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<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=+Indian+eCommerce+"> Indian eCommerce industry,</a> which is at its best these days, is ‘<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=aquihiring">aquihiring</a>’ these days and is looking for not just skilled people but innovative ideas as well. 
 
As per an Economic Times report, Indian startup firm <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Flipkart">Flipkart</a>, about a month ago, was in talks with Denmark-based social networking site, which matches travelers going to a destination with those who want to send goods to that place. 
 Not just this, but the firm is also prepping up to aquihire <keyword id="2970266" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sociotransit">Sociotransit</keyword>. If sources are to be believed, <keyword id="6354742" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword> has made a proposal to Niral Desai, an IITian, and Pranav Shah, who has an MBA from India. The offer was to buy-out their firm, Sociotransit, and that the founder members could continue to work on the expansion of their startup while drawing a salary from Flipkart as employees. 
 While <keyword id="2970709" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="aquihiring">aquihiring</keyword> of Sociotransit is on hold, experts believe that the trend of getting talent and technology might continue. Flipkart, however, did not respond to any query related to Sociaotransit, but, it did mention that the firm’s prime focus this year would be aquihiring. 
 In fact, the trend of acquihiring — acquiring a company for its cutting-edge technology and hiring its employees for their expertise — is catching up fast in India's hypercompetitive <keyword id="436047" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ecommerce">ecommerce</keyword> sector. 
 
In India, there’s a huge chunk of tech experts owning their ideas and are not willing to give it up for the lure of a job with other bigger eCommerce firms. The aim is to spot the teams working on any ‘out of the box’ idea with new-age technology and then get them onboard by acquiring their company. 
 <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword>'s latest acquihires include mobility solutions firm Letsgomo and Bengaluru-based <keyword id="2970268" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Grabbon">Grabbon</keyword>. Its recent product Shopo, an app-only zero-commission marketplace, is engineered by the MartMobi team acquired earlier this year. 
 
Rivals Flipkart and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Snapdeal+">Snapdeal </a>are betting on the idea of aquihiring while Jabong is in no hurry to get into the race anytime soon. 
 
A Flipkart spokesperson said, "We embrace the fact that not all innovation can happen internally, and want to join hands with disruptive companies for technology and talent." 
 
Abhishek Kumar, vice-president, corporate development, at Snapdeal says, "Now that we are a very large company in terms of number and people, (acquiring) smaller groups of companies doing cutting-edge work and bringing their team on board give impetus to the project and adds entrepreneurship zeal. Acquihires have given us good result and will be our focus in future." 
 
"It is a win-win for both the company and the candidate they are hiring along with his startup, which is mostly at an early stage," said GC Jayaprakash, executive director at RGF Executive Search. Online fashion retailer Jabong said it is open to the idea. "If the startup is going to give our organisation organic growth, add value, at the same time if the person too can add value and has a great idea at a nascent stage, we are open to taking them on board and taking over the startup," said Ashu Malhotra, head of HR at Jabong. 
Image: indiatimes

India eCommerce industry on a ‘aqui’hiring spree

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The tech industry is anticipating an upswing thanks to Trump's election this week.</li><li>VCs expect possible deregulation to boost innovation, with Musk potentially influencing government policies.</li></ul>Some venture capitalists <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-trump-return-startups-venture-capital-2024-11">expect US President Donald Trump</a> to dial back regulation, potentially making it easier to develop new technologies and do business in Silicon Valley. Many of these hopes are pinned on Elon Musk's involvement in the new administration."The most exciting thing of all will be putting Elon in charge of government efficiency," Ben Narasin, founder and general partner of Tenacity Venture Capital, told BI of the election outcome. "He's going to take a chainsaw through calcified butter, and it's going to be awesome to attack the bloat and overreach that we've had in the government."Trump is <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-could-be-donald-trump-advisor-wsj-reports-2024-5">reportedly considering Musk</a> for White House roles, including ones that would audit various federal programs and organizations.Musk, in turn, has proposed creating a "Department of Government Efficiency" — cheekily nicknamed DOGE, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/history-elon-musk-love-affair-dogecoin-2022-7">a nod to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin</a> — that he said would remove dealmaking regulations that have slowed M&amp;A in the tech sector in recent years.While many in Silicon Valley dislike Trump, many VCs and startup founders crave more freedom to pursue riskier new technologies unburdened by regulation. In short, tech is stoked about this."Trump-Vance ticket is the first unabashedly pro-tech presidency in our Nation's history," said Augustus Doricko, CEO and founder of cloud seeding startup Rainmaker. He expects an onslaught of tech innovation during the Trump administration.In conversations with more than a dozen VCs and Silicon Valley executives following the election, many have echoed this sentiment — including those who supported Kamala Harris in the election."With a major push to remove unnecessary red tape and over-regulation in key areas, we could really have a century of crazy building, innovation, and acceleration," Aaron Levie, the CEO of cloud company Box and a Harris supporter, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://twitter.com/levie/status/1854237056287060266">posted on X Wednesday. </a>"Excited for Elon's efforts here."Mark Pincus, an early Facebook investor and the founder of Zynga, responded on X, "Effective accelerationism! E-acc," referring to the recent Silicon Valley movement that wants <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/effective-accelerationism-humans-replaced-by-ai-2023-12">technological advancements in AI</a> to move as fast as possible, without any guardrails.<h2 id="04af9d99-2642-43c3-875c-92cb63b01ca9">Regulation has held Silicon Valley back in recent years</h2>VCs during Biden's presidency have complained about how tough it's been to get deals done. The outgoing administration was an antitrust enforcer and put many tech mergers and acquisitions on hold that it deemed anti-competitive. This is particularly galling for VCs because they rely on selling startups in M&amp;A deals for many of their exits and returns.Limits on tech M&amp;A have "caused the rate of venture capital return of distributed proceeds to fall drastically, making new capital formation near impossible," said Louis Lehot, a top tech lawyer at law firm Foley &amp; Lardner. Silicon Valley is looking for a relaxation in the government's stance here "to enable exits and new capital formation, which is the cycle of innovation," he added.For example, regulatory pressure had <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-23/google-s-aborted-deals-for-wiz-hubspot-show-antitrust-s-shadow-over-tech">dampened deal-making at Google</a>, with the tech giant abandoning two potential purchases this year, including cybersecurity startup Wiz, which would have been one of the tech giant's biggest-ever acquisitions.The US also opened antitrust investigations into <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-acquihire-deal-inflection-ai-antitrust-probe-us-regulators-competition-2024-6">Microsoft</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elizabeth-warren-backs-justice-department-nvidia-antitrust-investigation-2024-9">Nvidia</a> earlier this year over their dominance in the hot AI space. The Federal Trade Commission is probing Microsoft's aqui-hire of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-hired-inflection-team-amid-board-concerns-about-openai-2024-3">Inflection AI,</a> and the Department of Justice is investigating Nvidia's acquisition of Israeli AI startup Run:ai.While some lawmakers say that allowing a few companies to influence the majority of AI research, development, and monetization poses an economic risk, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-vcs-in-silicon-valley-2024-7">many VCs have cried foul and accused FTC commissioner Lina Khan</a> — who has frequently sued to block mergers — of an anti-business bent and say it's tricked down to closing fewer startups deals, too.Investors were also critical of what they call <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-influence-election-trump-harris-2024-10">unclear rules for cryptocurrency under the Biden regulation</a>. Many VCs and founders in the space donated to Trump and other Republican candidates, which they consider more favorable toward crypto technologies and markets.VCs are now hopeful that Trump <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-presidency-affect-big-tech-2024-11">could roll back</a> some antitrust and crypto policies that a Harris administration may have continued, although nothing is certain about the new administration's approach.Trump's running mate and former VC JD Vance has <a target="_blank" rel=" nofollow" href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4491363-vance-biden-ftc-chief-is-doing-a-pretty-good-job/">publicly said</a> that Khan is "doing a pretty good job," referring to her antitrust enforcement for Big Tech companies. At the end of Trump's first term, regulators under his administration launched antitrust investigations into Big Tech companies, including Amazon; and filed antitrust lawsuits against Google and Meta."At a high level, we expect Trump to cut corporate taxes and regulations, helping startup M&amp;A and investment," said Mason Angel, general partner at Industrious Ventures. "We may see new acquisition efforts by big tech with a new FTC director."Musk's influence could also help slim down the government's involvement in tech deals, these VCs told BI."Elon is a positive force who's had to run multiple companies that are heavily regulated, so he has a realistic view; since he's lived it, he can be influential," Narasin said of Musk's track record of building Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. "He's pro-startup, pro-business, pro-everything that will help the US population. A good, healthy economy is good for everybody."<h2 id="a31623cb-2e54-4906-802e-37c294e98064">VCs anticipate an innovation boom</h2>America is a country of entrepreneurs, and that's especially true in Silicon Valley. Some VCs and founders say that having an entrepreneur like Musk influencing the Trump administration and potentially wiping away regulations will bring prosperity to the industry.Indeed, <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-trade-us-presidential-election-dollar-treasuries-stocks-crypto-djt-2024-11">the stock market responded exuberantly</a> to Trump's decisive win on Tuesday night, which could eventually be a boon to venture firms seeking investments. Limited partners such as pensions and endowments have been choosier recently thanks to high interest rates and few exit options for startups. But their return to funding venture firms would, in turn, mean that more founders are building and getting funded."I would like to see the President given the power to unilaterally remove, or at least streamline, regulations around major projects or economic areas that will make it possible to actually build new things," tech blogger Ben Thompson <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://stratechery.com/2024/president-trump-take-two-big-tech-little-tech-chips-and-hardware-elon-musks-triumph/">wrote after the election.</a> "There needs to be a way to cut through all of the red tape that has accumulated.""I think the next four years will be imbued with aspirational mega-projects and visionary initiatives without precedent," Rainmaker's Doricko said. "New cities. Lunar and Martian colonization. Free electricity. Weather control."Angel, whose VC firm invests in the space, industrial, and defense sectors, says that those industries will experience strong growth."Trump created the Space Force in 2019, and his close relationship with Elon Musk will bring renewed attention and government investment into the field," Industrious Ventures' Angel said. "Same goes for the US industrial and defense bases."As various sectors within the tech industry ebb and flow, VCs say they're optimistic about the idea of having one of their own helping to call the shots at the federal level."Elon's going to be an enormously positive monster who delivers a cleaned up, slimmed down, pro-business government, and there will be prosperity for everybody," Narasin said.

Silicon Valley is betting a Musk-inspired Trump could unleash a startup boom

Innovative startups that manage to hire great teams and build interesting products don't always find the huge consumer or enterprise market they need to survive in the long term.
When this happens, the natural thing for the startup to do is shut the whole thing down.
But sometimes, there is an alternative to liquidation: sell to a larger technology company for a nominal amount – a few million dollars.
Larger, wealthy tech companies (Facebook, Google, and even, lately Apple) like these deals because its an easy way to hire talented and entrepreneurial tech workers.
This kind of deal is called the aqui-hire.
The most successful example of this kind of deal is Facebook's purchase of FriendFeed – a social sharing service that never gained much traction. FriendFeed executives ended up in very senior roles at Facebook, and FriendFeed technology rooted deeply into Facebook.com.
But not all aqui-hires end so cheerily.
Over on Quora, there is a question: "Has a startup founder (or founding team) gone through an "Acqui-Hire" but regretted it later? Why?"
Here is the best answer, from a startup lawyer:
Read <a href="http://www.quora.com/Startup-Acquisitions/Has-a-startup-founder-or-founding-team-gone-through-an-Acqui-Hire-but-regretted-it-later-Why/answer/Gil-Silberman/quote/215702" class="quora-content-link" data-width="575" data-height="762" data-embed="9bBdRye" data-type="quote" data-id="215702" data-key="116020dbe2b7e5a87f3a35edddc53a89">Quote of Gil Silberman's answer to Startup Acquisitions: Has a startup founder (or founding team) gone through an "Acqui-Hire" but regretted it later? Why?</a> on <a href="http://www.quora.com">Quora</a>

How Selling A Startup For Millions Of Dollars Can Go Horribly Wrong

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Douglas MacMillan of the Wall Street Journal <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-ceo-set-to-refresh-turnaround-plan-1413760289">says</a> Marissa Mayer will announce a "new plan" for Yahoo this week.
Yahoo will hold its third quarter earnings call this Tuesday.
Citing a source briefed on Yahoo's plan, MacMillan says Mayer will discuss the following on the call:
<ul>
<li>A change in acquisition strategy. MacMillan says Mayer will defend her decision to spend $200 million or so on "aqui-hires" - those deals where Yahoo bought failing startups in order to hire their engineering teams. After defending acqui-hires, Mayer will promise to do fewer for them - in favor of larger acquisitions that might be able to help grow Yahoo revenues.</li>
<li>Cost-cutting plans. "Ms. Mayer is expected to outline cost-cutting efforts. Mayer is also likely to explain her recent decisions to lay off nearly 500 employees in India and Jordan as part of a broader effort to cut costs."</li>
</ul>
Mayer is currently under pressure from an activist shareholder Jeff Smith. Smith, of Starboard Value, wrote an open letter a couple weeks ago, says that Mayer should quit making acquisitions altogether, find a tax efficient way to monetize its Asian assets, and sell to AOL.

WSJ: Marissa Mayer To Announce 'Refreshed' Plan For Yahoo On Tuesday

<ul><li><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://cyclecomputing.com/about/key-management-board-of-directorsadvisor/">Cycle Computing</a>Cycle Computing cofounder and CEO Jason Stowe looking happy after Microsoft bought his company.</div></div></div>Microsoft has acquired a startup called Cycle Computing for an undisclosed sum.</li><li>Cycle Computing's software allows companies to run massively huge apps in the cloud, a profitable area for cloud vendors.</li><li>Cycle was an early partner with AWS and Google and its customers will be asked to move to Microsoft's cloud. </li></ul>In a bit of a coup in the cloud computing world, <a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/MSFT-Quote">Microsoft</a> on Tuesday announced that it bought a startup called Cycle Computing for an undisclosed sum.Cycle may not have the name recognition of some of its better-known tech peers, but the startup has played a crucial role in creating today's cloud computing industry. When businesses swipe a credit card today and instantly get access to unlimited supercomputing power, it's in large part thanks to Cycle.Cycle Computing gained nationwide attention in 2012 when its technology transformed Amazon's then nascent Web Services into a supercomputer boasting the equivalent of 50,000 individual computers. Scientists were trying to find potential new cancer drugs and they used Cycle's software to simultaneously run their app across tens of thousands of virtual computers in Amazon's datecenters. (Specifically, they used 6,700 Amazon EC2 instances to create a 51,132-core computer - with each core is basically equivalent to a single computer). The setup was so powerful that it cost researchers <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-researchers-paid-nearly-5000-for-one-hours-worth-of-amazons-cloud-2012-4">$5,000 to run their AWS app for just one hour</a>.It was an early proving project for Amazon's AWS business which, back in 2012, was still trying to convince enterprises to give it a go. This project was pointed out by Amazon's cloud genius Werner Vogels as one of his most proud moments to date, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/x-of-the-brightest-minds-in-tech-tell-us-whats-next-for-cloud-computing-2012-6#">he told Business Insider at the time.</a>In the years since, Cycle Computing grew to be used by all three of the big cloud vendors, AWS, Google and Microsoft Azure. Plus, a bunch of competitive products came onto the market that also let virtual cloud computers work together as if it were one massive supercomputer.<h2>A grab for AWS, Google customers</h2>Flash forward to 2017 and there's now an entire market of such products called "cloud orchestration," complete with its own consortium under the Linux Foundation, the "Cloud Native Computing Foundation" of which Cycle was a founding member. CNCF has grown so powerful that Microsoft and AWS bowed and joined it last week.Microsoft did not disclose the terms of the sale and it's hard to guess because Cycle Computing was unusual in another way: it was bootstrapped, taking on zero VC funding. Cycle raised $1 million in debt financing in 2016.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rPpCnFE-hU">Amazon</a>Amazon CTO Werner Vogels</div></div></div>The founders "started Cycle twelve years ago on an $8,000 credit card," founder and CEO Jason Stowe said <a href="https://cyclecomputing.com/cycle-computing-joining-microsoft/">in a blog post on Tuesday announcing the news.</a>So this could have been sweet exit for them and their employees, who own 100% of the company. Or it could have been an aqui-hire fire sale. There's some reason to believe it was a happy exit. Cycle claims Novartis and NASA as marquee customers as well as a list of unnamed top companies in manufacturing, life insurance, pharma and biotech, media and financial services/hedge funds. Stowe says that all told, its customers are using the product to run the equivalent of "1 billion core-hours this year, growing at 2.7x every 12 months," in other words, a billion hours of computing time and growing.But here's the clincher: while Microsoft says it will continue to support all of Cycle's customers on their original cloud of choice like AWS or Google Cloud, future Cycle customers won't be given that option. And existing Cycle customers will be asked to move to Azure.Microsoft says: "We will continue to support Cycle Computing clients using AWS and/or Google Cloud. Future Microsoft versions released will be Azure only. Customers will be given assistance to migrate."And that's why this is brilliant. These are huge application that use a lot of cloud services and rack up big cloud computing bills. Microsoft is trying to boost usage of its cloud Azure. With this acquisition it gets to do that, while also encouraging AWS and Google customers to jump ship. Get the latest Microsoft stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/MSFT-Quote"> here.</a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-inside-pimple-pus-bacteria-acne-2017-8">All the nasty things inside a pimple - and why you should stop popping them</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Microsoft just made a brilliant acquisition in the cloud wars against Amazon, Google

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">AP Photo</div></div></div>On Monday morning, Eric Jackson, the manager of hedge fund SpringOwl, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-shareholder-presentation-2015-12">sent a brutal 99-page presentation to Yahoo's board</a>, outlining his case for why Yahoo should drop Marissa Mayer as CEO and find new management.Jackson points out that Yahoo has burned through $3 billion on M&amp;A in the past three years since Mayer took the reins, which contributes to $10 billion in what Jackson calls Yahoo's misallocated capital.The value of all of those startups Yahoo has acquired, Jackson says, is worth nothing at Yahoo's current stock price.Jackson also points out that Yahoo has a history of buying up startups run by former Google APM members. While at Google, Mayer started the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/elite-google-apm-program-molly-mackinlay-2014-7" target="_blank">company's elite associate product manager program</a>. Of the 49 acquisitions Yahoo has made under Mayer's leadership, 6 were startups founded by ex-Googlers. The total cost of these six acquisitions is $319 million, according to Jackson's slide deck.Here are all of those acquisitions (the acquired startups founded by former Googlers are circled in red):<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image">SpringOwl</div></div></div>Under Mayer's leadership, Yahoo made a reputation for itself by acquiring tons of startups. When she started, Mayer said that one way she intended to restock the company with talented engineers was through small acquisitions. These transactions are often called aqui-hires, and they are often a nice way for a failed company to have an amenable end.Yahoo <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-just-bought-the-social-shopping-startup-polyvore-2015-7">bought Polyvore</a> in July for $230 million. Polyvore, a social commerce site that lets users make artistic collages of clothes and accessories, was founded by three Yahoo alums, including Jess Lee, whose relationship with Mayer dates back to Lee's days as a Google APM more than a decade ago.At the time of the acquisition, Yahoo said it bought Polyvore because of the "amazing potential" of the combination of Yahoo's premium content and the startup's expertise in community-driven experiences and retailer-supported commerce.But Jackson does not mince words when it comes to Yahoo's decision to spend shareholder money acquiring Polyvore and companies like it. "It's not acceptable to pay $230M for zombie companies run by former APM members," he says, pointing out that Polyvore had raised $22 million in VC funding, was eight years old and had gone through multiple pivots. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a goner until Yahoo bought it.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">SpringOwl</div></div></div>According to Jackson's presentation, Mayer pushed for the Polyvore deal at $30 million despite SpringOwl's belief that there's no justification for the valuation. He also says anonymous sources have told his firm that besides Mayer, no Yahoo employees wanted to do the Polyvore deal through Yahoo's "deal review" process.In Jackson's view, Yahoo's core business is badly in need of a turnaround, but it's still undervalued after being poorly managed by Mayer. Selling today would mean selling it at a low point. He thinks selling Yahoo right now would only enrich some private-equity people while current shareholders would miss out on upside. Here is a complete list of all the startups Yahoo has acquired with Mayer at the helm:<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">SpringOwl</div></div></div><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">SpringOwl</div></div></div> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-lean-on-advice-yahoo-ceo-2015-4">The 3 people Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer leans on for advice</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="NhNTZ3czosZYDWyZA6DhvD69u3qyFSjQ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

Hedge funder slams Yahoo: 'It is unacceptable to pay $230 million for zombie companies run by former Googlers'

<keyword id="6363100" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Yahoo">Yahoo</keyword> CEO <keyword id="319703" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Marissa-Mayer">Marissa Mayer</keyword>'s latest acquisition isn't an aqui-hire or a billion dollar bet on a social network.
With a small portion of her massive personal fortune, Mayer bought a funeral home on October 7.
<a href="http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/10/29/yahoos-marissa-mayer-buys-funeral-home-property#.Um_uSHUkYBQ.twitter">Sue Dremann of the Palo Alto Weekly reports Mayer bought Palo Alto's oldest mortuary, Roller &amp; Hapgood &amp; Tinney.</a>
The building, on a 1.16 acre lot, is a block east of Mayer's house.
This is what it looks like:
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">Google Maps</div></div>
Dremann doesn't know why Mayer bought the home.
Maybe it's because the lot was recently identified by the city as a suitable place for an apartment building, and Mayer didn't want to see one go up.
Maybe she plans to build a new house there. The lot is bigger than the .3 acres her current, 5,600-square foot house sits on. Also, it's nearer to an elementary school.
Mayer famously likes to throw huge Halloween parties. Maybe she's really getting into it this year? A funeral home would be a pretty good setting for such a thing.
Some Palo Alto residents wonder if Mayer is planning to do what Google CEO Larry Page is doing with his own house in Palo Alto.
Page, who lives on Waverly Street, has acquired several lots and is constructing a massive, walled-off complex. 
Neighbors wish he could be more like the late Steve Jobs, who owned a relatively modest Palo Alto house, and could be seen working at home by walkers-by.
It's weird. Because of all these billionaires trying to live normal lives, Palo Alto is a funny place with bizarre real estate.
You walk around and the houses look like they belong on any street in Small Town, USA.
Then you look them up on Zillow or Trulia and they cost $5 million and the monthly mortgage is $11,000 or so.

Marissa Mayer Bought A Funeral Home

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:350px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fortunelivemedia/8245437954/">Fortune Live Media</a></div>A source of ours met with <keyword id="6363100" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Yahoo">Yahoo</keyword>'s corporate development team sometime during the past few months.
This source said the team was open about the kinds of startups and companies CEO <keyword id="319703" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Marissa-Mayer">Marissa Mayer</keyword> would like to buy.
Here is what they said.
Primarily <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/yahoo">Yahoo</a> wants to buy small, failed startups with excellent teams for very little money. This is what's known as the "aqui-hire."
These days, it's a common way for big tech companies to hire talented, entrepreneurial people.
Otherwise, Yahoo has a lot of cash available and it's willing to spend big, but only if the target company meets two criteria. It must:
<ul>
<li>Be very strong in mobile.</li>
<li>Enhance one of Yahoo's current brands, in particular Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance. As an example, this source said that if Turner had not just acquired Bleacher Report for $200 million, it would be the kind of company that Yahoo, under Mayer, would have taken a long look at aquiring. </li>
</ul>
The mobile requirement makes a ton of sense. Yahoo has a large total audience in mobile because the default <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/iphone">iPhone</a> weather app carries its branding. But the data that powers that app is provided by the Weather Channel. And while Yahoo has strong reach and 70+ mobile apps, users don't spend much time with its product on mobile.
Check out this chart from Goldman Sachs (which we hear is working with Yahoo on strategy):
 
Another reason why Yahoo needs mobile help is that it depends on traffic to its Webpages from home PCs, and those are being replaced by tablets.
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-death-of-the-pc-slide-deck-2013-1">Check out this chart from our presentation on the Death Of The PC:</a>
<div> </div>

A Source Met With Marissa Mayer's Acquisitions Team, And This Is What They Said They Want To Buy

<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div>Nick D'Aloisio via TwitterNick D'Aloisio, founder of Summly</td></tr></table>A few weeks ago, <keyword id="6363100" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Yahoo">Yahoo</keyword> made headlines when it acquired <keyword id="1438410" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Summly">Summly</keyword>, a startup run by a 17-year-old CEO named Nick D'Aloisio for $30 million.
Summly is a news aggregation app.
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-17-year-old-that-yahoo-paid-30-million-was-renting-his-startups-core-technology-2013-3">We thought the deal was weird.</a>
Here is why:
<ul>
<li>Summly never had many users or any revenues. Yahoo is shutting the app down. Yahoo is saying the point of the deal is to have Summly's CEO help lead the company in mobile.</li>
<li>But Summly's CEO lives in London, where he is staying to finish school</li>
<li>The CEO has only promised to stay at Yahoo for the next 18 months. </li>
<li>The CEO is 17 years old. We don't buy that he's going to be able to lead or inspire adult Yahoo engineers and designers.</li>
<li>The Summly team did not invent the core technology behind the app. It was created by SRI, which licensed the tech to Summly in exchange for equity. </li>
</ul>
Now we've learned another piece of information that makes the deal stranger. 
Not only did the Summly team not invent the app's technology, they also did not build the app. A company called Somo did. Somo is "the UK’s largest independent mobile marketing agency." <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/08/somo-developer-of-the-summly-ios-app-secures-new-investment-from-mmc-ventures/">It just raised a bunch of money.</a>
So here is what Yahoo did: It "aqui-hired" a team of people, led by a 17-year-old living in London, that cannot claim to have invented a cool technology OR to have built a cool app. Yahoo does own the technology SRI invented for Summly, but it doesn't own SRI, so it hasn't acquired the team that can scale the technology for Yahoo.
Odd.
Anyway, $30 million is not a lot of money for Yahoo, and this story is getting a little old, so we're kind of beating a dead horse. But still. What a strange acquisition.
UPDATE: A source at Yahoo <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-bought-a-30m-startup-2013-4">explained why Mayer bought the app. Read more here.</a>

The Teen Who Got $30 Million From Yahoo Did Not Build His Startup's App (Or Invent Its Technology)

<div class="image-container"><div class="image"><keyword id="6363100" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Yahoo">Yahoo</keyword> video</div></div>
This fall, Yahoo began serious talks to buy photo-sharing site Imgur, a source with first-hand knowledge of those discussions tells us. 
Since she joined Yahoo in July 2012, CEO <keyword id="319703" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Marissa-Mayer">Marissa Mayer</keyword> has acquired dozens of startups. Most of these acquisitions have been acqui-hires.
The buy cost Yahoo a lot was its $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr. Yahoo bought Tumblr because it has a deeply engaged, youthful audience, that uses the product on mobile. It would buy Imgur for all the same reasons.
Imgur (pronounced "Image-er") was created in 2009 by Alan Schaaf, a student at Ohio University in Athens. He made the site "as a gift to Reddit," because he was annoyed at how hard-to-use so many of the Web's photo-sharing sites were.
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/MrGrim">In a message to the Reddit community</a>, he wrote:
"I got fed up with all the other image hosts out there so I made my own. It doesn't force you to compress your images, and it has neat things like crop, resize, rotate, and compression from 10-100. It's my gift to you. Let's not see anymore imageshack/photobucket around here ;)"
In the years since, Imgur has actually grown larger than Reddit. The site crossed the 100 million user mark in September. That's bigger than Reddit's audience of 85 million, and up from 30 million at the beginning of 2012.
Those stats are according to The Atlantic's Megan Barber, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/imgur-the-biggest-little-site-in-the-world/281872/">who just wrote an excellent 3,000-word story about Imgur</a> (the kind of positive, access-given story that comes out about a startup when it is fundraising or on the block).
Imgur is now based in San Francisco, where 10 people work for the company. It's not a huge business, but does generate some revenue through ads, memberships, and a new product its testing: sponsored images. Imgur also sells image-hosting capacity to other companies. One of its clients is Yahoo.
We don't know how much Yahoo wants to pay for Imgur.
Schaaf hasn't taken any venture capital, so he doesn't need to hold out for an Instagram-sized offer to make as much money as Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom or Tumblr CEO David Karp made selling their venture-backed startups for ~$1 billion each. (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-better-to-sell-a-startup-for-20-million-instead-of-200-million-2013-7">Sometimes its better to sell a startup for $20 million than $200 million.</a>)
But it's unlikely Imgur can be had for cheap. 
Three reasons:
<ul>
<li>
Imgur would not be an aqui-hire for Yahoo. Acqui-hires are something failed startups do when they have cool technology but not very many users. Imgur has decent technology and design (it's very easy to use), but it's main asset is all those users.
</li>
<li>
Imgur is "social." Barber's story on Imgur begins with an Atlantic story on Imgur begins with anecdote about how to users met and started dating through the site. Every image on Imgur accumulates "points" through votes up or down by its community of users. Schaaf told Barber, the average amount of "points" every image gets on the site is between 6,000 and 10,000. 
</li>
<li>
Imgur isn't going to run out of money any time soon. All Things D's Liz Gannes <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/imgur-the-biggest-little-site-in-the-world/281872/">reports</a> VCs are "are literally-literally-sliding term sheets under their door."
</li>
</ul>
Our guess is Yahoo would have to offer something between $100 million and $500 million. But who knows in a world where Snapchat supposedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook.
Acquisition talks fall apart all the time, and so could discussions between Imgur and Yahoo. It's unclear if Imgur wants to sell. Schaaf hasn't been looking for an exit. Before Yahoo came calling, Imgur hadn't even hired an investment bank.
Yahoo declined to comment on this story.

Marissa Mayer's Next Big Acquisition Could Be Imgur, The Photo-Sharing Site Reddit Loves

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image">Reuters/Christian Hartmann</div></div>For some programmers and entrepreneurs in the tech startup scene, being acquired by Google is a dream come true.
But not when you're the only member of your five-person company that's left behind.
An <a href="https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy">anonymous woman using the gossip app Secret</a> has described the heartbreaking way she alleges Google treated her when it became interested in the company she founded.
Google decided to hire her five male colleagues in an acquisition deal, but not her. Even though she founded the company and "the product was my idea," she didn't get a deal because she was not an engineer.
Worse, she made only a $60,000 salary at the startup while her male colleagues were paid twice that. "Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you're a girl and you have a rich boyfriend," <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/secret-shame-of-an-unacquired-techie.html">she told New York magazine</a>.
She was left with $10,000 while her former colleagues received signing bonuses, $250,000 annual salaries, <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/secret-shame-of-an-unacquired-techie.html">New York Magazine reported</a> after speaking with her. On Secret, the woman - who was given the pseudonym "Amy" by New York - claims their compensation packages could ultimately be worth $5 million.
Here's what the woman says happened, from her comments on Secret:
The salary per engineer and the CEO was $250k. Double what they were making at our startup, but around what they were making at their last corp job. Now, I did not personally examine anyone's paperwork from google, but my CEO did tell me that one of the engineers got a deal that, when fully vested, would create a 5m total package including stock, starting bonus, etc. I was told the other engineers received similar deals. This information was communicated to me in rode to explain why the company was taking the deal they said they wouldn't take. And it was mentioned that they were sure I would be okay with the $10k, as they knew my live-in-bf had recently had a large payout.
The woman went on to warn other entrepreneurs not to trust a Google acquihire:
They said the deal was contingent in leaving me behind, and they thought 10k was a decent price for me. Clearly not. I am obviously still heartbroken over my team betraying me. I can't blame them, in a way. As purple lightning [another commenter] guessed, our funding was running out, and google is offering a soft landing for everyone (except me). Now- are they discriminating based on my gender? I have no idea. I'm a startup generalist. I do sales, product/project/ graphics/basically anything that isn't code. I was given a coding and product manager interview. I was given math and logic puzzles. I was told 'I don't believe you did all the things you say you did." So, I have no idea why they didn't give me an offer. But, the company was literally my idea. The product was my idea. I designed the entire UI/ux logo etc. I just have no idea if my gender played a part. How could I know? At this point, my #1 goal is to have my story be a warning to other founders. Don't trust aquihires, don't let them exclude a founder, and don't think google is going to play fair.
More details came out in the comments, such as the fact that. Google gave her company money to pay their investors back, and said she wasn't "a fit" because she isn't "an area expert." The anonymous co-founder was responsible for the product's user interface, graphics, customer service and sales among other duties. She had been with the company since the beginning. 
"I'm not great at just one of those," she responded to one comment. "I did all of them."
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><a href="https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy">Secret</a></div></div></div>
The situation again brings up the debate about whether the tech industry discriminates against women. The software development field is dominated by men, and women in tech skew more heavily in marketing or mid-management roles that do not require coding or engineering skills.
In this case, however, the company and the product only exist because "Amy" was a founder, even though she is not an engineer.
"I think I am done with tech," she wrote in response to a comment. "I appreciate your kindnesses. But I feel betrayed by my investors, my CEO and my team. I understand that everyone else has a house, family, kids, etc, but we agreed we were in this together. Two years gone." 
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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