

LinkedIn Is Acquiring Contacts Start-Up Rapportive (YC S10) - sahillavingia
http://allthingsd.com/20120207/linkedin-is-acquiring-contacts-start-up-rapportive/

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betterlabs
Rapportive is best amongst the products that add social profiles so this is an
awesome outcome. Congratulations to the team!

I always wondered how they could turn it into a business, though. Its useful
but tough to say you'd pay for it and Google and others could add it easily,
which they have done.

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BuddhaSource
One of my Fav tool. I hope its here to stay :) I am not sure if its talent
hire.

Rappotive can go to places where even google can't. Google People (
alternative to rappotive ) gives you info only from Google network. They are
restricted in a way to go beyond their own network.

Truly a great product ! Congrats to the team.

Sometimes I wonder if its the investors who push for this acquisition. Reading
though their blog it seemed Rappotive was building a premium product.

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frankdenbow
I hope this doesnt get shut down. Rapportive is one of the few things I use
_every_ day. LinkedIn kept CardMunch going so I hope they do the same with
Rapportive.

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grinich
I doubt they'll shut it down. This is likely a play to compete with Xobni's
Smartr for Gmail (though they have a bit different functionality).

<http://www.xobni.com/download/gmail>

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arctangent
Is that a market that LinkedIn want to compete in? I can see a tenuous link,
but it doesn't seem to be part of their core business. I am sure that time
will tell, but I suspect that they bought Rapportive for the talent.

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shykes
Linkedin is completely embedded in my email experience, and they have
Rapportive to thank for it. I suspect I'm not the only one, so it probably
makes sense to keep the service running.

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arctangent
I didn't realise it was such a big deal. Any chance you could spell out what
the key benefits are to you? I use LinkedIn to read up (i.e. spy) on people
quite a bit if I am going to be working with them but I don't know why this
would be useful for people who are already emailing me.

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shykes
Sure. The key benefit in a nutshell: it makes context switching less painful.

I'm introduced by email to a lot of people I don't know - new and potential
customers, new and potential partners, lots and lots of potential hires, etc.
A fair number of these introductions evolve into two-way conversations. And,
as probably everybody here, my overall dose of email is way too high.

The result of all this is constant context switching between too many mental
threads. Rapportive makes each context switch slightly easier. In aggregate
that saves me immense amounts of mental cycles.

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stbullard
Title should be "LinkedIn may be acquiring Rapportive".

Neither company has commented, and Gannes' unnamed source doesn't appear to
know whether the deal has closed.

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why-el
is acquiring works too, as they are in process of getting acquired. :)

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stbullard
For context, this submission's original title on HN was "LinkedIn Acquires
Contacts Start-Up Rapportive (YC S10)". About an hour ago, it was changed to
"is acquiring" to better reflect the linked article's headline on AllThingsD,
as I'd suggested above.

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joshu
I invested in etacts which didn't get very far, so I ended up passing on
Rapportive. Wonder if I made a mistake.

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sjtgraham
At this point it looks like you might have answered your own question.

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joshu
Not all acquisitions are good for investors.

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gsharma
Based on numbers from TechCrunch, looks like investors got a 3.75x.

According to TC: Rapportive raised 1M on 3M pre and got acquired for 15M.

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rdl
Wow, congratulations! I wonder if they'll post about how being bought by a
public corporation is different from a late-stage private startup.

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lbarrow
Great for them! I've used Rapportive for a while and always been happy with
the service, even though I've never paid a dime.

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shykes
Congrats to a fellow YCS10 company! The Rapportive team rocks.

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skrish
Great tool & a great outcome for Rahul & team. Congratulations.

Has been one of the most useful tools for me as it just pulls up all the
necessary profile information based on email id. Hope it doesn't get shut down
or trivialized because of the acquisition.

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Shank
Not a half bad deal, as long as LinkedIn doesn't screw with the already
working systems Rapportive has. Maybe they can add more data from LinkedIn
profiles with it?

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PanosJee
Congrats to the founders! I hope they keep it going as it is. Maybe with some
deeper LinkedIn integration! (that would be great)

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AllenGannett
This bodes well for the other start-ups in the personal CRM arena,
Contactually, Xobni, etc. More funding and M&A to follow.

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meiji
I think the business model is definitely to sell to someone else consolidating
in the sector. I use this and have used Xobni but don't need the services
enough to pay for them like most people I suspect. It's genuinely useful for
people who don't know how their email search works and for those who want to
track people down though.

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movingahead
Used this product from its early beta. It is pretty useful. Happy for the
Rapportive team. They have slacked off in the recent past, probably because of
the acquisition. I have started using Xobni's Smartr for the past week,
because of their mobile app.

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brackin
Did Gmail not integrate similar functionality into the latest version? A good
acquire.

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mbertrand
Anyone have any insight into LinkedIn's strategy with this acquisition? Have
seen them nab a few other companies in the space. Talent grabs? Curious to
hear your thoughts.

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jcc80
Great, now I'll have to stop using this tool. Rapportive is great, but who
knows how long before I'll have to opt out of LinkedIn putting my photo next
to ads or something crazy like that. Not that a company would ever do
something so audacious...but never know.

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endlessvoid94
Wow, congratulations guys.

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ZanderEarth32
Odds that LinkedIn shuts the service down if they are acquired?

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stbullard
Not as high as many other companies. They've acquired 2 consumer-facing
startups so far: CardMunch, which they rebranded and re-released, and
Connected, which they've kept going without any changes.

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wavephorm
I think the word "acquired" is used a bit too loosely these days. If this
business' operations get shut down then it's not really an exit in the
traditional sense, and I don't think people shouldn't be congratulating a
whole company for giving up, quitting their jobs, and getting 9-5 jobs at a
corporation.

