Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

berrebi.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 43 posts

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#31

Post by ryanglasgow »

OldSchool wrote: post #12

Of course I don't know what the terms were, but if you're in a position to decide to take on (more?) VC or sell to Google I'm inclined to say going with the latter is the better choice. If you're a great visionary you'll have another chance not too far down the road to show the world again. If your good fortune hitched a ride with lady luck to some extent, then shamelessly cashing out your personal bubble is also a s…

Did you read the article? Google took longer than 30 days to close the deal, and their term sheet with Mangrove was about to expire.

He had no choice but to accept the VC funding.

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#32

Post by exolxe »

I love Jeremie's life principle which got him through the Google sandboxing/blackballing and company failure after passing on the acquisition:

“Everything that happens in your life is for your own good”, “Every challenge makes you stronger”... "All he said was, don’t worry, good things will happen after this tough experience"

--http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/ilan-abehassera

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#33

Post by OldSchool »

ryanglasgow wrote: post #31
OldSchool wrote: post #12

Of course I don't know what the terms were, but if you're in a position to decide to take on (more?) VC or sell to Google I'm inclined to say going with the latter is the better choice. If you're a great visionary you'll have another chance not too far down the road to show the world again. If your good fortune hitched a ride with lady luck to some extent, then shamelessly cashing out your personal bubble is also a s…

Did you read the article? Google took longer than 30 days to close the deal, and their term sheet with Mangrove was about to expire. He had no choice but to accept the VC funding.

Sure, I read this: "After waiting for it 30 days, we decided to accept the Mangrove investment proposal." That sounds like a choice was made.

My main point is for those going forward: unless the equity you stand to convert into your own personal wealth is insignificant to you, an exit can't really stop your career for long but it also just might be the only chance you get.

Maybe the Google deal wasn't a sure thing but whether or not they could pay was not a question.

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#34

Post by andrewhillman »

mvkel wrote: post #4

What an awful email. Reads like a lazy VC associate trying to do as little work as possible to pass along metrics to higher ups.

I think this was intended to read the way it does. Google A/B tests everything, including how well canned messages work vs. more personal messages like this.

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#35

Post by Karl_Rove »

citizens wrote: post #11
allbombs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

took a quick look, aren't those backlinks to subdomains? No idea what the product/service does but it appears subdomains are the main spam links, not the root.. So perhaps they were duped by spammers creating subdomains

Yep, totally possible

Indeed

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#36

Post by allbombs »

Evbn wrote: post #27
robryan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a create your own store product. People would have simply been making a store and then using software to spam their links everywhere. I think sub domains are usually treated as separate domains though?

They are separate for user generated subdomains. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdom... It is possible that on that fateful day, Google noticed zlio is user generated sub domains, and lost power.

technically you could still suffer from that.

subdomains are treated as separate domains, right

If all the subdomains had links back to zilo (say the header or footer), it starts to look like a huge link farm, or a bunch of satellite sites. It's actually pretty dangerous. But disavow is here, right? hah

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#37

Post by mjwalshe »

citizens wrote: post #2

> "For the little story, Zlio, became blacklisted/sandboxed by Google 6 months after…. It killed the company…" This is only speculation, but it looks like zlio.com was sandboxed/blacklisted because of rampant spamming. 4 out of the top 5 referring domains are porn sites (about 150k links). Source: http://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/refdomains/subdomains/zlio.c...

Yes I consulted on site that got hacked and thousands on pages with linsk to porn sites created - killed the site dead had to switch to a new domain in the end.

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#38

Post by rehack »

dsymonds wrote: post #15

Why is it now trendy to publish private mail like this? Is there really that much public benefit to be had?

Agree on the point you make. But out of this context, I think, its useful/interesting for Startup founders, to see what acquisition mails from Google look like.

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#39

Post by jfoster »

OldSchool wrote: post #33
ryanglasgow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? Google took longer than 30 days to close the deal, and their term sheet with Mangrove was about to expire. He had no choice but to accept the VC funding.

Sure, I read this: "After waiting for it 30 days, we decided to accept the Mangrove investment proposal." That sounds like a choice was made. My main point is for those going forward: unless the equity you stand to convert into your own personal wealth is insignificant to you, an exit can't really stop your career for long but it also just might be the only chance you get. Maybe the Google deal wasn't a sure thing bu…

If Google wanted them enough they could still purchase after the additional VC. They'd just need to pay more.

Re: The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio

#40

Post by mvkel »

namank wrote: post #10
mvkel wrote: post #4

What an awful email. Reads like a lazy VC associate trying to do as little work as possible to pass along metrics to higher ups.

What? They had already met once. Given the context, it sounds like a continuation of the conversation, casual in nature, from a biz person to an engineer.

Why does casual need to mean "communicate poorly"? When I type out emails, casual or not, they're designed to at least get the message across.

For something as important as an acquisition, I wouldn't want to feel like I'm dealing with an intern.

Post reply on HN