

Ark bought Carsabi - drewonstuff
http://carsabi.com/

======
ericflo
That's surprising given the publicized Facebook acquisition:
[http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-
founder...](http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-of-
carsabi-who-will-sell-off-their-car-price-comparison-site/)

~~~
wilfra
Did you read the article? It says they plan to sell off the carsabi
site/service. So, it's not really surprising at all...

~~~
ericflo
Good point -- I remembered the article from October and found it to link it,
but didn't re-read it.

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tomasien
Initially didn't know what to make of this given how highly I think of Carsabi
and how new Ark was. Put the pieces together with the FB aqui-hire
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-
founders-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-of-
carsabi-who-will-sell-off-their-car-price-comparison-site/)

and now I think it's probably beneficial for all parties, but not as big of a
deal as a full acquisition (by a mile).

Love to see Ark pursuing other verticals though!

~~~
tapp
Slightly OT, but could someone tell me what, exactly, "acq-hire" means? I
thought it referred to one company acquiring another purely in order to get
access to talent.

Facebook did not acquire any Carsabi assets according to the linked TC story,
it simply offered the founders jobs.

Back in the day, we called that getting "hired."

Is there a distinction here (e.g. perhaps some sort of payback to investors or
something) that I'm missing?

~~~
callmeed
Your understanding of "acq-hire" is accurate. In this case, I think the TC
headline is wrong.

If Carsabi never raised money (I'm not sure), then they had no investors to
return money to. And since FB didn't want it, perhaps it was okay to just sell
it separately.

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sbuccini
Both of Ark's co-founders are Cal grads. Both of Carsabi's co-founders are
also Berkeley grads. Seems smart, Carsabi gets to leave their baby with
someone they know and trust, and Ark probably got it for a song.

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dw5ight
fwiw acquihire means fb gets your investors some money back and you get a
decent offer when Craigslist sues you and things go south. as car search is
not particularly relevant to social media, we were pretty happy to turn over
the IP to Ark as another Cal grad search company and can't wait to see what
they do with it.

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prophetjohn
Good news. I used Carsabi a lot when they first started it since I was in the
market at the time. I also emailed one of the guys (maybe OP) a little bit
offering to help and he seemed like a good guy. Congrats.

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mikle
As someone not in the know, I would love for someone to explain whether the
Startups TV show had something to do with this and how "real" is this?

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wilfra
Bummer. I was hoping carsabi would take off.

I used them to find my car. It was great. Especially the graph that tells you
whether a car is overpriced or underpriced compared to all of the other
listings. I used it to negotiate $1,000 off of a $6,000 car at a used car
dealer, making them sell it to me for the average private party price.

Kelly Blue Book purports to offer a similar price guide, but it is terrible
and dealers know it. If you try to cite it to them, they say its wrong - but
if it benefits them they try to use it to their advantage. However an actual
database of actual private party sales going on right now is very powerful.

~~~
arscan
Cargurus.com has a similar feature. You are right...it's a great feature for
negotiating price.

