Slide.com raised $50M in a $500M round. Wow. That’s a lot of money. How much?
The $500M represent s85% of MySpace’s price tag or 33% of YouTube’s price tag. It’s also the same valuation Facebook got when Greylock invested in Facebook in April 2006.
More importantly, I think, is that this is 33% of what Paypal sold to eBay for. That’s important because Levchin is maniacal on building a company that will sell for more than what Paypal did. Then again, as Business Week’s Sarah Lacy reports, Levchin is aiming for an IPO, and not an M&A.
Time will tell if this is as prescient as the Facebook deal (which technically remains to be seen) or the MySpace acquisition (definitely a smart move in hindsight). But Slide is indeed a way to monetize the social networks, or rather, a theory on how to monetize social networks. I must say (not to compare WatchMojo.com to Slide.com at all) but I tend to agree that building the most valuable apps for social networks will be able to generate high returns. Where my philosophy differs is that I personally do not think that slides and what not are what marketers will really want to advertise, and conversely, users won’t want brands advertising on their personal images; we do it via high-quality video programming… but right now, that is moot.
I must say, reading the following made me chuckle:
No doubt the valuation will revive talk that we’re in the midst of a bubble. How could a widget company be worth half a billion dollars? What is the revenue model? How could it ever make a profit on slide shows running on other people’s sites? The naysayers have a point, but I’ve long thought Slide was a far more valuable property than the Silicon Valley masses gave it credit for.
Why? Does this cover remind anyone of anything? Also written by Lacy:
Too funny. It will be interesting to see if 2008 adds momentum to digital media asset prices. I tend to think that yes, because there is a bull market somewhere at all times and in an otherwise slow offline landscape, online seems relentless in its growth.
Allen & Company helped with the round, incidentally, the funding came from Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price.
Told you, Max doesn’t mess around.
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