This is exactly the kind of acquisition that can help drive even more adoption of a service since it's obvious to users how the two companies complement each other.
This is also one of the very few acquisitions where I've read "[acquirer's] vision sits well with ours..." and not had to scratch my head and figure out why.
Congrats on a great pairing and sorry that we're losing Simon and Nat to the US.
I'm working on a business in a similar space, and what got me excited by this news was the natural overlap. It doesn't come off as a talent grab. Rather, there are natural parallels between the two services, and it seems like they're going to explore how they can (yup, I'm gonna say it), synergize, their two respective domains.
Podium (http://hellopodium.com) is the service we're working on. Excited about this space :)
I remember reaching out to them a couple years ago asking about their stack, and I got a really nice/informative response back (actually they linked me to a page on their site that listed all the info). These two deserve it!
A lot Brits say 'naff' when they mean 'unfashionable', it sounds ludicrous to me- as if we were still in the 1980's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s ). Not fly.
(to be more serious about it: different countries use different phrases. So what?)
They mean different things - reaching out is more specific about who is initiating the conversation, and it also doesn't necessarily imply success. I may have reached out to Bill Gates yesterday to see if he fancies giving me some career advice, but it's unlikely I talked to Bill Gates yesterday.
Congratulations as all have said, and also some excitement, as this seems like a well-matched pair of services. I am very optimistic for the outcome of this acquisition/collaboration. Best of luck to all involved!
Simon and Natalie, and all the team, congratulations on your continued rise of success. Yours has always felt like one of the most human and utterly useful services out there; long may it be so. Enjoy the new phase.
Early? It's three years almost to the day, for a service which, albeit very nice, was basically without a real monetization strategy (at least from what I saw -- I only attend a couple of conferences per year, so I'm not a heavy user or anything). In Europe, such services tend to die much earlier than what Lanyrd managed.
Besides, it makes a lot of sense as an add-on or content-sink for services with a more solid outlook... like Eventbrite. So it's a good move for everyone involved: SimonW and friends get their payout and Eventbrite gets a nice set of features ready to go. Win-win :)
They raised $1.4MM almost exactly two years ago and have a team of six in London. Maybe their options were limited. They deserve our congratulations regardless.
> If you want to sell it so early why start in the first place?
Uh, what? Are you genuinely suggesting that if your intention is to sell a business quickly, you shouldn't start one to begin with? I.e. "if you want to sell a business, don't start a business."
you missed "so early". They could have sold it for twice the price if they grew little bit more and become bigger competitor. Like all decisions, no selling a company is also an investment decision. Do you want to invest in founders who sell within 3 years or someone who grow the company much bigger in 10 or 15 years ?
Mark Zuckerberg was offered $1 billion dollar by yahoo when no one even heard of facebook and he declined the offer.
If you want to call it "Utter nonsense" its your choice.
Yeah, and how much were the Foursquare guys offered at one point? And the various groupon sites? Lots of people end up kicking themselves for not flipping a company when the going was good.
Agree. Gambling. Ignoring the downside risk of something can be a huge mistake. It's one thing to pass up selling your macbook and oops they just released an updated model now I will get $300 less on ebay. Another thing to pass up a billion dollars for a company no matter what you think the future is. Or for that matter any large amount of money for your company.
This is also one of the very few acquisitions where I've read "[acquirer's] vision sits well with ours..." and not had to scratch my head and figure out why.
Congrats on a great pairing and sorry that we're losing Simon and Nat to the US.