Boomerang Entrepreneurship: How To Sell The Same Startup Twice

Deals

from the double-the-profit dept

In 1999 the entrepreneurs behind a photo hosting company named Webshots sold their company to Excite@Home for $82.5 million. Not bad. Even better, though, was that a few years later, after Excite@Home went bankrupt, the founders bought Webshots back at an $80 million discount, paying just $2.4 million. That was pretty smart of them… because now, two years later, they’ve flipped the company again, this time to CNET, for $70 million, $60 million of which is in cold hard cash (they’ve obviously learned the value). You have to wonder if this agreement has a buy back option as well. While most news stories focusing on the deal are comparing it to Google’s similar Picasa purchase yesterday, this bit of yo-yo startup reselling is a much more interesting story.