Term Sheet in times of coronavirus
I’m Lucinda Shen, the writer taking over Term Sheet from Polina.
I’m Lucinda. You may already know me.
I’ve been making stealthy appearances covering the IPO section of this newsletter since 2017, though I’ve popped up above ground every so often, meerkat-style, to write the essay whenever Polina was out.
I 210% did not expect to ever write Term Sheet when I joined Fortune four years ago as a finance writer covering highly-regulated public companies. But here I am, just in time for startups to confront what may be a global economic meltdown. Strap in, Term Sheet readers—I am doing the same.
A programming note: Term Sheet will still arrive in your inbox every weekday morning. I’ll still be covering the day’s big news in dealmaking as well as sharing a list of major VC deals, private equity deals, IPOs, and more (scroll on for today’s list).
We won’t be having face-to-face contact any time soon, given my honor of taking over Term Sheet in the middle of a global pandemic—but I want to hear from you. What do you want to read about from me? What are you hearing that I should know? And how is your company dealing with coronavirus?
Let’s Zoom. Let’s email. Let’s On-nomi.
But enough housekeeping. On to the news.
Bargain deal: AOL acquired MovieFone—that service you used to call to buy tickets—in 1999 for $388 million. Last week, Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings of Helios & Matheson, MovieFone’s parent company, reveal that it sold for…just over $1 million.
Early on, MovieFone tried to pivot to online sales but lost to the likes of Fandango.com, theater websites and plain old Google. AOL later tried to reposition the whole venture as a broader entertainment media site…but it turned out that space has pretty heavy competition too. Helios & Matheson then acquired MovieFone in 2018 for about $1 million in cash, not including stock that is now worth nothing—and wound it down to a single employee. It’s unknown who exactly acquired MovieFone last week.
This one Twitter thread: If the medical shortages around the coronavirus haven’t become real enough to you yet, I would like to point you to a Twitter thread by a member of the startup community. Bradley Ziffer, a product designer at Acorns, recounted his harrowing experience trying to get hospital care while battling COVID-19 last week. An excerpt:
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com