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The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

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Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#131
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you are British, you'd want to check that burger doesn't contain horse meat. And as amusing as that might or might not be, there is also a point there.

There's nothing wrong with horse meat.

Potentially, there's a problem with any meat if you can't have confidence in where it came from. (British buyers didn't know they were buying food containing horse meat. They were being duped.)

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#132
post #101

How does it feel to work at a company when it pays over a billion dollars to 20-somethings working on the opposite coast? It's not mentally reconcilable. The only way not to go crazy is if you don't think about it at all, but that's just denying the reality of you being exploited while getting few of the benefits. Some people say, "Well, I have 'job security!'" Is "job security," the greatest corporate-serving propag…

Frankly, I don't get your position. If you believe that price should be determined by supply and demand based on perceived value, like it mostly is in these cases, then there's no exploitation. If you believe that price should be attributed based on Labor expended, then the Yahoo! workers are already extremely disproportionately paid relative to the average worker, so it makes no sense for them to feel exploited. How…

How exactly are the Yahoo! workers exploited?

I think that's between the employee and their own view of the world. If you worked at Yahoo for six years doing something, anything, and then Yahoo buys a six year old company run by a 26 year old for a billion dollars — what were you doing the past six years? Couldn't it have been you? Why not?

Every computer person employed by a company isn't generating a million dollars a year in value, but most could if they were pointed in the right direction. Even those who are generating 10x to 1000x the value of their salary aren't compensated proportionally (hence, why startups exist).

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#133
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you are British, you'd want to check that burger doesn't contain horse meat. And as amusing as that might or might not be, there is also a point there.

There's nothing wrong with horse meat.

unless it is sold as beef , then it is a scam since horse meat is quite cheap ,beef is not.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#134
I dont understand why Yahoo would need Tumblr , nor i got why they bought Summly the price they paid.

Is it to look relevant ? Yahoo has a ton of services, a ton of engineers and apps that could do better if they were made better. Yahoo still feels like it is 1999. Why not work on yahoo mail and make it relevant ? groups and make it relevant ? what about their ugly homepage ? I mean there is a ton of things to do, instead of buying things like Tumblr.

Marissa is cute and intelligent , but what's her strategy for Yahoo? At that rate , she'll be out in a year.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#135
post #134

I dont understand why Yahoo would need Tumblr , nor i got why they bought Summly the price they paid. Is it to look relevant ? Yahoo has a ton of services, a ton of engineers and apps that could do better if they were made better. Yahoo still feels like it is 1999. Why not work on yahoo mail and make it relevant ? groups and make it relevant ? what about their ugly homepage ? I mean there is a ton of things to do, in…

They need a social network. Badly. All their other services, including email, belong to a bygone era (with the exception of acquisitions like Flickr).

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#136
We're starting to see another destructive trend in acquisitions. First we saw a trend in acquihires. This clearly is bad for users and only serves founders interests. Now we're starting to see a trend towards acquiring relevance. For example, Facebook bought Instagram for "$1 billion" before it made any money for the sake of remaining relevant. In Facebook's defense, they bought it on a cash/stock (reportedly 30% cash/ 70% stock) deal. The stock ended up being worth much less. Yahoo buying Tumblr may work out, but it's very unlikely it will have any direct financial return on investment. The only return on investment is the slight chance Tumblr stays a relevant brand and in return keeps Yahoo's brand afloat. Yahoo needs to make some big bets, but I'm not convinced this is the right one.

What do you think would be their best bet? My guess is it would be something less trendy since most of those end up being fads. Google's best acquisition was clearly Applied Semantics; not YouTube.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#137

This is great news for the NYC startup ecosystem, which had been lacking in the billion dollar exits that create the next generation of entrepreneur-investors.

The Double Click acquisition spawned a ton of investment and led to companies like Gilt and 10gen. It will be interesting to see what Marco Arment does with a cool $100 million or so. He seems to have a golden touch. Tumblr, Instapaper, and The Magazine makes him 3 for 3.

Considering Marco left Tumblr a year before [1] they raised their last $85M round at $800M valuation [2] do you you think it realistic/possible that he had 1/8th the company after that deal?

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/marco-arment-instapaper/

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/tumblr-raises-85-million-ro...

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#138
post #96
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We don't know what Yahoo wants to do with Tumblr. All we have are rumors, a WSJ report and tons of idle speculation. Without knowing what the intended end game is, I don't see how we can call the acquisition a "success" or "failure", much less the CEO's. I also don't agree that "a sign of progress" is "making it succeed in the long run". Google is no genius with large acquisitions either. Motorola and Blo…

To know that Motorola was a poor acquisition, you'd need to know what would have happened if Google hadn't done it. Defensive/preventative decisions are sometimes undervalued.

That's essentially saying that one needs to know alternate history, which is obviously impossible. So, any mention of 'undervalued' can be counterbalanced with 'overvalued' absent facts.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#139
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Double Click acquisition spawned a ton of investment and led to companies like Gilt and 10gen. It will be interesting to see what Marco Arment does with a cool $100 million or so. He seems to have a golden touch. Tumblr, Instapaper, and The Magazine makes him 3 for 3.

Considering Marco left Tumblr a year before [1] they raised their last $85M round at $800M valuation [2] do you you think it realistic/possible that he had 1/8th the company after that deal? [1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/marco-arment-instapaper/ [2] http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/tumblr-raises-85-million-ro...

I wonder how much shares he has. Two days ago he tweeted that:

https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/335483318311194624

> @ericf @jsnell 1) I was technically an employee, not a founder. 2) My shares were from the first funding round, before any further dilution.

How much shares would a (number 2?) employee typically get? And does it mean his shares were diluted or not?

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#140
post #82
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We don't know what Yahoo wants to do with Tumblr. All we have are rumors, a WSJ report and tons of idle speculation. Without knowing what the intended end game is, I don't see how we can call the acquisition a "success" or "failure", much less the CEO's. I also don't agree that "a sign of progress" is "making it succeed in the long run". Google is no genius with large acquisitions either. Motorola and Blo…

Google is a genius at acquisitions IMO. To qualify as a genius you don't need a 100% of acquisitions to work out. You do need a few to work out tremendously. Google has those. Meanwhile, what's the last yahoo acquisition that didn't turn into disappointment soon after the acquisition? We can go back 15 years and be hard-pressed to find one. On the other hand there are plenty of disaster acquisitions including broadca…

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