What a week for Seattle companies…
I suppose the most notable announcement was Microsoft’s $240 million dollar purchase of 1.6% of Facebook. It was only a month ago that Steve Ballmer was trying to figure out if this was all a fad or not.
What he said:
There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure,” Mr Ballmer also noted that sites such as Geocities, an online community that was bought for $3 billion by Yahoo! in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, “had most of what Facebook has.”
Hmm. Well, make of this what you will.
The other notable announcement was the closing of Judy’s Book. I understand start-ups not working out sometimes. What I don’t understand is why it took $10.5 million to get here. I don’t necessarily know that Judy’s Book was a bad idea…I just think that it should have only taken about $2-$2.5 million to get to this conclusion.
Today I read with great interest that Nick Hanauer over at Second Avenue has joined the Board of Marchex. I’ve long believed that a huge frontier is that of small businesses slowly moving their ad dollars online. ReachLocal’s recent $55 million dollar round certainly underscores that point. But, Marchex’s recent acquisition of VoiceStar suggests very clearly that they intend to sell phone leads to small businesses. How do you track a phone lead from a website? Why, using an IVR system like Voicestar of course!
Last but not least is the ongoing saga of Isilon’s public life on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock currently trades at $5.65 (down from its 52 week high of nearly $29 per share) after the company failed to missed sales targets that analysts were expecting. Fellow RealNetworks alumn and Sujal Patel, who founded the digital storage company seven years ago and served as its chief technology officer, has assumed the CEO role. The appointed CEO and CFO were let go this week after several disappointing quarters. Actually, three disappointing quarters in a row. Knowing Sujal, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this stock rebound nicely over the coming year. He doesn’t have experience running a public company but he does have a very big brain and that’s half the battle. He won’t make promises he can’t keep.
I might just buy both Isilon and Marchex stock this week.
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