I received this comment from “Contest Hunter” this afternoon – “What do you think about entre card this time dude? Pls take a look at http://entrecard.com/blog/?p=1258″
In case you do not already know, Entrecard finally found a buyer and announced the sales earlier today. The new owner is a company called ZipRunner. Don’t bother googling them, there is absolutely no information about them at all. I am assuming it is a couple of investors who pulled some money together and just came up with the name. I doubt they were a “real” or established company before.
Let me get to my thoughts on the sale. I think it is GREAT and I am excited about the potential. Entrecard was a brilliant idea and what ever you think out the founder (Graham Langdon) you can not deny that he built up a solid network with immense value. The financials were not disclosed but my guess is somewhere in the $500,000 neighborhood. The reason I think this will be positive for the Entrecard community could be summed up in one word; Money. This is what Graham did not have, he was unable to secure angel or vc funding and with out capital there can be no growth. In fact, what happened over the last couple of months is that there was not enough money to adequately operate the company. The new owners will no doubt want to recover there investment and make a nice return. Therefore, I would expect them to make some operational changes right away. For example, I would expect to see some customer support people brought on. I also expect them to revamp the marketplace as there is a lot of opportunity there but right now it is simply a mess. I also would not be surprised to see outside advertisers brought back in as this is the quickest way to make money.
In short, this should be good for Entrecard as there will be capital to operate and grow. I would love to hear all your thoughts on the sales.. Do you think this is good or bad? What are your predictions for the short term future? How much do you think Graham sold it for?
Nowhere does Graham say he SOLD Entrecard; he says it was ACQUIRED. ZipRunner is a sole proprietorship owned by none other than Andrew Te, EC’s original angel investor, who got tired of his investment not making any money and called in the loan.
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@anonymous- I read it differently. He clearly says “new ownership.” This means to me that he no longer owns it, which is the equivalent of selling it. He does not say “under new management.” Thanks for the info on ZipRunner
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Hopefully Entrecard can be better now, I think the support part was lacking a bit. You say you think it went for $500,0000. Wow, thats a lot of money if you ask me.
I guess we will have to wait and see what happens in the next few weeks.
George Serradinho´s last blog ..Need to know more Twitter Lingo?
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Doesn’t Graham use the word ’sold’ on his new blog? It’ll be interesting to see what ZipRunner have in store for us.
John´s last blog ..Entrecard Acquired by ZipRunner: What it Means for the Community
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@George- I agree that customer service needs to be improved tremendously.
@John- Thanks for pointing that out, Yes he does say “sale.” Here is the direct qoute from his blog
“I finally decided that out of potential options, a full sale to ZipRunner Inc. was the best fit in terms of resources they could dedicate to the project, their understanding of social media landscape, and their vision for the future of the company.”
Tycoon Blogger´s last blog ..Entrecard sells out – Literally!
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I think Graham sold his entrecard at $1million. It’s actually good to see that Graham is actually selling his entrecard site, I believe that the new owner will be development entrecard into new version. I hope we as a blogger can make more money form the new entrecard version in future. I’m waiting for the day…Let’s see what will be happening this few weeks..
Regards,
Lee
Make Money Online´s last blog ..Make Money Online With Affiliate Lead Marketing MLM Network
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It will be good because they will provide the necessary support and people that will handle the
gautam hans´s last blog ..Entrecard Contest Update
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a million bucks? I know he was asking for that a while back… If that is true, good for him!
Tycoon Blogger @Make Money Blogging´s last blog ..Entrecard sells out – Literally!
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Looks like someone got paid, I just recently signed up to Entrecard but havent started using it yet.
Extreme John@Extreme John Blogging and Business´s last blog ..Morphing RSS Feeds
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[...] Entrecard sells out – litteraly – Tycoon Blogger [...]
And people have started guessing about Graham’s next venture !
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would be really good for us people. will have better support
gautam hans´s last blog ..75 Free Delicious Social Bookmarking Icon Sets
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I don’t think he got much money for it as he was with 112.000 $ in debt with the owner of ZipRunner like “Turnip of Power” pointed it out.
In the business language you always write it in that style… was sold or acquired… but acquired means usually taken over for a penny or some dollars.
Is the same like with Graham’s announcement as “still an advisor”. Andrew Te didn’t mention anything about this in his first blog post, only that the Programmer Phirate will stay on board.
That means important and unimportant decisions are no more made with Graham!!
The Timeout one day before the Acquirement of EntreCard had to do with this new owner but they just said it took longer than it was planned due to such a big database… Usually when you sell something you will make the announcement some days or weeks before the new owner is in charge and not like Graham did it – he had to handover it to ZipRunner immediately.
cornyman@EntreCard Explained´s last blog ..EntreCard: How Graham lost control over EntreCard?!
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@cornyman- You bring up some great points. I read your post on the subject and you are right on..
Tycoon Blogger @Make Money Blogging´s last blog ..Is Social Spark ripping off bloggers?
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It is all very interesting… But the new guys seem to be listening to the users at least. Finally eliminating paid ads once and for all (rather than just fizzling out, as they were under Graham) was a great first step. I’m interested to see what the future holds for Entrecard.
Money Seeds@Generate Passive Income´s last blog ..Entrecard for increasing blog traffic
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Hi,
Very nice post,I really enjoy the post.
It Is very interesting to sound.But i think they found some solution for the user of the card.
Thanks for sharing
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