Back in the day when Napster was hip and cool (and unprofitable), unlike now when its not cool and not profitable, the big buzzword in Silicon Valley was P2P networking, and all start-ups that had P2P in their game plan, well they got gobs of money. Then a reality check happened…. why bring up bad memories, its been so long! One of those companies that got funded in the go-go days of the Internet 1.0 was Kontiki, which has gone through more makeovers than the number of shirts I change in a day.
Nevertheless, today there is news that it got sold for $62 million to Verisign. That’s good, as long as you ignore the fact that the VCs put in nearly $41 million into the company. Five years to return $21 million. This should be lesson to anyone who is starting/investing in the pretty young things of the Internet. Of the 10-odd calendar companies, how many do you think make it? One or two will get sold to Yahoo or Fox or maybe AOL. What about the rest?
I believe Kontiki have been profitable for sometime, but ye – shit deal.
profits … who knows. they say they were, but boy this deal did not really make any money for anyone … did it. that’s the point. some deals make money and others just whither away or stay on life support forever.
I think you are being generous to suggest that one or two of the calendar companies will be bought. Google, Yahoo and MSFT have the functionality already.
So it didn’t make a ton of money. That’s the nature of venture capital. What is your point?
since i have to spell it out for you – drew my point is that not every deal works out, especially the ones which happen to be me-too types.
50% return over the last 5 years, sure beats the stock market!!!!
Calendars – exactly! Too many web 2.0 companies being built to be bought and not built to grow and monetize.
I Agree, it’s not bad to have a 50% return over five years.