The latest from TechCrunch
- With Reports Of A New Round Closing In On $1 Billion, Groupon's Valuation Could Be As High As $7.8 Billion [Update: We Have The Document]
- More On AOL's Disc Strategy: $1.19 Floppies, 50% Of All CDs Made, And Precision Bombing
- SnapPages Lets You Hook Into LinkedIn For Custom Online Resumes
- Will 2011 See App Makers Thinking Android-First? One Developer Thinks It's Possible
- How Much Did It Cost AOL To Send Us Those CDs In The 90s? "A Lot!," Says Steve Case
| With Reports Of A New Round Closing In On $1 Billion, Groupon's Valuation Could Be As High As $7.8 Billion [Update: We Have The Document] | Top |
| photo © 2009 Chelsea Oakes | more info (via: Wylio ) According to a VC Experts report, Groupon gave the State of Delaware a heads up on its new funding on December 17th with an Amended/Restated Certificate of Incorporation. The document showed the authorization of an up to $950 million round of Series G preferred stock says VC Experts. While this doesn’t necessarily mean the company will be raising that amount, it does give it the capacity to do so. The report says to expect a SEC Form D with the exact amount of financing to be filed next week. From the VC Expert Blog : “There are a few key differences in terms and pricing between the Series G and its Series F, raised in April. The $135 million Series F, led by Digital Sky Technologies, was priced at $32.12 per share and was junior in liquidation preferences to all preferred shares. This round is priced $.53 less, at $31.59 per share and is senior to all. The latest filing also increased the authorized shares of voting common to 250 million shares, and if all of them are issued, Groupon’s valuation could be as high as $7.8 billion. The financing comes just weeks after Groupon’s rejection of Google’s $6 billion buyout offer. Groupon gave no official reason for the rejection, though reports speculated pricing, strategy and anti-trust issues were to blame.” According to VC Experts’ estimate, the new round gives Groupon a “best estimate” valuation of $6.4 Billion. The filing has reportedly also increased Groupon’s authorized voting common shares to 250 million and if all of them are issued at $31.59 per share could mean that the company is valued at over $7.8 billion. VC Experts says it will release the Amended Certificate of Incorporation filing tomorrow morning to its email distribution list. We are currently looking into it and have contacted Groupon for more information as well. Update: The entire document is now available on the VC Experts site . PDF below. View this document on Scribd CrunchBase Information Groupon Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| More On AOL's Disc Strategy: $1.19 Floppies, 50% Of All CDs Made, And Precision Bombing | Top |
| Yesterday, our post about AOL’s promotional discs by way of an excellent thread on Quora invoked quite a bit of feedback. That’s hardly surprising given that every man, woman, and child (at least in the United States) probably had their hands on one of the discs at some point in the 1990s. In fact, Jan Brandt, AOL's former Chief Marketing Officer, dropped a huge knowledge bomb in the Quora thread after we published our original post: “ At one point, 50% of the CD's produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it, ” she wrote. Wow. And she followed up today in a new thread with even more interesting information about the program. Specifically, someone asked: What was the Conversion Rate of AOL CDs in the 1990′s ? Given how widespread the discs were, you might think AOL wasn’t (or wasn’t able to) monitor the rates so closely. But they were, according to Brandt. “ The profitability of each and every disk and promotion effort was tracked and analyzed. We conducted approximately 2000 different tests each year and used these results to develop future programs. Despite the label ‘carpet bombing,’ there was actually a very high level of marketing sophistication and almost all decisions were data and results driven ,” she writes. While she didn’t have any singular statistic to share, she does say that the first large mailing program began in the Spring/Summer of 1993, with about 200,000 discs (technically, still 3.5-inch floppy disks at the time) and other non-disk mailing being sent out at that time. “ The average response to that mailing was a staggering 10%– unheard of in direct marketing– or any marketing circle ,” she notes. Incredibly, each floppy disk cost AOL $1.19 to make at first. And that’s just for the disk. That doesn’t include any of the other packaging they were sent in. “ Part of the success of the marketing program was also dependent on dramatically driving down the costs of producing and mailing the disks and packages ,” Brandt writes. As former AOL CEO Steve Case noted yesterday, they were able to do just that. And that’s why we saw so many of those disks (and eventually discs). “ At the time of the initial tests there were no machines that could assemble these packages automatically. We worked with vendors to develop automated equipment and could not have scaled the marketing programs without first developing this equipment ,” Brandt writes. The strategy worked as AOL perfected the system enough that it was cost-effective. Soon, they were signing up a new user every six seconds. A few years later, they were a $150 billion company. Brandt also humorously notes that the (annoying) disc image we used yesterday in our post wasn’t actually one AOL widely sent out. Instead, it was one of the many test discs AOL was trying at the time. I actually remember the floppy disks better than the CDs because I was actually excited to get the floppies back in the day to try out the latest version of AOL. A few years ago, CrunchGear noted an AOL 1.0 disk selling for $5,000 on eBay. Which is awesome. Just in case you’re new to TechCrunch, yes, AOL now owns us . Clearly, that has nothing to do with why we’re posting this. Or does it? You’ll never know. CrunchBase Information AOL Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| SnapPages Lets You Hook Into LinkedIn For Custom Online Resumes | Top |
| Earlier this years Linkedin Labs , which showcases projects created by LinkedIn employees, launched a feature that lets you quickly convert your profile on the professional social networking site into a more traditional resume. It’s quite slick, with a handful of templates to choose from and buttons to convert it to PDF for easy printing (or to share it on Twitter and Facebook). Now SnapPages , a website builder that we’ve covered before , has launched a new feature that does something similar, but with a bit more flexibility. SnapPages founder Steve Testone explains that many of the site’s users have said that it would be helpful if they could create ‘resume websites’ that would let them showcase their work experience in a format that doesn’t look identical to everyone else’s. To help with that, SnapPages has launched a new resume builder . It’s pretty straightforward: first, the tool will ask you to connect your LinkedIn account to SnapPages via OAuth. Next it will ask if you’d like to add any additional contact information, like your email address or Twitter account. Then you’re done — the site will generate a clean-looking website that includes your work experience and links to your social media presences. It looks like SnapPages only offers one template for your online resume (whereas LinkedIn offers a handful of options), but it has one advantage: you can manually customize the appearance and the copy that appears on your web resume. The only way to modify the text using LinkedIn’s tool is to edit your actual LinkedIn profile, which may not always be ideal. SnapPages will also let you add additional images and change font appearance as you’d like. Update: Testone clarifies that you can actually use any of the design templates already available on SnapPages — there are five available for free accounts and sixteen for premium pro accounts. It’s been a while since we last covered SnapPages, so I asked Testone for an update on the drag-and-drop website creator. Testone says that the company is on track to hit profitability in the first half of 2011, and it now has three full-time employees (up from one). The site has added a photos application, which lets you manage photos from Facebook, Flickr, and Picassa webpages and then push them out to your SnapPages site. There’s also an option to upload and host any kind of file. Finally, the site has added a new Developer Accounts option. Testone says that many of the site’s users are actually web designers who use SnapPages to help build sites for clients. So the service rolled out a special account-type for these users that lets them quickly access all of their clients’ accounts, and there’s a project management and ticketing tool built in. For another resume building tool, check out JobSpice . Update : And, as one of our commenters points out, you can also include your LinkedIn information on your About.me profile (which was recently acquired by TechCrunch’s parent company AOL). CrunchBase Information SnapPages Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Will 2011 See App Makers Thinking Android-First? One Developer Thinks It's Possible | Top |
| Over the weekend, there was a ton of talk about 2011 being the year in which Android “explodes” onto the market. You could argue that 2010 was already that year, but plenty of numbers indicate that 2011 will be much bigger for the platform. But despite Android as a whole already outselling the iPhone, there’s little debate that amongst developers, iOS is still the platform you develop for first. But this could change as well in 2011, at least according to one developer. And it’s significant because he’s been an iPhone-first guy up until now. Akshay Kothari is the co-founder of Alphonso Labs , the development house behind the popular Pulse news reader app. Pulse started as an iPad app first , then expanded to the iPhone , then came to Android . Kothari credits both the support they’ve received from Apple and the press surrounding the iPad as the reason why they’ve been so iOS-centric up until now. But, “ our thinking about the Android platform has changed significantly over the last couple weeks ,” he writes to us. “ A few interesting things have happened on Android recently ,” he continues. What things? He lists three specifically: i) Revamp of the Android store: Initially, News was bundled into “news & weather” category, which was dominated by weather apps. Also, the leaderboard/featured was very hard to crack through. This has been improved, with new categories such as “News&Magazines” and much better discovery of apps, in general. Having a banner, more screenshots and getting more than 250 keywords to describe your app is huge. Still not perfect, but much better. ii) More powerful Android phones/Tablets: Initially we were plagued by emails complaining about how some features in Pulse did not work on old phones. Sometimes the widgets wouldn’t work, sometimes it would load really slowly. A lot of these problems are disappearing now, because a lot of these devices are pretty solid now. Particularly the Galaxy Tab, where Pulse works really really well. We’ve learned a lot and improved the app also, but the devices these days are pretty fast. iii) Getting featured on the Market: Getting featured on the App Store gets you tons of downloads, easily 10x your normal traffic. I never thought Google’s blessings could do the same. Pulse is currently a featured app since last week, and the downloads every day are comparable to our best days on iOS. Pulse is indeed currently featured in the Android Market. “ So far, our innovation has moved from iOS to Android, and it may stay that way in the near term. But with the option to instantly get feedback on your new update, it may not be too far-fetched to have innovation move from Android platforms to iOS platform ,” Kothari notes. News broke yesterday that the revamped Android Market could soon see video demos alongside the regular images. And then there’s the talk for the first true Android-based iPod touch competitor . Both are also good signs for Android development. But the major issue up until now has of course been money. As in, developers on the iOS platform have an easier road to make it. Google is also working to improve that by getting new carrier-billing deals in place for the Market. But the fact remains that paid apps are a much easier sell in the App Store than in the Market. That will need to change in 2011 for developers to really start going Android-first in a meaningful way. CrunchBase Information Android Alphonso Labs Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| How Much Did It Cost AOL To Send Us Those CDs In The 90s? "A Lot!," Says Steve Case | Top |
| Like most little kids, I used to love getting things in the mail. And in the 1990s, I was lucky enough to get something new every single day. Sadly, 99.9 percent of those were install discs from AOL. If you lived in the United States in the 1990s, you remember these. They started as 3.5-inch floppies and transitioned into CDs. And I’m not exaggerating. I got one just about every single day. You’ve got mail, indeed. If nothing else, it was ingenious marketing for AOL. While people eventually started bitching about getting spammed by the discs, most of those people probably also installed them at least once and checked out the service. So how much did that cost AOL? “ A lot ,” says CEO at the time, Steve Case . Case himself took to Quora recently to answer the question: How much did it cost AOL to distribute all those CDs back in the 1990′s ? Case says that he doesn’t remember the total amount spent on the discs specifically, but says that in the early 1990s, AOL’s goal was to spend 10 percent of lifetime revenue to get a new subscriber. He says that since the average subscriber life was around 25 months, revenue was about $350 off of each of these users. So he guesses they probably spent about $35 per user on things such as these discs. “ As we were able to lower the cost of disks/trial/etc we were able to ramp up marketing. (Plus, we knew Microsoft was coming and it was never going to be easier or cheaper to get market share.) When we went public in 1992 we had less than 200,000 subscribers; a decade later the number was in the 25 million range ,” Case recalls. In other words, the discs worked. Case also notes that the subscriber growth helped grow AOL from a market cap of $70 million at the time of their IPO to $150 billion when the marger with Time Warner occurred. I repeat, the discs worked. Well, at least until that merger turned into a nightmare and had to be dissolved. A move which paved the way for the new-look AOL to purchase TechCrunch this year . Another user on Quora looked over some numbers from the 90s and gave a more specific number for how much AOL spent on those discs: $300 million. Update : Jan Brandt, AOL’s former Chief Marketing Officer has now weighed in as well: Over $300 million :-) At one point, 50% of the CD’s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it. We were logging in new subscribers at the rate of one every six seconds As a side note, it’s great to see people like Case — who is usually pretty candid — answering questions directly on Quora. Humorously, it was SGN founder Shervin Pishevar who actually asked the AOL question in the first place. How do we know? Because he emailed us about it, overjoyed that Case himself responded. He also sent us the following love note for Quora completely unsolicited: I think it’s very significant that people of influence are starting to flock to Quora as the authoritative place to communicate with the world in long form. Billionaire entrepreneurs like Steve Case (AOL) and Reid Hastings (Netflix) have already left important answers on Quora. Twitter is the leading place for short form broadcasting and short form blogging. Influential people are busy and don’t have the time to manage blogging on a continual basis and manage that community. Quora is quickly becoming the defacto community for such people to broadcast longer forms communications with the world and have it spread fast. We love Quora too. It leads to information like this . More : More On AOL's Disc Strategy: $1.19 Floppies, 50% Of All CDs Made, And Precision Bombing CrunchBase Information AOL Steve Case Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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