Ark bought Carsabi

Good news. I used Carsabi a lot when they first started it since I was in the market at the time. I also emailed one of the guys (maybe OP) a little bit offering to help and he seemed like a good guy. Congrats.

Re: Ark bought Carsabi

#5

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 4:39 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #2

[deleted]

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Re: Ark bought Carsabi

#6

Post by wilfra » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 4:56 AM UTC

Bummer. I was hoping carsabi would take off.

I used them to find my car. It was great. Especially the graph that tells you whether a car is overpriced or underpriced compared to all of the other listings. I used it to negotiate $1,000 off of a $6,000 car at a used car dealer, making them sell it to me for the average private party price.

Kelly Blue Book purports to offer a similar price guide, but it is terrible and dealers know it. If you try to cite it to them, they say its wrong - but if it benefits them they try to use it to their advantage. However an actual database of actual private party sales going on right now is very powerful.

Re: Ark bought Carsabi

#7

Post by tomasien » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 5:02 AM UTC

Initially didn't know what to make of this given how highly I think of Carsabi and how new Ark was. Put the pieces together with the FB aqui-hire http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-...

and now I think it's probably beneficial for all parties, but not as big of a deal as a full acquisition (by a mile).

Love to see Ark pursuing other verticals though!

Re: Ark bought Carsabi

#8

Post by wilfra » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 5:10 AM UTC

ericflo wrote: post #3

That's surprising given the publicized Facebook acquisition: http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founder...

Did you read the article? It says they plan to sell off the carsabi site/service. So, it's not really surprising at all...

Re: Ark bought Carsabi

#9

Post by tapp » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 5:51 AM UTC

tomasien wrote: post #7

Initially didn't know what to make of this given how highly I think of Carsabi and how new Ark was. Put the pieces together with the FB aqui-hire http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-... and now I think it's probably beneficial for all parties, but not as big of a deal as a full acquisition (by a mile). Love to see Ark pursuing other verticals though!

Slightly OT, but could someone tell me what, exactly, "acq-hire" means? I thought it referred to one company acquiring another purely in order to get access to talent.

Facebook did not acquire any Carsabi assets according to the linked TC story, it simply offered the founders jobs.

Back in the day, we called that getting "hired."

Is there a distinction here (e.g. perhaps some sort of payback to investors or something) that I'm missing?

Re: Ark bought Carsabi

#10

Post by callmeed » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 6:48 AM UTC

tapp wrote: post #9

tomasien wrote: post #7

Initially didn't know what to make of this given how highly I think of Carsabi and how new Ark was. Put the pieces together with the FB aqui-hire http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-... and now I think it's probably beneficial for all parties, but not as big of a deal as a full acquisition (by a mile). Love to see Ark pursuing other verticals though!

Slightly OT, but could someone tell me what, exactly, "acq-hire" means? I thought it referred to one company acquiring another purely in order to get access to talent. Facebook did not acquire any Carsabi assets according to the linked TC story, it simply offered the founders jobs. Back in the day, we called that getting "hired." Is there a distinction here (e.g. perhaps some sort of payback to investors or something…

Your understanding of "acq-hire" is accurate. In this case, I think the TC headline is wrong.

If Carsabi never raised money (I'm not sure), then they had no investors to return money to. And since FB didn't want it, perhaps it was okay to just sell it separately.