid closure




    by Tania Anderson
    Potomac Tech Journal

    Bears and other animals see winter as a time when food becomes scarce and chances of survival diminish. So they quietly retreat into caves and take a couple months off to wait out the cold. Some Potomac area technology companies are taking their cue from the animal kingdom, going into hibernation as a way to avoid a complete shutdown. It's a trend that already has gained favor in Silicon Valley. ...Martin Pichinson, co-founder of Sherwood Partners, a business adviser based in Los Angeles, opened an office in Washington, D.C., to offer his services helping companies go into hibernation. He says that he has been courting several local VCs who are interested in hibernating some of their portfolio companies.

  • Acquisitions of Dot-com Companies and Marketable Technology Assets Increase as Bankruptcy Trend in Sector Slows




    by Kenneth Rapoza
    Mergers and Acquisitions Advisor

    Is the dot-com deal back? Statistics released this spring by Webmergers.com suggest a slowing of dot-com bankruptcies and speculate that a second wave of deals, this time focused on Internet applications, may be coming.

  • Bertelsmann OKs New Napster Deal



    Media: Latest agreement to buy the file-sharing firm would leave investors empty-handed.
    by Jon Healey
    Los Angeles Times

    Global media conglomerate Bertelsmann struck a deal with Napster Inc. on Friday to buy the company after Napster emerges from bankruptcy, paying creditors $8million but leaving investors in the pioneering song-sharing service empty-handed. "It's a good name, but you've got to rebuild it. I don't think [Bertelsmann] can do it," Pichinson said. "They've lost the community. The people have moved away from the village."

  • Waiting to buy hardware may not be the best cost-saving strategy




    by Dana Norton
    Tech Republic

    Some IT managers believe that the best hardware deals are made at the end of a quarter or the end of the year because vendors are more likely to reduce prices to meet sales quotas. But experts we talked to warn that waiting to make a hardware purchase may not yield the best results. The best approach is to keep your eyes open and take advantage of opportunities when they happen.

  • People Interview: Mopping Up




    by Christopher Keough
    Los Angeles Business Journal

    Not all those associated with e-commerce and Web development have suffered in the past two years. Marty Pichinson of Sherwood Partners generates as much as $35,000 per client in weekly revenues as a business advisor or liquidation expert.

  • A Fine Line Between Cost Cutting And Pulling the Plug at Start-Ups




    by Raymond Hennessey
    The Wall Street Journal

    There's a fine line that needs to be walked between shrinking a company and killing it off. ...Little cuts count, as well. Martin Pinchinson, co-founder of Sherwood Partners, a business consulting firm based in Los Angeles, has lately been specializing in company "hibernation," going into portfolio companies to get them down to the bare minimum, yet still keep them poised to strike back once the market improves.

  • Dead Dot-Com? Marty's Your Man



    Pichinson cleans up after failed techs-and business is great
    by Linda Himelstein
    Business Week/ Business Week Online

    Over the past 18 months, Martin D. Pichinson has become a permanent fixture in technology circles...Pichinson is the man venture capitalists turn to when their companies are crumbling. His job: to sort through the companies' dirty laundry and shut them down.

  • Start-ups Must Act Like Survivors, Advises VC Advisor




    by Pete Greenley
    ePrairie.com

    Experienced VC Advisor Marty Pichinson takes the time to give start-ups some hints about making sure they don't get voted off the virtual island. Like coroners, the jobs of many business advisors focus on death – the death of companies. But also like many coroners, business advisors that close companies often have perceptive viewpoints on the life of businesses and how they should grow and prosper.

  • Sigma Networks To Liquidate



    Decision comes just 11 months after launching with $450 million



    Sigma Networks is discontinuing operations and liquidating, ending a high-profile venture to provide interconnections in major metro hubs. Sigma's shutdown comes less than 11 months after it launched with more than $450 million in venture capital backing, and barely a month after it completed its five-city network build-out.

  • Venture Funds Hire Adviser to Put Out Cash Fires




    by Jim Christie
    Reuters Online

    When Martin Pichinson walks into a tech start-up and sees gold-flecked paint or computers in pristine bubble-wrap, he smells money burning.

  • Exerpt from BusinessWeek Online Frontier "Smart Answers"




    by Karen E. Klein
    BusinessWeek Online

    Q: I need to shut down my 50-year-old, family-owned travel agency. How do I do this properly? --M.G., Fairfield, Conn.

  • PhotoPoint returns to original creators




    by Gwendolyn Mariano


    Troubled online photo site PhotoPoint has been acquired by Pantellic Software, a privately held Canadian company that created and spun off the company during the Internet boom.

  • "Photo of the Day"





    Mercury News

    Marty Pichinson strolls through the empty offices of Zoho.com, an Internet company in Sunnyvale that serves the hotel industry. Sometimes called the 'Repo Man,' Pichinson is the man every dot-com company fears the most. His arrival often signals the end for struggling companies. Hired by company creditors, usually bankers or venture capitalists, it's Pichinson's job to take over a company, close it down and liquidate its assets.

  • High-tech’s Repo Man on a roll   (PDF)



    Wrecked companies a deal in the making
    by Matt Marshall
    San Jose Mercury News

    This news story covers some of Sherwood Partners' recent operations in the San Jose area, focusing specifically on our Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors' service.

  • CMI Holdings Group Closes Acquisition of Fandom Shop





    Business Wire

    CMI Holdings Group, Inc. (OTC-Pink Sheets: CMIH) has acquired the primary assets of Fandomshop, which includes the online store of Fandom Inc., the Company feels will be a cornerstone in its rapid corporate growth....Fandom, the holding company of both Another Universe and Fandomshop, made an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors to Sherwood Partners, Inc. and the asset sale was made through Martin Pichinson, the Assignee. Mr. Pichinson is a principal and founder of Sherwood Partners, Inc., the leading crisis and restructuring firm in the technology arena.

  • 4SURE.com Enters Into Exclusive License Agreement With firstsource corp.







    4SURE.com, a leading direct marketer of computer and technology products, announced today that it has entered into an exclusive license agreement with firstsource corp. Founded in 1991, firstsource is a B2B technology reseller located in Santa Ana, CA. Focusing their efforts on building a strong base of business customers, sales in 2000 totaled over $79 million.

  • Venture Funds Hire Adviser to Put Out Cash Fires




    by Jim Christie
    HighTech Forum

    When Martin Pichinson walks into a tech start-up and sees gold-flecked paint or computers in pristine bubble-wrap, he smells money burning. "Venture capitalists have not carefully watched their investments," Pichinson said. "I´ve gone into companies where there are five or six servers unpacked. That´s watching your money?"

  • LendingTree suing ex-partner




    by J.C. Zoghby
    The Charlotte Business Journal

    Charlotte-based LendingTree Inc. has filed a lawsuit against a former partner, hoping to reclaim $158,100 in fees and late charges. That partner, San Francisco-based online insurance provider eCoverage P&C Insurance Services Inc., is no longer in business.

  • Insert Published in EXPERT INSIGHT™ in the March 15, 2001 issue of Inc. Magazine   (PDF)







    As an established leader in the consulting community, Sherwood Partners, Inc. was invited to participate in Expert Insight, a nationwide educational series for managers of growing companies. “Reducing Debt Through Thirt Party Negotiations” is the second of three insertions appearing in Inc. Magazine throughout the year.

  • Insert Published in EXPERT INSIGHT™ in the March 15, 2001 issue of Inc. Magazine   (PDF)







    As an established leader in the consulting community, Sherwood Partners, Inc. was invited to participate in Expert Insight, a nationwide educational series for managers of growing companies. “A Better Alternative to Bankruptcy” is the first of three insertions appearing in Inc. Magazine throughout the year.