New Short Position: KITD

In a post last year, I recommended a documentary from 2001 that was airing on Showtime again, Startup.com, which profiled the rise and fall of a dot-com called govWorks.com. A post on Fred Wilson's blog yesterday (NYC's BigApps Challenge) reminded me of one of the stars of Startup.com, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman (pictured above), the co-founder of govWorks.com. When I found through a quick Internet search that Tuzman was now the CEO of a public company (KIT digital Inc.; Nasdaq: KITD), I figured it might me a good candidate to sell short, so I ran the Altman Z"-Score on it. Its score was -4.17. Recall that a score below 1.1 indicates a high risk of bankruptcy. On the other hand, the financial data that score is based on doesn't take into account two recent acquisitions made by the company, which the company's management claims will be accretive, so bear that in mind.

I shorted this at $11.55 today.

The photo above of Mr. Tuzman is from KIT digital Inc.'s website.

Update: readers of this post may also be interested in this site, which offers tools and ideas for short sellers and includes an automated calculator and screener based on the Altman models: Shortscreen.com

Hell's Kitchen isn't a DMZ

Last Friday, Cheryl and I went to see The Cult at Terminal 5, in Hell's Kitchen, and then went out for burgers afterwords at Five Napkin Burger, in the same neighborhood. Great show¹, great burger².

Twenty years ago The Cult mentioned this neighborhood in their song "New York City", describing it as "a DMZ", a "Disneyland trash can", and, "a crazy place". That was back in the pre-Giuliani days though. Hell's Kitchen is pretty gentrified these days.

¹Before the show, venture capitalist Fred Wilson mentioned in a comment thread that Terminal 5 was "too up and down", i.e., that it's got steep staircases. True, but not really an issue if you stay on one level, as we did. With a bar and bathrooms on that level, there wasn't any need to wander up and down.

²Coincidentally, when Binging for "Five Napkin Burger" while writing this, I found this post by Fred's wife, where she gave the place a thumbs up.