When I see news like the $45 million StumbleUpon Acquisition, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Right in front of our eyes, a young entrepreneur started, built, and sold a high profile company to a huge organization.
After reading about the StumbleUpon buyout from every single vendor and website out there, I decided to dig through the archives (as in my bookshelves) to see what I could find on the company and where they got their start.
It seems Garrett Camp, one of the StumbleUpon Founders, was looking for a way to find new photo sites. Apparently, there just wasn’t anything out there that led him to places he wanted to go. So in recruiting Justin LaFrance and Geoff Smith, he created an early version of StumbleUpon to fit his own
needs.
After nailing the photo website problem, they decided to adapt it to different forms of media. They built it out to include all different kinds of websites, selectable through categories, and started pairing online ads with the results. In fact, about every 20 StumbleUpon results is a paid advertisement. Bet you didn’t know that!
Last December, the startup launched their video application, aptly named StumbeVideo which is the closest thing to channel surfing as you can find on the web.
The part I like the best about this story is the formation of the StumbleUpon idea. Garrett simply designed a solution for his own problem. He needed a way to find photo sites on the internet that just couldn’t be done with Google or Yahoo. So he and a couple buddies designed an algorithm and portal to fit their needs.
After they conquered the original problem, one of them had the idea to offer it as a service, combine it with advertisement, and make some money!
Also just announced is the Google competitor. There always has to be a “me-too”
In the end, I am still curious as to why Ebay wants StumbleUpon at all. It is documented that Ebay wants to marry the StumbleUpon toolbar with an eBay application and Skype, but why? That is a pretty damn expensive toolbar..
The other side of the coin is eBay’s profits are up 52%. I wonder if that has anything to do with the acquisition? Any thoughts?
Also, thanks to Scott, Gary, Ed, and Sean for the last posts’ comments!
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