

Ebay Acquires Svpply - coupdegrace
http://ebayinkblog.com/2012/09/06/ebay-inc-acquires-svpply-com/

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54mf
Sigh. They even had a business model, too. Disappointed.

Looking forward to Svpply either (a) being slowly destroyed, or (b) shut down
all together so the team can work exclusively on eBay's awful site. Congrats
in advance to the team on cashing out 12/24/48 months from now.

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whalesalad
When Salesforce.com acquired Heroku I was horrified that things were going to
go downhill. Heroku has continued to get better and better as far as i'm
concerned! Hopefully the trend of acquihires and product shutdown stops
though.

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54mf
There are definitely exceptions to the rule. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure
eBay isn't one of them.

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whalesalad
Zach Klein is killing it. Co-founder of Vimeo, founder of Svpply. He's been
involved in lots of other cool gigs too. It's been _really_ fun to follow
along with his progress over the last few years. Tons of respect for the guy,
and glad that he has done most of this outside of SV. Congrats on the sale!

~~~
54mf
Oh, absolutely. Between Vimeo, Svpply, DIY, and his Cabin Porn blog (SFW, you
should check it out if you haven't yet), he seems to have impeccable taste for
things the internet could use. Huge props to him for everything.

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joelrunyon
<http://freecabinporn.com/>

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wiradikusuma
completely out of topic, but i'm really curious: the moment i saw those
isolated cabins, all sorts of things that can go wrong popped up in my mind,
especially safety issues. like, you can have armed fugitive stopped by and do
nasty things to you. or, do they have like hidden sensor/perimeter or stuff?

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hellotoby
It's possible that these things could happen. It's also possible that you are
paranoid.

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jjacobson
"With Svpply.com, eBay gains access to technology talent to further improve
the shopping and selling experience for its customers. Svpply.com assets –
including a talented team of six designers and developers – are well-suited to
help eBay advance more personalized experiences and merchandising options on
eBay.com."

Doesn't really sound like EBay is excited about Svpply as much as it is about
the team. But can the vision that drives and motivates the team of an awesome
startup like Svpply exist inside a giant corporation?

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lallouz
I can't help but wonder if this is one of those "bail out" style acquisitions
we hear about. Although it's mostly conjecture, I had definitely heard
rumblings of them not doing well as of late. I hope the team and founders did
well with this.

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crisnoble
I am saddened that another small and awesome startup will be sucked into the
bureaucratic conglomerate that is eBay/PayPal.

On the other hand, I am happy these guys got their payday. They built an
awesome site and totally deserve it.

Here's to hoping that eBay doesn't screw up the site too badly...

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droob
I don't care about their payday if it means another useful tool disappears.

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ceslami
I don't think its going anywhere -- at least that isn't the plan:
[http://blog.svpply.com/post/31008753911/ebay-inc-acquires-
sv...](http://blog.svpply.com/post/31008753911/ebay-inc-acquires-svpply)

On another note, if you truly find the site useful, you should be interested
in its longevity. For all you know, a team of 7+ with an affiliate sales model
and only 60,000 monthly uniques may not have been able to sustain this product
without interest from a larger corporate entity.

In essence, a sale is not synonymous with disappearance, and sometimes it can
even _ensure_ the opposite.

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potch
The distinguishing factor in this era of the Web is that now acquisitions are
treated with dismay rather than celebration. Web 3.0 is much more cynical
toward the big corporations (and in my opinion, rightly so).

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yuxt
It turns out the CEO of svpply had some ideas what to do with the company. I
am surprised no one has mentioned this post
[http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/5450242474/my-job-
pt-1-i-have...](http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/5450242474/my-job-pt-1-i-have-
no-idea-what-im-doing)

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cake
I was going to mention this post. I still think it was genuine and that he has
"no idea of what he is doing" as he is saying. Otherwise if he had a true
vision of his own business he wouldn't have sold, wouldn't he ?

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jrubinovitz
I interned at Skillshare up until late July, and we shared an office space
with Svpply. They are a cool bunch of guys and they seemed to be working
pretty hard this summer. I wish them the best at Ebay.

Is this the second NYC acquisition by ebay (the other I know of is Hunch)?

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thirdsun
This is disappointing from a user perspective. I always loved to use svpply to
find well done and niche products. I'm not sure what eBay is going to do with
it, but I expect it to go downhill from here.

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beforebeta
Awesome news, but I kind of felt Svpply had a very broad focus. I'm interested
in seeing what some of the newer startups in this segment, with a more
specific focus, will fair out (eg. <http://lover.ly> for weddings,
<http://www.threadmatcher.com> for clothes and footwear,
<http://www.grandst.com> for gadgets).

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trips2
Vimeo is a pain though. It does not work well without Flash, as does YouTube.
player.vimeo.com/config/12345678.smil will give some mp4 url's but they
require the request to come from their swf or some other annoying impediment.
Not everyone always has a super fast connection or uses Flash all the time.
With YouTube that's not a problem. With Vimeo, it is.

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crisnoble
via Svpply blog:

>We created Svpply three years ago with the goal of creating a unified online
retail shopping experience by bringing shoppers, tastemakers and merchants
onto a single site. Today, we couldn’t be happier to announce that we’ve been
acquired by eBay Inc.

>One thing we do want to make clear: Svpply is not going away. We’ll continue
to bring our users new products each day — allowing our loyal fans to explore
beautiful products and stores, all of them hand selected by the community.

>Our talented team will help eBay expand its focus on merchandising, discovery
and browsing. Together, we’ll work to create improved and personalized
experiences and merchandising options for eBay.com.

>We’re excited to join the eBay and Hunch teams in the new state-of-the-art
technology development center in New York City!

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xSwag
Anybody know how much? Congrats!

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rthng
I really like Svpply and I don't find myself using it so much. Maybe we'll see
some nice integration with eBay, or possibly keep running as it is, either way
congratulations to the team.

Looking forward to what's coming next.

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antidaily
Yeah Ben!! Congrats!

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wilschroter
Congrats team. Very few people every make it to the finish line of an exit,
and for those that do, you inspire the rest!

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ChuckMcM
Awesome news, both for Svpply and for Ebay which I see increasingly trying to
be in Amazon's space.

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studobalina
Founder Collective is killing it. Second startup to get acquired by eBay
(first was Hunch).

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photorized
Exits. I need to learn now to do that.

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artsim
Ebay + Hunch + Svpply + Milo = ?

