Friday, April 27, 2007

StumbleUpon Money

Imagine a product that takes you to a random site on a click. The random site of course is not so random, since it is based on some logic of likeness shared by people with similar interests as you. Seems far fetched and would probably not work. And even if it did do something close to whatever it claims, who would spend money on/for it.



Truth is stranger than fiction and reality definitely likes far fetched ideas. Apparently, the startup Stumbleupon  has 4 million sites being stumbled upon by people and their 2 million user base is good enough to have ebay interested in them. Imagine, with a seed funding of just $1.5 million dollars, they are now rumored to go for $40-$45 million dollars! Now, this is called stumbling upon some money! I really wonder, how would a company like ebay benefit from stumbleupon? Can then make people stumbleupon products that they are likely to buy? Along similar lines, how would ebay benefit from spending $2.6 billion to buy skype? Can they make sellers and buyers talk over skype and finish deals?



I guess ebay just has money to burn or a real whacky M&A strategy. :-)

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