By Jon Russell at TNW:
Google completed its acquisition of Waze last June, but only now has the price tag that it paid for the Israel-headquartered social mapping startup and a hint at why the company sold out been revealed.
A blog post on LinkedIn from Noam Bardin, who is CEO and co-founder of Waze, confirms that Google agreed to a $1.15 billion deal to buy the company. That’s notable since it is the first time that a member of either company has confirmed a figure — media estimates had varied from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion — although it isn’t clear how that broke down over stock and cash.
In addition, Bardin also provides some interesting context on the deal. He hints that pressure from investors — who seem to have held significant stakes in the company — was a key factor in Waze deciding to sell:
One of Waze’s mistakes was the valuation of its A round which significantly diluted the founders. Perhaps, had we held control of the company, as the Founders of Facebook, Google, Oracle or Microsoft had, Waze might still be an independent company today.
Waze raised its $12 million Series A funding round in March 2008. It went on to raise a further $30 million in 2011, which took it to $67 million in private funding in total.
Read the full story >>
0 comments:
Post a Comment