Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#1

Post by razin » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:25 PM UTC

Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
blog.backtype.com

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#2

Post by swombat » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:32 PM UTC

[ YC08 ]

BackType has raised a total of $1.32m according to http://www.crunchbase.com/company/backtype

No speculation as to the size of the acquisition, but I guess anything between $10-100m is possible, which would give YC a return of about 3% (6% adjusted down to 70% twice) of that, or somewhere between $300k and $3m?

"YCombinator: turning $15k into $300k in 3 years"

Not bad.

Edit: This is based on the idea that BackType is successful, and had other options (which may not be the case, since their QuantCase/Compete graph is going down)... if they were about to go bust, the price could be considerably lower... but if they were doing well, I imagine investors would have blocked a sale lower than $10m.

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#3

Post by brlewis » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

"we will discontinue the BackType product and API services"

Besides Google Alerts, what alternatives are out there?

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#4

Post by rokhayakebe » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #2

[ YC08 ] BackType has raised a total of $1.32m according to http://www.crunchbase.com/company/backtype No speculation as to the size of the acquisition, but I guess anything between $10-100m is possible, which would give YC a return of about 3% (6% adjusted down to 70% twice) of that, or somewhere between $300k and $3m? "YCombinator: turning $15k into $300k in 3 years" Not bad. Edit: This is based on the idea that Ba…

I think it is more sub $10M. Their product will be discontinued, so it appears they are buying the team. Bactype looks like a company with a handful of employees so you probably want to count $1M/engineer or maybe $1.2M.

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#5

Post by joblessjunkie » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:40 PM UTC

I wish that when a headline announced "Big company acquires little startup you've never heard of" that it would be accompanied by some explanation of what the little startup actually does, and why it is interesting.

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#6

Post by vegashacker » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:41 PM UTC

joblessjunkie wrote: post #5

I wish that when a headline announced "Big company acquires little startup you've never heard of" that it would be accompanied by some explanation of what the little startup actually does, and why it is interesting.

The interest here (for most people I assume) is the YC funding they got in 08. (Or "O8" as it seems to be written in the headline.)

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#7

Post by pdelgallego » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:42 PM UTC

Congrats to the guys of BackType.

I have been very tempted to apply to their internship during the winter.

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#8

Post by siculars » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:43 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #3

"we will discontinue the BackType product and API services" Besides Google Alerts, what alternatives are out there?

I was using some of BackType's API's myself. Now I'm taking a look at http://corp.topsy.com/developers/api/.

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#9

Post by scorpioxy » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:46 PM UTC

joblessjunkie wrote: post #5

I wish that when a headline announced "Big company acquires little startup you've never heard of" that it would be accompanied by some explanation of what the little startup actually does, and why it is interesting.

You would typically know about it if you're into social media analytics and metrics and its effects on advertising and so on.

Their technology stack is very cool. The amount of data it needs to process is staggering. And this whole field is relatively new so there are tons of potential in it.

Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

#10

Post by swannodette » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

I wonder what affect this will have on the open sourcing of Storm.