
Yahoo Acquires Qwiki For Around $50 Million - kunle
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/02/yahoo-acquires-qwiki-for-around-50-million/
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mikeash
My Twitter feed has been lighting up with this. Not because the acquisition is
all that interesting in and of itself, but because the app was developed by
Chaotic Moon, and they're saying they never got paid. For example:

[https://twitter.com/whurley/status/352201365910593536](https://twitter.com/whurley/status/352201365910593536)

Better start making popcorn.

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kevin818
Does anyone know if these types of acquisitions are as simple as, "hey I like
this company, let's email them with an offer price and see what they say", or
is it more of "hi, we like your company, can you please send us your earnings,
forecasts, expenses, etc..."?

For anyone out there that's had suitors/offers, I'd love to know what the
process for this kind of thing entails.

~~~
dakimov
Before they make an offer, they will perform a complete assessment of your
company, it is called "due diligence".

They do not easily throw money at you.

~~~
larrys
Due diligence typically refers to the process after an offer is made and
accepted to ensure things are what they are supposed to be.

[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/duediligence.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/duediligence.asp)

[http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/due%20diligence](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/due%20diligence)

I will note that this differs from what wikipedia says is due diligence.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_diligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_diligence)

Unfortunately most of the information that is needed for true "due diligence"
is not going to be possible until signing a contract or perhaps a letter of
intent (which means very little of course).

~~~
dakimov
It looks to me that your references contradict you. How many companies have
you sold?

I do not know whether the due diligence is supposed to be done after an offer,
but when you are negligible to a company that will possibly acquire you, they
just propose a due diligence and maybe a deal, or no deal. What would you
choose?

~~~
justin
larrys is correct; due diligence (as it applies in corporate M&A) occurs after
a term sheet or letter of intent is sent and accepted, and is the process of
verifying that everything the other party said was true.

Further, your question "How many companies have you sold?" is rude and
irrelevant.

~~~
dakimov
Sorry, I tried to look smart talking about things I did not know enough about.
I sometimes do this because I am very frustrated, as I am your age and have
not done anything significant with my life.

It gives me a huge amount of butthurt looking at people like you, as you are
my age and a seasoned entreprenur, rich, happy and successful, and I am a
miserable failure.

Sure you know how due diligence is done, probably you have had time to be good
at knowledge and experience in business, while your employees whom you have
made money from have been working barely seeing the sun.

Are all those people THAT worse than you to justify the income discrepancy, or
are they worse than you at all?

Do you consider yourself superior to the people who are of your age or older
and are still working as employees?

This seems so fucking unfair to me that people like you get THAT amount of
money and life enjoyment. Are you really THAT good, that better than the
people who are not entrepreneurs?

Looking at people like you, I suppose you believe you are extremely smart and
special and the way you life turned was the only possible way.

The human world is so fucked up.

By the way, I do not think that the question "How many companies have you
sold" is that rude, I was just trying to find out whether the person speaks
from their experience or not. And definitely it is relevant. So go fuck
yourself, smarty pants.

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josh2600
Yahoo is building a content engine. In a play on the 'chicken returning to the
egg' strategy, Yahoo recognizes the negative regression of the Internet
towards portal sites driven by Facebook. This is the original trend that got
Yahoo going in the first place, and what is the thing that always wins in
Yahoo land? Content.

Content is king in that land of Yahoo and summarization of a neverending
stream of content is a faster way to get more people to see more content and
thus more ads.

Yahoo is making a new portal, one built around summarization of personalized
content.

~~~
notatoad
>Yahoo is making a new portal

Yahoo already has a portal - that's what their homepage is and it's hugely
popular. The nature of a portal though, is to transport the user somewhere -
they are taking all their huge number of pageviews and sending those users on
to _somewhere else_. Yahoo's acquisitions seem to be the opposite of making a
portal - they're bringing more and more of the content onboard, trying to turn
their portal into a destination. or rather, buying up enough actual
destinations that the portal can promote their own products instead of lucky
third parties.

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johnvschmitt
<s>I'm sure Yahoo will become the true market leader of the internet by simply
buying a few startups every month</s>

I mean, it reminds me so much of "trophy wives".

One does not simply BUY one's way into Mordor.

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ameen
Based on most of their recent acquisitions (Tumblr, Summly, Qwiki) I'm
inclined to believe that they're working on some sort of an automated(?)
product for the publishing industry (New Media, perhaps).

I just wish Yahoo's acquisition spree doesn't end badly with employees
leaving, because the IP really doesn't seem to be worth anything (in the case
of Summly, Qwiki, etc).

~~~
camus
> I just wish Yahoo's acquisition spree doesn't end badly with employees
> leaving

Right now it is just short term pump and dump. There is 0 strategy. It will
only end up with employees getting fired due to Yahoo executives mistakes.

~~~
obviouslygreen
Without being present in the relevant board meetings, it's hard to say this
with any realistic certainty... but it certainly does ring true given the
hulking, festering mass of anecdotal evidence Yahoo keeps leaving in its wake.

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ivanist
> In another display of their intent to buy the entire Internet

Sounds accurate to me..

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Matt_Mickiewicz
They raised $10.5m... probably at a $30-$40m pre-money valuation for their
later stage, $8m round.

Not a great outcome, especially if the investors had liquidation preferences.

~~~
kapilkale
Not a great outcome for last round's _investors_. With a 1x liquidation pref,
they just get their $10.5M back with some change on top.

Pretty decent for everyone else- especially founders, assuming they've got a
significant stake in the remaining money.

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Keyframe
How much cash does yahoo have and where do they get it? Are they profitable at
all?

~~~
spullara
Yahoo has been (nearly) continuously profitable since early this century. It
often surprises people given the general negative feelings toward them.

~~~
Keyframe
It really is surprising, but I'm glad they found their way to stay alive and
profit as well. Hopefully they'll make some sort of a bigger splash in modern
era as well.

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longwei
"Yeah, let's go shopping"

