Yesterday myYearbook CEO Geoff Cook reached out to FunAdvice President Jeremy Goodrich to talk about a possible acquisition. Based on certain assumptions, Cook said, he’d be prepared to offer $125,000 cash up front, $25,000 in consulting fees and $125,000 in MyYearBook stock.
Goodrich emailed Cook back and bcc’d us with his response: no deal. I asked Goodrich, who I don’t know, why he copied us on the email string. His response: “I won’t do that again, I thought techcrunch would find it interesting.”
Interesting indeed. I wish all startup founders did this. The email string is below, with some contact information removed. I’m sure Cook is thrilled.
Sorry, you were bcc’d on the email.
I won’t do that again, I thought techcrunch would find it interesting.
Best,
Jeremy Goodrich
Co-founder, FunAdviceOn 4/30/09, Michael Arrington
wrote:
why am I cc’d on this?On Apr 30, 2009, at 3:42 PM, Info Funadvice wrote:
Hi Geoff-
First, we’re sincerely flattered that MyYearBook would be interested in acquiring FunAdvice.com. I’m writing this under the assumption this is a real offer and not some prank.
In point of fact, our March numbers were far higher than compete would suggest – 3.7 million visitors and 3.4 million uniques…as we see you are a “quantified” publisher, I find it odd, but interesting, that you would mention our compete stats rather than the much higher quantcast numbers (which are pretty close to reality, for our US audience).
As we have grown 300% year over year (yes, you read that correctly) comparing April, 2009 with April, 2009…well, your valuation would seem to massively underestimate the value of FunAdvice. Based on Answerbag’s acquisition by InfoSearch Media (later re-sold to Demand) and the sale of faqfarm.com to Wiki.Answers…and, of course, Yedda by AOL…well, let me put this another way.
On Quantcast, it shows that your *monthly* uniques are about 2x our size:
http://www.quantcast.com/myyearbook.com (those are your real unique numbers…correct?)In any event, your revenue estimate was off by a factor of ten…so, unless we could start talking from the same frame of reference…then, I’m not sure we can move forward with a serious acquisition
discussion.Best,
Jeremy Goodrich
Co-founder & President, FunAdvice
http://www.funadvice.com/my/thedudeOn Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:26 PM,
wrote: Jeremy,
I’ve been following funadvice.com and think you’ve built out a
great site on a low budget, which is a tremendous achievement.I’m not sure if you would entertain an acquisition discussion, but it appears to me, based on compete.com data, that funadvice.com has 1.3M uniques and 4.2M pageviews in March. I’m not sure what your revenues are, but I would infer about $4200 per month.
If those basic assumptions are in the right ballpark, we’d be
prepared to offer, assuming we understood traffic sources enough to feel traffic would not plummet on your exit:• $125,000 Cash Up Front
• $25,000 Cash After Successful Migration of Funadvice to our servers (would expect 3 mos or less) as a consulting fee
• $125,000 in Stock in myYearbook based on the valuation of our last round.Please advise if you would be interested in such a deal. We have the budget to make only 1 such offer this quarter so I would appreciate a response in the relatively short term, as I only have 1 offer outstanding at any given moment.
If you’d like to speak more, I can be reached at 609-xxx-xxxx.
Sincerely,
Geoff CookCEO, myYearbook
Bad Journalism Mike! Never reveal your sources. You have just killed this guys credibility. He was trying to give you inside information and you played it wrong!!
Not Nice!!
I am a Fan but you got this very wrong!!
Kind of agree there
Michael Arrington, here goes your credibility….
Doing this will further reduce your website traffic..
I agree … don’t reveal your sources
Right. Owen Van Nutta would never have done this mike, and you say his integrity is questionable.
Baloney. if the guy that sent it was concerned about privacy he would not have sent it. freeadvize thought the cheap offer resembled a joke. now he just got some free publicity. and myrearbook looks like a cheap skate. no big deal
AdviceLocator.com – counsel yourself
Though I hate your shameless locator .com promotions, I agree with your opinion. I came away with myyearbook being incredibly presumptuous, especially basing valuation on 3rd-party traffic tools.
“We have the budget to make only 1 such offer this quarter” is bullshit, a false takeaway.. Did he think most people were born yesterday? Insulting.
This is an example of how NOT to approach with an offer.
V bad Mike, totally killed your credibility!
I COMPLETELY agree…
Seriously mike…
“Not Nice!!” does not even begin to describe this
…But you probably don’t care what we think anyway
agreed!
Agreed. Just ruined a good thing. FunAdvice is good in my book because of this guys chutzpah.
I can’t help but agree. Terrible journalism. I sure know if I had some interesting information and I didn’t want to be known as the source I wouldn’t come to techcrunch to reveal it. Crazy.
blogging != journalism
But you have nothing interesting, so you wont have to worry about it.
Totally agree, he took you into confidence when he emailed that to you. So, your tagline should NOW read:
“I Wish More People Bcc’d Us On Their Confidential Acquisition Emails…but they won’t cause I killed it!”
Whoa, whoa, you guys are being ridiculous. The person copied Michael so that exactly this would happen: he thought his condescending reply was amusing and he wanted it to appear in TechCrunch. The lack of judgment is Jeremy’s, not Michael’s. If Jeremy had asked Michael to keep information in confidence, Michael would have. And a rejected acquisition offer of this scale isn’t perhaps newsworthy except for the tone of the solicitation and its response.
bingo.
You never put an offer in an email, so Geoff’s bad. But I’m also sure Geoff didn’t expect this to be broadcast to the world. Bad move by Jeremy; he’s going to have a hard time getting another acquisition offer from someone for this stunt.
and do these 2 companies even know each other? if some loser sends me a random acquisition email that i feel is highly undervalued i would do the same.. but i’m surprised mike even acknowledged it… i’m sure he gets a lot of these daily… (or will now).
i never heard of this company until this article… and will forget who they are in 5 seconds.. enjoy the blip of fame!
Honestly,
I would recommend you remove this post!
“I asked Goodrich, who I don’t know…. ”
Is this how you would give away your sources if they are not your friends?
Sorry for you Jeremy Goodrich, I guess it serves you right for leaking a private deal!
I agree with Oo
If I’m Geof Cook, I’d be pretty pissed off right about now. What a lame thing to do.
Absolute genius. These guys just scored a huge traffic boost from this PR stunt. I’m sure their new user signups and ad revenue will show a nice boost this month.
Intentional not, this is a major score for both web firms.
Not all publicity is “good publicity!”
double true — they’re in cahoots, and figured out a good way to get mention on TC.
Agreed, Mike. Its very interesting no doubt, but I would have expected you to play it quite differently. Oh well, no worries!
Yeah, publishing this email thread is wrong and unethical. And it definitely ain’t journalism.
I agree. You played this wrong Mike. I definitely wouldn’t send you anything.
got that right!
a. you probably have nothing of interest to send.
b. you will probably having nothing close to worthy of a tech crunch mention.
c. Mike and tech crunch do just fine without your “hot off the presses” wire leaks.
What Mike did seems acceptable to me.
The guy didnt ask for confidentiality, he simply blindly emailed TC with data and why would he do that unless he wanted it published on this site?
And how exactly would TC be able to keep this guys name out of it? The entire article is about MYB trying to acquire this site. Would be a odd article if it just was “rumor, MYB attempts buyout on unknown site”
Dont want yout info on techcrunch? Dont send it in with no context.
Just wanted to throw this out there- I am positive that if you ask TC or Mike to keep some info anonymous, they would. Its ignorant to think that they wouldnt.
Look, worst case its an error in judgment – it happens – in reality I don’t think its that big a deal. Move along, folks, if the parties involved aren’t happy they’ll work it out.
If this is what you claim he wanted, then why would he say “I won’t do that again”?!
I agree!
Jeremy is the one who is responsible for the email, and he will be highly beneficial of this post and the controversy it will bring, mentions on other bogs, discussions etc.
Btw, TC needs to implement voting for comments@
If you’re making $4,200/month ($50kish/year) and someone offers you $125k in straight cash… I’d take it.
Unless your revenues are set to *really* rocket in the next few months.
You obviously do not understand the difference between revenues and valuation of a going concern
And his traffic has been rocketing for nearly 2 years now w/o any publicity or advertising, just sheer SEO.
No you don’t. By just maintaining the status quo you break even in 2.5 years. He looks poised to blow past that though.
He said they were off ten fold so that means about 40K a month not 4K so 275K aint shit, ya know?
Thinking the same thing. And I might be doing the math wrong, but Goodrich assumed 4.2M pageviews in March and inferred revenue of only $4,200!? Did he mean the M to be 1,000 or Million? Seriously, 4.2 million pageviews and you think they only made $4,200 in rev?
Oh jesus. I love your mysterious ways, Mike.
Now I know to never give you any insider information! scary that tech crunch would oust an insider
Maybe this is what Jeremy Goodrich wanted?
That is such an interesting email to get. What are the ethics involved when you are BCC’d? What was the guys purpose in that unless he wanted the exposure and media attention?
Ethics indeed.
But then I suppose ethics are in the eye of the beholder, and Mr. Arrington found his sweet spot in an unlikely location.
It would seem to me there should have been only two logical choices: ignore it or write a real article about it.
Obviously, ignoring it was the way to go. I was a lame offer for an unexciting property. However, if it was interesting enough to write about, one might think Mr. Arrington would have bothered to ask Mr. Cook and Mr. Goodrich for a comment for the story.
It would appear that Mr. Arrington knew it was inappropriate to publish it. After all, if he felt he had no ethical duty of confidentiality, then he would not have redacted ANY of the information in the email or the headers.
Ethical or not, it was certainly tasteless.
spot on!
poor form
At the same time, Arrington’s actions were even MORE egregious. He claims he forwarded the email on purpose. If so, he completely exposed Geoff Cook’s e-mail to a third party (and a MEDIA party, no less!). This obviously was confidential financial information (which, stupidly all around, should have been initiated in only vague terms via email and then F2F for any serious dollars and cents discussion). Frankly, all three of you seem pretty stupid…
Finally, some common sense. You are correct, morons all around.
Not cool but still funny. Yes let’s make Overheard.Techcrunch.com and just post emails that are CCed / BCCed to TechCrunch. Could be awesomely fun.
Mike is so arrogant something I began to notice with the bottled water stunt he pulled.
Isn’t he the same guy who came out crying about someone spitting at his face? HAHAHA you deserve more than that humiliation.
Your position as the Kingmaker has turned you into such a pompous jerk – or maybe you’ve always been one all along.
Hey Mr. lollipop, all Mr. Mike is doing, ok, is showing who is the big boss, ok? It is beyond social shutzput to assume that Mr. Mike wants to hear about this guys sorry property, ok? Mr. Mike should return the email right back to Mr. Goodwrench and shut up his stupid face, ok? Such is the word of Sanjay.
Such is the word of Sanjay? Please!
Don’t rain on my party, Mr. Saheed, ok? You need to shut your stupid face, ok? Don’t hate my gait, ok? Keep your schocolate muzzle out of my biz. Suck is the word of Sanjay.
Interesting way for both companies to get some free publicity out of TechCrunch. I do not have too much beef with Mike for airing this little charade. Wish it was about some companies I cared about.
The RECIPIENT of the initial email BCC’d this email thread to Arrington, a sneaky and disingenuous act and betrayal of private communication, as no doubt the sender did not give permission to share the exchange with the public, much less Arrington.
Do not Arrington and TechCrunch understand the issue, that it was not an email to which both parties okay’d sharing with TechCrunch?
Seriously bad ethical judgement.
As we have grown 300% year over year (yes, you read that correctly) comparing April, 2009 with April, 2009
Wouldn’t that be infinite growth if you’re comparing over 0 years?
It’s the first I’ve ever heard of My Year Book and now I’ll never know, taking longer than 1 minute to load anything.
Tried 3 times.
This is Jeremy’s bad for sharing with Michael. Though it’s nice to see real examples of acquisition emails.
“comparing April, 2009 with April, 2009″
This is a tale told by two idiots. Geoff Cook and Jeremy Goodrich are the two idiots.
First, what a lousy way to make an offer. You have to be kidding me? An email? A “firm” offer based on some guess at visits? Cold calling with an offer?
If I were investing in Cook’s company, I’d immediately be looking for new CEO. You got the village idiot running that company! He didn’t ask for confidentiality — so he doesn’t deserve it either.
His stupidity and crass, boorish style is only outdone by the apparent imbecile Goodrich. I presume Goodrich thinks he’s the next Google? Even if you believe his numbers — this is a tiny ass company. He must think getting techcrunch into the middle might stimulate some sort of bidding or higher rate? Geez, how ignorant this person must be!
These are rank amateurs and neither one deserves to be running a real company and both deserve any ridicule they get from this silly little exchange.
The story is not about the leak, but about the childish, stupid back and forth between the two of these obvious morons.
Maybe when they grow up and realize their company’s and employees are not some little wind-up toy to play with here — they’ll come to regret this.
This is beside the point. It is not Arrington’s right to publish an email exchange, regardless of content, without permission of both parties.
Well said! I completely agree that both these guys are clueless idiots and that this is justified public humiliation.
Well said.
Yes, but you have to include Arrington in the trifecta of idiots.
Actually I think there’s an interesting question raised in this exchange… how much is the site actually making? The offer conjectured about $4k/month and the refutation did not correct it, merely citing traffic numbers and dated comparables.
So are we still valuing things based on eyeballs vs forward actual earnings?
Pay closer attention: He said the revenues were off by a factor of 10.
Why would you make an offer like this over email?
He CC’d you because he’s smart, and leaking was the best thing that could have happened (likely what he wanted) – he’s suggesting a valuation north of $2M, looking for a buyer, and this little doozie is going to get a lot of attention. It’s damn near an advertisement. Well played!
Moreover, he CC’d you because he could count on it getting posted
totally fine to publish, thanks Mike,
so was revenue ~50k a month?
Also, for the love of god, Mike, why did you blank out the phone number! Valleywag would have left it in! You could learn something by reading them more often.
Just to clear a few things up, if you email us and request confidentiality we respect that. We get lots and lots of good stuff in our tips email that’s never posted, or the identifying information stripped out, etc. But, come one, we’re a tech news blog. If you send us something without any sort of comment and don’t expect us to post, you’re just being ridiculous. And don’t think the old school journalists do things any differently. Look up the Peanut Butter Manifesto that the WSJ posted. This happens all. the. time.
Your response is not acceptable. By default, anything sent to tips@techcrunch.com is a tip and should be treated such.
At the sametime it was very improper for Goodrich to Bcc TechCrunch.
I still say, very wrong move Mike! and you should accept you made an error.
you really like your exclamation points
True, but you’ve put yourself at their level with this non article. A real keystone cops cluster f of idiots.
This whole thing is absurd–Geoff should have been an adult and approached Jeremy personally. No serious offer should be initially discussed via email. And of course Jeremy is at fault as well. What kind of executive would bcc a blog or news organization on an acquisition offer response? His actions are commensurate with the maturity level of funadvice.com. He’s lucky *anyone* places value on this property. This is a good case study in how not to negotiate an acquisition.
you’re all idiots, so there
you’re all idiots, so there
can anyone explain how is funadvice different from yahoo answer?
It was perfectly reasonable to publish that email. If “TheDude” did not want that to happen, then he should not have bcc:ed Arrington, especially since he does not even know him. If there is someone who cannot be trusted with confidentiality, it is “TheDude” and no one else. This blog post may well soon be the top Google result when searching on his name.
A boneheaded move by all parties, TC included.
Goodrich made a rookie mistake and over-played his hand. Journalists depend on such mistakes, Goodrich seems dumb enough and naive enough to have been a good source in the long-term, but that wasn’t enough for Techcrunch.
By publicly destroying this guy as a short-term, traffic-boosting stunt, rather than cultivating him, Techcrunch is sending a clear signal to the rest of us – Goodrich may be an idiot who deserves everything he gets but, if you aren’t and idiot and if you don’t want to be exposed in the same way, don’t leak your stories here.
Michael Arrington You need to remove this post…..
yep, agree. doing so immediately. keep hitting refresh, you’ll see it removed in a minute.
Heh, that’s pretty funny.
Perhaps you could run Techcrunch as a comedy site when all your sources dry up?
Or maybe he could run a site called WordSkill which is under construction. But that would be competing with your awesome site. But I’m sure when Mike gets in trouble he could come to you for a loan for all the money you’re making off of a under construction page that you are promoting for some odd reason.
Yep you pegged mike, he’s a real idiot for being a multi-millionaire, and one of the most influential people on the net.
Instead of criticizing, maybe take some notes, and you’ll be able to have hundreds of comments on one of your blog posts one day, that is, if it ever gets completed.
Hehe, Mike getting desperate about his declining ad $$$…
It’s incredible to be reading all these comments suggesting the owner of one of the most succesful blogs on earth how to proceed
People make mistakes: this is certainly not one!
Check alexa.com and see these sites rank up.
Great job Mike! besides incredibly entertaining
Clasilistados.org
umm… this is internet… everything is cached.
I think this is awesome! Way to go Michael!
Dick move.
justyn, good point- yes, what’s the likely up$ide of ‘leaked’ controversy vs. potential downside?
The guys who kill me are the tiny startups (so common now) whose founders/coders ape ’senior executive’ culture ca 1980s-90s and talk about the ‘team’ even tho they’re living in parents’ basement. They try so hard to appear ‘big’ despite Alexa #s which confirm zero traffic.
I used to think of this as a conventional white lie to be politely indulged but it’s really hilarious.. someone could make a wicked funny blog by ‘outing’ all the startup executives whose mums answer the door…
Myyearbook and funadvice could be worth $4 billion each. This is where the economic growth is. No recession for web 2.0 http://iamned.com/blog/ keep buying stocks
Well played by Goodrich, though a certifiably prickish move. This will generate buzz -and backlinks- galore. Cook didn’t deserve this (if this email is the whole history). Was Cook contacted for comment? I see that as the only journalistic mistake.
You know, it’s Michael’s site, he can do whatever he wants, but he has underestimated the number of people who will see the story and laugh but also file away, in the back of their minds, that leaking anything to Techcrunch can be pretty risky.
Michael will still be a multi-millionaire, Techcrunch will still be an important site, the only affect on him and the quality of this site is that, now, he will be slightly, ever so slightly less inside the loop than he was, and some good stories will be leaked to more trustworthy competitors. Hardly noticeable, really.
If your leaking something you want it posted. If he didn’t wanted it posted, he could of said so and Mike posted above he respects those requests.
Sure, this guy will probably like the publicity although, of course, a year down the road, when he can’t get investors to take his calls, he may begin to wonder if this was really such a good idea.
But I’m not talking about guys trying to pump publicity for their own tiny companies by any means necessary, I’m talking about the majority of people in tech who work for companies and who risk losing their jobs when they leak.
Those are the people with the real stories but do you think they are going to risk it when, from now on, they keep hearing people say “That Arrington guy, he doesn’t protect his sources”, do you think they’re going to risk it?
Or do you think they might, just possibly, prefer to leak to one of the hundreds of tech journalists who don’t expose their sources?
lol
valleywag.techcrunch.com
The hundreds of tech journalists? Where are these hundreds? There are only a handful of tech blogs that people actually read.
Goodrich should turned this into an experiment. He should have bcc’d not only Techcrunch but Mashable, Valleywag, and CNet. That would have been comedy gold (or at least silver).
But that’s the thing, if you want to be “protected” you just say that. Michael even emailed back asking why it was sent before posting it.
If sending it to Michael was a good or bad idea I don’t know; but, can’t fault him anywhere here.
Agreed… Mike, you should seriously change the title of this post at the very least…Because this wish of yours isn’t going to come true…anymore.
Btw: if you really thought it to be “Confidential”, why would you publicly post it here anyway?!
Mike,
Welcome to link bait 101. Send BS email to sleep deprived blogger/journalist. If anything this was a joint venture by both parties to get a traffic boost. Now certainly neither company has any of their demographic reading TechCrunch but does it matter. We all know what landing on TC can do for a site, especially within the SERPS.
$125k is a ridiculous amount of money to offer. Who cares what actual revenue is right? Additionally if they had made the offer $500k people might actually think they should have considered it. $25k consulting fee. Lol.
My vote is for well orchestrated link bait by both parties.
Either that or the email was spoofed and MYB has nothing to do with it.
oh DMP, well said, and likely true.
but now you’ve blown everyone’s cover lol.
Making a firm offer in an initial based on a wild guesstimate of revenue? Asking for an immediate answer since he only likes to have “1 offer outstanding at any given moment”?
Oh, Geoff Cook’s a Harvard grad. That explains everything. Fuckin’ amateurs.
1.65 monthly uniques according to comscore.
DMP, on second thought – maybe not. Consider that both sites are already well known and getting way more traffic than where it would matter much to get a TC link and its echoes…
Look, if somebody includes a confidential notice in an email to me: I wouldn’t send to anybody.
And, yes, typo in my email, that was comparing 2009 to 2008…sorry about that, we were laughing our butts off while reading the email & wondering, honestly, what to do.
Thing is, if you read the crunchbase entry (which I wrote a while back) you’ll note: we’ve never raised funding. It’s been my blood sweat, and tears for six years to build up the site…along with my long suffering business partners, Ericson (whom I’ve built & sold another company with) and Widhadh (also my wife, who has started 8 companies with me over the past nine years, we’ve sold two so far).
In any event, I do appreciate the publicity. As I mentioned, there was no confidentiality notice…for all I know, somebody forged the headers of the guy & sent the email as some kind of prank to us…b/c really, why would you cite Compete traffic numbers if you are a Quantified publisher? I simply don’t get it.
Good comment Jeremy. Its not that you got on here to have a voice. We’ve worked with MyYearBook for a while now, good guys and company.
Damn, meant its nice that you got on here to have a voice.
“for all I know, somebody forged the headers of the guy & sent the email as some kind of prank to us”
Not possible. Techcrunch checked with someone at myyearbook to confirm that this was in fact sent from them. This isn’t Valleywag. There is REAL journalism here. Mike doesn’t print random emails he gets without checking the sources. Techcrunch is an Owen Thomas free zone.
Continued comparisons to Valley”gag” will be met with scorn.
Prepare for another six years of tears
Lol. Six years of tears.
I’d have replied to the Yaearbook guys myself, but I asked Jeremy to, because I couldn’t stop rolling on the ground laughing.
You don’t value a company out of your ass with wa-off-incorrect numbers, send the founders an email with a “final” offer, and expect a “yes sir!” reasonable response.
That’s arrogance of the highest order.
Here on the east coast, we believe in building real companies from the ground up that make money from day one with without those funding “rounds”.
oh please drop the serial-investor bunk…we all know in reality you spent most of that time doing moronic seo “work” for yahoo
HAHAHA DISREGARD THIS I SUCK COCKS!!!!
Great work Mike. I don’t understand all of the negative comments. The people involved with this were most likely hoping to receive such publicity. I know I would enjoy it if we got such a post on TechCrunch.com. Also, the Peanut Butter Manifest on the WSJ is a good example. This does happen all the time.
Well done.