Carol Bartz wanting to buy Yahoo is no longer a rumor, this TechCrunch post makes it more than official.
TechCrunch: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz On Foursquare: It Depends On How Much Money They Want The topic on everyone’s lips was Yahoo’s rumored talks with Foursquare ..... Bartz’s response: “It depends how much money they want.”Selling FourSquare would be a mistake, a huge mistake, a fatal mistake, taking $10 million at a $80 million valuation from a VC firm would be a good move, but the best move at this point would be to take $10 million from Yahoo upfront and then $10 million annually thereafter to be reevaluated in two years to add location to as many Yahoo properties as possible. Just like Twitter took $25 million each from Google and Microsoft to let them offer tweets as search results so as to be able to claim they also now do real time search, FourSquare should also make money by letting Yahoo be able to say Yahoo now does location in a big way.
Take $10 million right away, and then another $10 million for the first year, and turn the various Yahoo properties into a major project. Expand the team. Get a new office space. I recommend Dumbo. (Digital Dumbo: Here I Come) If not Dumbo, then Williamsburg. Actually, Williamsburg would be far better. Cooper Union is too cooper.
If FourSquare can cut a deal like this with Yahoo, it can cut a deal like this with many other major web properties. It could fund its growth with all that money. You go to VCs, you get diluted. You make money like this, you don't get diluted.
Hire me to work through some of these deals: 4:16 PM @ FourSquare.
Yahoo would be a great first customer for FourSquare. You have to understand, Yahoo used to be Google, it was hot. It was so hot, selling to Yahoo was the first exit strategy the two Google founders thought of. It was Yahoo that refused. We already have a search engine, they said. Over the past decade Yahoo has tried to regain some of that lost glory. In FourSquare they see a chance of that happening. Yahoo mistakenly thinks buying FourSquare will do it for them. It won't. Instead if they cut a deal with FourSquare, that will cost them much less money, as less as one fifth, and could actually do the trick of making Yahoo a hip company all over again.
Yahoo is going through an identity crisis of sorts, and cutting a sound deal with FourSquare might just be that thing it needs.
FourSquare needs the money to grow. Yahoo needs location. Cut the deal. How will FourSquare add location to the Yahoo properties? That is a whole another blog post, or preferably a job.
TechCrunch: Don't Sell Out FourSquare. Not Now. Not To Yahoo
Business Insider: Yahoo Considers Buying FourSquare For $100 Million
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