eBay and StumbleUpon have announced tonight that SU has been sold back to its original founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith. The terms of the sale will not be disclosed. SU was bought by eBay in May 2007.
An eBay statement says that:
it has become apparent that there are few long-term, strategic synergies between StumbleUpon and the eBay Inc. portfolio. The separation of the two companies is the right move to further StumbleUpon’s success while eBay Inc. continues to focus on strategies to connect buyers and sellers across its many platforms.
On the StumbleUpon blog, Camp writes:
This change will help StumbleUpon move quickly and stay true to its focus – helping people discover interesting web content. Our goal is to make StumbleUpon the web’s largest recommendation engine and we think this is the best way to get us there.
It was never very obvious what synergies might exist between StumbleUpon and eBay, so it’s not particularly surprising to see the two part company. eBay having divested itself of one mismatched subsidiary is only going to add fuel to recent rumours that Skype too is being sold back to its founders.
Rumours that profitable PayPal is to sell its Marketplaces’ liability back to Pierre for an eBay Live pin and Meg Whitman’s autograph so far exist only in my head.
6 Responses
I’d love to know how much of their $75m they got back. Bet they didn’t lose as much as the did and will on Skype.
Any chance they can have made a profit on this buy/sell?
Seems massively unlikely that they made their money back, when SU lost three-quarters of its traffic:
https://www.tamebaynew.wpengine.com/2008/09/ebay-to-dump-stumbleupon-expand-classifieds.html
WOW Sue! That made me laugh out loud. I would be willing to donate the pin but someone might have to buy Megs signature.
As I recall, Bill Cobb said at the time that SU had no obvious synergies and they’d work it out.
They didn’t work it out. Which worries me a bit.
Reminds me of the time I sold a camera on eBay and almost bought it back at a profit a few months later. I would have too if I didn’t forget about the auction before it ended.
I like Michael Arrington’s take on this:
https://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/14/stumbleupon-a-case-study-in-the-efficient-allocation-of-resources/