Ark bought Carsabi | Hacker News Reader

Ark bought Carsabi

carsabi.com

33 pointsdrewonstuff13 comments

That's surprising given the publicized Facebook acquisition: http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founder...

Did you read the article? It says they plan to sell off the carsabi site/service. So, it's not really surprising at all...

Good point -- I remembered the article from October and found it to link it, but didn't re-read it.

Initially didn't know what to make of this given how highly I think of Carsabi and how new Ark was. Put the pieces together with the FB aqui-hire http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-...

and now I think it's probably beneficial for all parties, but not as big of a deal as a full acquisition (by a mile).

Love to see Ark pursuing other verticals though!

Slightly OT, but could someone tell me what, exactly, "acq-hire" means? I thought it referred to one company acquiring another purely in order to get access to talent.

Facebook did not acquire any Carsabi assets according to the linked TC story, it simply offered the founders jobs.

Back in the day, we called that getting "hired."

Is there a distinction here (e.g. perhaps some sort of payback to investors or something) that I'm missing?

Your understanding of "acq-hire" is accurate. In this case, I think the TC headline is wrong.

If Carsabi never raised money (I'm not sure), then they had no investors to return money to. And since FB didn't want it, perhaps it was okay to just sell it separately.

Typically 'acquihire' means the company was purchased solely for the talent. If the company had investors, it means they'll get some of their money back. If it didn't, it might be done anyway to let the founders take their windfall as capital gains instead of ordinary income.

If they were just offered jobs, then it's not an acquihire. It's just a dead startup and some jobs.

Both of Ark's co-founders are Cal grads. Both of Carsabi's co-founders are also Berkeley grads. Seems smart, Carsabi gets to leave their baby with someone they know and trust, and Ark probably got it for a song.

fwiw acquihire means fb gets your investors some money back and you get a decent offer when Craigslist sues you and things go south. as car search is not particularly relevant to social media, we were pretty happy to turn over the IP to Ark as another Cal grad search company and can't wait to see what they do with it.

Good news. I used Carsabi a lot when they first started it since I was in the market at the time. I also emailed one of the guys (maybe OP) a little bit offering to help and he seemed like a good guy. Congrats.

As someone not in the know, I would love for someone to explain whether the Startups TV show had something to do with this and how "real" is this?

Bummer. I was hoping carsabi would take off.

I used them to find my car. It was great. Especially the graph that tells you whether a car is overpriced or underpriced compared to all of the other listings. I used it to negotiate $1,000 off of a $6,000 car at a used car dealer, making them sell it to me for the average private party price.

Kelly Blue Book purports to offer a similar price guide, but it is terrible and dealers know it. If you try to cite it to them, they say its wrong - but if it benefits them they try to use it to their advantage. However an actual database of actual private party sales going on right now is very powerful.

Cargurus.com has a similar feature. You are right...it's a great feature for negotiating price.

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