New exit strategy: eBay

Wednesday 16 August 2006

Working in a startup, you are always aware of possible “exit strategies”: ways that your company’s startup phase could end. Good ones are acquisition and IPO. Bad ones include running out of money. Well-regarded calendaring site Kiko has a new one: auction the company on eBay.

They’ve built an impressive site. Their reasons for selling it seem a little capricious:

We are selling Kiko because we want to have time to work on other projects as a development team. We had a project in mind we just didn’t want to wait on :)

They may have a problem convincing future investors that they are in this for the long run, but if it works for them...

Comments

[gravatar]
Michael Chermside 4:10 AM on 17 Aug 2006

It is certainly an unusual strategy, although if it garners enough publicity then it's worth it. I think the $50,000 offering price is a bit low for any company that actually planned to put this to use, but they needed something to get the bidding started.

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