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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

dmor wrote: post #137
jcampbell1 wrote: post #129

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...

[deleted]

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

#142

Post by camus »

smegel wrote: post #135
camus wrote: 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).

Who do they need a social network ? are people going to move from Facebook or Twitter to Tumblr? No. They need a good an new idea , an innovative product that will draw attention. and a consistent strategy . People are fed up with social networks ( i.e. Google+ ).

Tumblr is not valuable at all for advertisers , unless you are selling porn...

What's Yahoo mobile strategy ? What's Yahoo's cloud strategy ? ect ...

I see no strategy , only buzz ...

I'm sure plenty of engineers at Yahoo have great ideas ,it's just feel like what's really broken is Yahoo's management. Why would they pay that much for Tumblr, really ?

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

#143

Post by droithomme »

davidw wrote: post #111
zaidf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This thread sounds like "he said, she said". Anyone got a nice spreadsheet of who has acquired what, with the fate of the acquired unit and people? How long did they stick around? That seems like the minimum - maybe there are clever ways to add information to it.

Here you go, per your request, all 76 of them, but not including this latest one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...!

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

#144

Post by jcampbell1 »

dmor wrote: post #137
jcampbell1 wrote: post #129

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...

My rule of thumb is co-founders have 2/3, employees have 1/3, and investors cause a 75% dilution per round. Thus since their are 4 rounds, .75^4 * 2/3 => 21% between the founders.

However, in this case it appears that Marco wasn't a co-founder, but rather a first employee with an equity grant. If it were for 5%, it is probably worth ~1-2% now, and so I'd reckon he will see $15M. That is a lot of money, but not enough to change the startup landscape.

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

#145

Post by lmm »

camus wrote: post #142
smegel wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who do they need a social network ? are people going to move from Facebook or Twitter to Tumblr? No. They need a good an new idea , an innovative product that will draw attention. and a consistent strategy . People are fed up with social networks ( i.e. Google+ ). Tumblr is not valuable at all for advertisers , unless you are selling porn... What's Yahoo mobile strategy ? What's Yahoo's cloud strategy ? ect ... I see…

>are people going to move from Facebook or Twitter to Tumblr? No.

Huhwhat? Of course they are. Do you not have friends doing this already?

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

#146

Post by blankenship »

camus wrote: 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…

What does cute factor have to do with anything in this thread?

“Ballmer is rotund and intelligent, but what’s his strategy for Microsoft?” sounds just as silly.

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

#147

Post by lmm »

carbocation wrote: post #2

Assuming this is true, does the 1.1 billion in cash tell us that this is purely about the property and not in any way about the team, or is that over-reading / misreading the tea leaves?

Nope, there could still be vesting periods/golden handcuffs etc., this just means it was cash rather than Yahoo stock. It tells us that Yahoo preferred to spend cash than stock, or Tumblr's founders wanted cash rather than Yahoo stock, or a combination of the two, which can be a starting point for any amount of speculation.

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

#148

Post by waterlesscloud »

pkmehta wrote: post #47
minimaxir wrote: post #36

Per AllThingsD, "There were no other competing bids, despite reports, to snap up the New York-based hipster blogging service." http://allthingsd.com/20130519/yahoo-tumblrs-for-cool-board-...

Can someone explain to me why you spend $1.1B on this if the company was running out of cash, had investors skittish about funding a new round and there were no competing bids. Why didn't Yahoo just let them get desperate and buy them then? With an all-cash deal, it seems they're less interested in the team than the platform so seems they could have picked that up in a few months for significantly less. What am I mis…

Also, the question isn't $1.1B or nothing, it's what amount would Tumblr say yes to?

Would they really have turned down an offer of $700 million? $800 million? Was $1.1B really the least they'd accept?

I bet they would have accepted significantly less, rumors to the contrary.

But the billion dollar headline has its own value, I guess.

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

#149

Post by waterlesscloud »

lmm wrote: post #145
camus wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do they need a social network ? are people going to move from Facebook or Twitter to Tumblr? No. They need a good an new idea , an innovative product that will draw attention. and a consistent strategy . People are fed up with social networks ( i.e. Google+ ). Tumblr is not valuable at all for advertisers , unless you are selling porn... What's Yahoo mobile strategy ? What's Yahoo's cloud strategy ? ect ... I see…

>are people going to move from Facebook or Twitter to Tumblr? No. Huhwhat? Of course they are. Do you not have friends doing this already?

I have zero friends that have left Facebook or Twitter for Tumblr.

I have a number of friends that have added Tumblr, but they haven't left anything.

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

#150

Post by waterlesscloud »

k_kelly wrote: post #45
mani27 wrote: post #38

The rate at which Yahoo is buying out companies for talent acquiring , I wonder what must be going through minds of engineers at yahoo.

As an outsider it looks like Yahoo is saying it will back big crazy engineering projects if they have potential. To me Yahoo went from being the last place I'd ever want to end up to being an exciting company. It's an amazing turnaround.

Why does any of this making working at Yahoo as an engineer even a little more exciting?

All we've seen so far is external projects get big money and attention. Where's the internal projects that would make working for Yahoo exciting?

Right now I'd rather be working for a company that planned to compete with Yahoo.

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