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Ebay Acquires Svpply

ebayinkblog.com

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Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#21

Post by crisnoble »

via Svpply blog:

>We created Svpply three years ago with the goal of creating a unified online retail shopping experience by bringing shoppers, tastemakers and merchants onto a single site. Today, we couldn’t be happier to announce that we’ve been acquired by eBay Inc.

>One thing we do want to make clear: Svpply is not going away. We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day — allowing our loyal fans to explore beautiful products and stores, all of them hand selected by the community.

>Our talented team will help eBay expand its focus on merchandising, discovery and browsing. Together, we’ll work to create improved and personalized experiences and merchandising options for eBay.com.

>We’re excited to join the eBay and Hunch teams in the new state-of-the-art technology development center in New York City!

Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#22

Post by lallouz »

I can't help but wonder if this is one of those "bail out" style acquisitions we hear about. Although it's mostly conjecture, I had definitely heard rumblings of them not doing well as of late. I hope the team and founders did well with this.

Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#24

Post by marcusestes »

whalesalad wrote: post #5

Zach Klein is killing it. Co-founder of Vimeo, founder of Svpply. He's been involved in lots of other cool gigs too. It's been really fun to follow along with his progress over the last few years. Tons of respect for the guy, and glad that he has done most of this outside of SV. Congrats on the sale!

He's doing great things with DIY, too: https://diy.org

Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#25

Post by ceslami »

droob wrote: post #15
crisnoble wrote: post #9

I am saddened that another small and awesome startup will be sucked into the bureaucratic conglomerate that is eBay/PayPal. On the other hand, I am happy these guys got their payday. They built an awesome site and totally deserve it. Here's to hoping that eBay doesn't screw up the site too badly...

I don't care about their payday if it means another useful tool disappears.

I don't think its going anywhere -- at least that isn't the plan: http://blog.svpply.com/post/31008753911/ebay-inc-acquires-sv...

On another note, if you truly find the site useful, you should be interested in its longevity. For all you know, a team of 7+ with an affiliate sales model and only 60,000 monthly uniques may not have been able to sustain this product without interest from a larger corporate entity.

In essence, a sale is not synonymous with disappearance, and sometimes it can even _ensure_ the opposite.

Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#26

Post by cake »

yuxt wrote: post #20

It turns out the CEO of svpply had some ideas what to do with the company. I am surprised no one has mentioned this post http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/5450242474/my-job-pt-1-i-have...

I was going to mention this post. I still think it was genuine and that he has "no idea of what he is doing" as he is saying. Otherwise if he had a true vision of his own business he wouldn't have sold, wouldn't he ?

Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#27

Post by jonathanmoore »

whalesalad wrote: post #6
54mf wrote: post #2

Sigh. They even had a business model, too. Disappointed. Looking forward to Svpply either (a) being slowly destroyed, or (b) shut down all together so the team can work exclusively on eBay's awful site. Congrats in advance to the team on cashing out 12/24/48 months from now.

When Salesforce.com acquired Heroku I was horrified that things were going to go downhill. Heroku has continued to get better and better as far as i'm concerned! Hopefully the trend of acquihires and product shutdown stops though.

I felt the same way when they picked up Desk (formerly Assistly). I have been pleased that they continue to push the product forward since the acquisition.

Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#28

Post by potch »

The distinguishing factor in this era of the Web is that now acquisitions are treated with dismay rather than celebration. Web 3.0 is much more cynical toward the big corporations (and in my opinion, rightly so).

Re: Ebay Acquires Svpply

#30

Post by rwhitman »

jamiequint wrote: post #14
54mf wrote: post #2

Sigh. They even had a business model, too. Disappointed. Looking forward to Svpply either (a) being slowly destroyed, or (b) shut down all together so the team can work exclusively on eBay's awful site. Congrats in advance to the team on cashing out 12/24/48 months from now.

Svpply's numbers have been pretty stuck for a while ( http://dl.dropbox.com/u/120/Screenshots/tcr0.png ) and they're competing in a market with tons of competitors that were doing better than them, specifically Wanelo ( http://dl.dropbox.com/u/120/Screenshots/-~1c.png ) but also Fancy ( https://thefancy.com ). You have to become huge to create a VC-backable business on the back of other affiliate programs and it didn…

I would argue that Pinterest was what crushed them
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