J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995), and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich... ? Learn More
On Sunday we broke the news that Skype was acquiring group messaging service GroupMe. What we didn’t know was the price, and neither company disclosed any of the terms of the deal other than that GroupMe would remain a standalone brand for now, and the team would stay in New York.
A widely spread report said that Skype paid as much as $85 million for the year-old company. We’ve heard this number is a bit high, and includes an earnout or deferred payments. What’s the real price?
Our sources close to the companies say the initial payment for GroupMe is $43 million, and deferred payments (or an earnout) can get the GroupMe shareholders as much as $68 million over four years. The founders will receive another few million dollars as part of their long term employmetn agreements.
Why the difference? No idea. But I have a high degree of confidence that Skype will pay somewhere between $43 million and $68 million for GroupMe. Which is one heck of a win for the founders and investors, who put $11.5 million into the company.
As an aside, when we add estimated acquisition prices to CrunchBase, we usually put in the higher number instead of a range. I like being optimistic, and we can always edit it downward later if new information becomes available.
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free,...
Learn more GroupMe is a group messaging and conference calling service that lets you stay in touch with groups of people via mobile phones. It’s a free service that allows users...
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