Ebay/Skype Deal
I'm not sure I buy the synergy EXCEPT for the case that having massive distributed call center capability does sound very appealing for the large numbers of ebay vendors out there.
Auctions for minutes, anyone? :-)
Wow - 2.6 Billion... on the other hand that's about $50/customer acquisition cost - maybe that's not so expensive.
What about Vonage? They just topped 1M subs. There is probably a premium for the hard-device installs. Let's say that's 2x. Does that mean Vonage is only worth $100M?
eBay to buy Skype for $2.6 billion in cash, stock | Tech News on ZDNet
eBay has agreed to buy the fast-growing Internet start-up Skype in a
move to add free Web telephone calls to its online auctions and fuel
growth, the companies confirmed Monday.
-Bob
Followup...
Alec points out that it is more like $1300 per PAYING subscriber, which does seem to be less of a bargain! Using that math would put Vonage at more like a 1.3B valuation based just on that rough math.
Just for fun I'll note that Jim Kramer was giving the deal a hard time on Mad Money this evening.
Comments
Vonage's cost of customer acquisition is insane.
I was reading an interview of their CEO one time when he mentioned it was $125 or some other ridiculously high amount. It was a total dot-com bubble number.
Skype acquired users the same way Google did - word of mouth. It's an awesome service, though I'm not sure if I'll renew my SkypeIn subscription.
Posted by: Shanti Braford | September 13, 2005 01:08 PM
It's not THAT cheap Bob. It's more like $1300 per PAYING subscriber.
Cheers,
A
Posted by: Alec Saunders | September 12, 2005 06:46 PM