I was about to say "talent acquisition" but given they're keeping the tech it's probably not the right term. But the price point seems likely to be about that of a talent acquisition.
Yup, not a talent acquisition. Matt and I have both moved on to other things. I'm working on a retail initiative at http://www.propersuit.com if anyone's interested.
This seems like a win for everybody: Infochimps gets to build its business, YC-funded founders get to exit profitably and move onto another project, Paul Graham & Co. claim another successful start-up, and YCombinator's share of the buyout money can fund more start-ups.
I'm not sure YC made money out of this one, certainly not by angel standards. Angels invest with the aim of a 10x exit, because that's what they need from the successes to cover the cost of the failures (probably less in YC's case as they have a lower failure rate).
15k at 6% is a 250k valuation, Infochimps just took 1.2 million of investment themselves, so it's questionable whether they got a 1x multiple, a 4x+ multiple is out of the question. Infochimps don't have that kind of money.
Infochimps is bringing in the DataMarketPlace user base and community to expand its data sources and resources exponentially. This is only the beginning of what Infochimps could be. :)
I agree. Infochimps has a whip-smart group of folks and they're rapidly acquiring the resources needed to be the major player in the data market. Not only that, but knowing a lot of them, they're genuinely decent, helpful people. It's great to see another Austin startup rocking and rolling.
