Flurry

Yesterday our portfolio company Flurry announced it was being acquired by Yahoo!

I thought I’d provide a bit of history since this was an interesting investment for us.

Back when Apple was launching its app platform in the winter of 2008, we met with Greg Yardley who had teamed up with Jesse Rohland to build an analytics service for app developers. We had known Greg from his work with Seth Goldstein at Root and we were fans. And it seemed to be a smart idea to give developers the ability to see what people were doing in their mobile apps. So we provided seed financing to Greg and Jesse along with our friends at First Round.

Pinch launched the first iOS analytics service and got rapid adoption. But they ran into some challenges, the two primary ones were monetization and getting onto Android and Blackberry (which was relevant back then). And that’s where Flurry entered the picture.

Flurry was a pivot into the same business as Pinch was in. They were already on Android and Blackberry but were far behind Pinch on iOS. They were led by a hard charging CEO named Simon Khalaf who had big ideas for monetization. It was a match made in heaven. So the two companies merged and Flurry became the surviving company.

Flurry continues to lead the mobile app analytics business. According to Simon’s blog post yesterday, there are 170,000 developers with 542,000 mobile apps using the Flurry service.

And now Flurry becomes a Yahoo! branded offering. There is no question that the Flurry data and its advertising products (powered by Flurry’s data) will be a great fit for Yahoo!’s mobile ambitions.

So we have a happy ending to a startup story with a few twists and turns. This is an example of where 1+1 equaled a lot more than two. I’ve been involved in a number of “startup mergers”. Some work. Some don’t. This one worked beautifully.

#mobile

Comments (Archived):

  1. gregorylent

    mobile is such a mystery niche to me .. occasional hand held use, emergency map use, check a quick mail, but give me a minute to sit, my mobile unit is no more than a tethering device, because my mb air is so much more capable in giving me the internet experience i need and crave

    1. sigmaalgebra

      Same here, and part of why in this thread I’ve been trying to understand.

  2. Rob Gritz

    No discussion on how this is really an incentivized ad network…analytics??? Really? Always so pious

    1. sigmaalgebra

      Very old story: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence. -William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act I, Scene iii

  3. jason wright

    for how much?

    1. fredwilson

      how much was what?

      1. jason wright

        yahoo’s valuation of flurry?…and how many times does this make it that you’ve sold an investment to yahoo?it’s quite the purple patch you’re having there.

        1. JimHirshfield

          Undisclosed. AFAIK.

          1. jason wright

            what, to all, and even shareholders?how does ‘undisclosed’ work within US regulatory frameworks?

          2. fredwilson

            no, just undisclosed to the public. the shareholders would have to know the specifics because they were required to approve the deal

          3. jason wright

            in my email inbox i have a disqus notification that you replied to my comment with “aha. i can’t disclose that unless Yahoo! did.”, but that isn’t showing up in the avc thread. is this a technical glitch?

          4. JimHirshfield

            No glitch. The comment is there.What you see when you click-through from the email notification may vary. For clarity, we sometimes only show you the reply we’ve notified you about…and we put it at the top of the thread if it’s a huge thread. But if you refresh or go to your inbox where you see the other notification, it will take you to the thread and show you the 2nd reply Fred made to you.

          5. jason wright

            thx Jim. now i see it here.

          6. JimHirshfield

            Undisclosed to us.If Yahoo doesn’t have to disclose, it would be because price was inconsequential to Yahoo’s overall value.

          7. jason wright

            i see. thx Jim.

        2. fredwilson

          aha. i can’t disclose that unless Yahoo! did.

          1. LE

            It will be in the financial statements..

    2. JimHirshfield

      So…Techcrunch says north of 200M USD. See @Tom Labus:disqus comment herein.

  4. William Mougayar

    Congrats on this acquisition! Simon is a good friend & I commented yesterday to him that now we know why Flurry ends with the letter Y!As he tweeted, purple is the new black. And it seems purple is a color that is attracted to green backed companies 😉

  5. JimHirshfield

    Nice play. Congrats.Any threat Google can do something now to hinder Flurry’s growth on Android?

    1. fredwilson

      steve jobs hated flurry but couldn’t figure how to stop them

      1. JimHirshfield

        Ha! What a great footnote.

        1. Eric Friedman

          Great video of Chris Fralic asking Steve Jobs about it at allthingsD too.

          1. JimHirshfield

            Can we get a gif of Jobs twitching?

      2. LE

        Being on the radar of Jobs, positive or negative, is an accomplishment in itself. We should all be so lucky.

      3. sigmaalgebra

        Yes, when put features into an operating system, or other system, that let people write more code, just MUST look at what some of the implications might be. E.g., somehow what’s in iOS enables Flurry. So, Jobs didn’t have his thinking cap on that day.Or if use the Internet as a way to communicate with, say, part of the electric grid or maybe control a remote factory, is this an open door to some hacker on the other side of the world to shutdown the grid or factory? Have to consider such things.Generally a user should know about, really be able to see easily, ALL file and communications activity by each program running and, then, be able to block such activity they don’t want. Such should be part of ‘sandboxing’, ‘containers’, ‘virtual machines’, etc. but so far is not. If we had such ‘sandboxing’, then a lot of security and privacy problems would be solved.Or, what the heck is that Web page JavaScript communicating with that server for? And is it accepting cookies from that ad server? Shut that stuff down.

    2. AlexHammer

      Do the companies who control these app marketplaces really place a lot of focus on individual apps from a competitive standpoint?If yes, what are some of the ways which they seek to do so, and would that really be a ultimately profitable use of time and resources?

      1. JimHirshfield

        Well, Apple is very protective and scrutinous of apps in their App Store. Google, not so much…but they do look for viruses and other malware.I have to think – whether they acknowledge it or not – that they pay close attention to anything that’s competitive to what they offer themselves.

        1. AlexHammer

          I find that interesting. Under what circumstances does focusing on your (in this case probably potential) competitors become, or may become, a distraction -and when is it, by contrast, advantageous or even essential?

          1. JimHirshfield

            Well, there’s “focusing on your competitors” like an obsession, which is ridiculous. And then there’s just keeping an eye on what they’re doing so you’re up on what might be innovative within your space.

  6. Rohan

    Congrats Fred! You must love yahoo. Geocities, tumblr and now Flurry! 🙂

    1. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

      Yessssssssss and Shhhhhhhhhhh 🙂

    2. Richard

      So when you are really excited about Yahoo! and Yahoo! is the last word of the headline, Should it be Yahoo!!?

      1. JimHirshfield

        En espanol: !!!!Yahoo!!!

        1. Richard

          And a half joking question … Yahoo!!?:)

  7. mikenolan99

    What a great story… And especially satisfying because I just recommended your blog to a great young entrepreneur building in the platform space. Hope to be reading about his exit in the years to come.I still recommend your blog a dozen times a month to entrepreneurs…. Many thanks.

    1. AlexHammer

      Yes, Fred is an INCREDIBLE leader in mindhare, which is increasingly the vital currency:http://www.quora.com/Alex-H…As I like to joke (but half true), playing off the famous The Economist ad, “I used to think, now I just follow Fred Wilson”

    1. jason wright

      “It has raised close to $74 million, with backers including Borealis Ventures, Crosslink Capital, DFJ, Draper Richards, First Round, InterWest Parnters, Menlo Ventures and Union Square Ventures.”crowd sourced venture capital?

      1. Tom Labus

        Just following suit

      2. JimHirshfield

        Flurry had their investors. And then Pinch had their investors.So, it was a Brady Bunch situation.

        1. LE

          There was also George Glass as an investor you probably didn’t know that.

          1. JimHirshfield

            Is he your imaginary investor?

          2. LE

            I think Jan held up the best, what do you think?Btw, I’m a Mary Ann kind of guy not a Ginger kind of guy. Yourself?

        2. fredwilson

          Great way to put it

          1. JimHirshfield

            Thanks. You can be Bobby Brady (I think he was the youngest).

  8. awaldstein

    Congrats to all parties.Nothing quite like a transaction to start the week.Honestly I so don’t get Yahoo. What they are about is a mystery to me.

    1. JimHirshfield

      Ah, I love the smell of an exit in the morning.

      1. awaldstein

        Better when it is yours .

        1. JimHirshfield

          No doubt.

      2. William Mougayar

        Apocalypse Now.

        1. JimHirshfield

          Yes, that’s the flick. But is that your commentary on the acquisition? 😉

          1. William Mougayar

            no, it was on your quote….

      3. sigmaalgebra

        It smells like money?

        1. JimHirshfield

          Depends what side (or sideline) of the transaction you’re on. Sometimes it smells like Napalm.

    2. jason wright

      not about agile innovation that i can see. it’s a oil tanker.

      1. JimHirshfield

        Oil tankers, especially full ones, are valuable.

    3. sigmaalgebra

      Maybe start by understanding the magazines and tabloids in grocery store checkout lines! Somehow try and try to get yourself all interested in the latest and juiciest celebrity gossip!Recently ‘Business Insider’ (BI) ran a list of the top 10 or so YouTube channels. Well, the top one was from Bethany Mota.Now, better to understand the world, and maybe also Yahoo, in 2014, try to understand Mota? So, go watch.Given the BI list and wanted to learn what made a top site, I watched a little of her latest clip. So, it was sleep, bathe, put on about 19 kinds of makeup, work on her hair, with more makeup products, eat, more makeup, swim, more work on hair and makeup, go shopping for clothes and makeup and spend money, more time on makeup, play with the clothes she just got, maybe wash off the makeup, put on more makeup, show the brand names of everything she has from shoes to, right, makeup, etc.And that’s the most popular. And apparently she’s making good money! Why bother with college? With what she’s doing now, soon she’ll be fixed for life.Video clips of how to do well with calculus? Apparently that couldn’t begin to compete!Sounds like Yahoo should ‘acquire’ Mota!

      1. LE

        soon she’ll be fixed for lifeSound like you are saying she is going to get spayed?Sounds like she executed on the Gary Vaynerchuk concept of taking something that typically better credentialed (or ticket stamped) people do and becoming an authority in the eyes of the internet masses? [1] Or maybe Kahn Academy is another example.This is possible because of what I call “the assumption of legitimacy”. Whereas if you tell simple people you are something because they know even less than you they believe you. As I said when I started my businesses nobody ever questioned me even on day one. I said “we are this” and they said “ok give me a price for doing this you are the expert”. I’m totally convinced because I’ve done it that I could go out and claim to do anything and get people to pay me money for that thing that I claim to be able to do. [2][1] There are fresh kill on the internet every day. It’s actually quite easy.[2] This would be a good concept for a reality TV show. The audience wouldn’t know until the end whether it was “con man or business man”.

        1. sigmaalgebra

          > “the assumption of legitimacy”That’s the second time I heard of her and watched a little. The first time was when she was still fairly new, had her number of ‘followers’ growing rapidly, and was written up at ‘Business Insider’ or some before.Back then she looked popular with her target audience, say, middle school girls, because she was happy, confident, and bubbly. And maybe she got away with it because of your “assumption of legitimacy”.But soon enough the vendors saw an opportunity to pay her for in effect, and likely effectively, pitching their products, and now she looks more professional and, then, may be doing still better on “assumption of legitimacy”. Now she’s not as bubbly as she was and is doing so much with makeup, instead of just fashion frocks, that she looks a bit ridiculous.Another observation, not to be missed, is that in the two clips I saw part of, she’s not actually DOING anything at all productive. So, there’s nothing on school, school work, jobs, college, etc. And she’s shown alone. Curious that that ‘life image’ could be so popular, at least #1 in ‘comparative popularity’.In a sense, then, she puts a lid on the impact of YouTube: Since she is the most popular, everything else is less popular which seems to say that no matter what the heck anyone can upload, no matter how good in absolute terms, so many hours a day of video in total at YouTube, comparatively will get beaten by Mss Mota bubbling about some makeup.

          1. LE

            Will be interesting to see what happens as she gets older and has less of a connection to the crowd that she courts right now. Quite different than the other examples (Wine and Learning) where the age of the “legitimate” knowledge bearer isn’t the key to success and the market isn’t shifting on a whim to something else.I find all of this fascinating thanks for pointing her out I had never heard of her.I’m reminded that as a kid when my older cousin said “oh the monkees are ok for kids but we (he might have been late teens iirc) need a real band – like the Rolling Stones.

          2. sigmaalgebra

            > the market isn’t shifting on a whim to something else.Makes me recall the two lines at the end of the first half of the David Lean movie ‘Lawrence of Arabia’:”Allenby: No, it’s not. I’ve got orders to obey, thank God! Not like that poor devil – he’s riding the whirlwind.Dryden: Let’s hope we’re not.”Well, Mota is. But, no doubt for now each month she gets to take the money to the bank. And even if her YouTube channel flops, the money will still be in the bank.Hmm, as she grows up, can she and her audience grow up together? Hmm. If so, as the years go by, she can be bubbling about Mr. Right, how she gets made up for her big dates, her bridal registry with all her desired gifts (Tiffany, Macy’s, or now also Amazon?, listen up here!), Pampers, selecting a pre-school, being a soccer mom, …!So patronizing for me to assume such stereotypes for her!So, that is the question, whether to be for the old demographic each day by day to the end of recording time or to embrace age as an opportunity and grow with the audience until death do they part — worst writing I can think of!I’m also reminded of the line, likely in ‘Forbes’, during the 2000 bubble:”Never be between a VC and the door when the lock up period is over.”Yup, in 2000 some VCs were riding the whirlwind. They had to “Make hay while the sun shined.”.

          3. LE

            And even if her YouTube channel flops, the money will still be in the bank.Will it? Maybe. You see you have someone young and there is a high probability that they don’t know how history plays out. If they have an idea that their fame could be short lived (because a parent puts things in perspective) then they could be ok. But if they don’t ,and they think they will always be special, (because they did something special one time) then they could suffer a pretty big fall.I mean I know very little about academia (which you do). So I have no perspective on that and very little frame of reference or seat of the pants judgement. If I was young and rising in academia it would take an older more experienced person to show me the ropes so I don’t get suckered into something. If I am older (as I am now) I know enough to give what is happening some thought or to research it and to ask at least.

          4. Nathan Lustig

            I’d be curious exactly how much money she’s actually making. From what I’ve seen not many of the “stars” on youtube actually make big time money like a star in the tv/print era would have. Does anyone have any data?

          5. LE

            Keep in mind that even if she isn’t making “that much money” she is getting tremendous exposure. And if she is opportunistic (and she most certainly is) that exposure will allow her to segue into other things. And to meet new people who will allow her to learn by osmosis. Or will get her involved in something new. While that might seem to contradict my statement it’s probably a good example of why it’s so hard to learn about some things by reading on the internet. Because sometimes things that aren’t obvious become obvious after you mix together different possibilities. I call it “the thing that leads to thing”.big time money like a star in the tv/print eraThe power of stars is that people know who they are and that helps with opening doors. It’s not necessarily the money that they make.

          6. Nathan Lustig

            I’m with you, I totally understand why she’s doing it and I’ve done similar things on a MUCH smaller scale to learn, get exposure and get some cash in the door.My point was more that she may be very successful in terms of views, exposure, but what is that translating into in terms of cash? For example, Jenna Marbles, who was one of the original youtube stars and has more than a billion views/clicks, has an estimated net worth of $2.5m after being at it for years. If she’s at the top of the pyramid, what are the next level people making? And the next level down?I’m not criticizing, I’m curious.http://www.celebritynetwort

          7. LE

            FYI that website you linked to is pretty meaningless. I don’t think you can take whatever value it has as a rough idea of anything. With the exception of info that is merely plucked from a somewhat reliable source possibly. It doesn’t even pass the napkin test.Even more traditional and accepted sites (like Forbes) without the explicit help of the actual person can vary greatly. They rely on estimates based on stock values and implied values and some other data they claim to keep on top of. I’ve heard where Trump actually contacts them to get his ranking up (that’s unusual).http://www.forbes.com/forbe…Obviously there is certainly valuable info in a gross way no question about it.

          8. Nathan Lustig

            Sure, its not the end all be all site, but if you google around the only hard numbers I’ve found are “six figure checks from youtube” and talking about a rented $1.1m house (NY Times.)My guess is that these youtube stars are doing well, but not making tens of millions per year like a traditional star might. All I’m saying is that I’d like to see more info about what these seemingly successful and internet famous people actually bring in for a year.http://www.nytimes.com/2013…For example, on a much smaller scale. I’ve written two very niche books that sell decently on Amazon. The value that people who don’t know me think these books have in actual money is WAY higher than what I actually make in cash. The books have brough me tons of related opportunities, but in terms of straight up cash in the bank, not as much as outsiders think. I’d bet youtube stars have a similar experiences, but would like to see some data.

          9. sigmaalgebra

            The recent article at Business Insider that lists Mota and 9 or or other YouTube stars list money.

          10. Nathan Lustig

            Thanks. I found this one that shows ranges of 226k to 2.6m or 800k to 8.6m for different youtube channels. If the top stars are making 800k a year from advertising its a big difference from 8.6m. Would be interesting to see more precise estimates.http://www.businessinsider….

        2. sigmaalgebra

          There is some insight into what Marissa is doing in the linkhttp://techcrunch.com/2014/…from Tom Labus in this thread. So, Marissa is going for “mobile first”. In that case, Flurry starts to make more sense.Now her share of search is under 10%, and she wants “more innovative” search on mobile. Uh, “Hello, Marissa? How about, for both mobile and other form factors, search, discovery, recommendation, curation, notification, subscription, more in the sense Eric Schmidt explained in Edinburgh, ’emotional delivery to people’, ‘arts … connect with and move human hearts’?”Ah, it’s good to keep up on Marissa’s M&A, but I’ve got to get the last bugs out of my software.

          1. Timothy Meade

            Well, there’s a personal assistant they acquired. They could take that and make it the focus of the company, focus on “emotional delivery,” on personalizing not only results but ultimately content.The only problem is you can’t be both a tabloid and a source of utility. AOL hasn’t figured this out either.Yahoo is famously the company that stumbled across search but proclaimed loudly they were a search directory, then pushed people to Inktomi and Google.Maybe they have a future in B2B with search advertising, but it seems Google has that pretty much wrapped up, the largest market, the largest inventory.It seems that Yahoo’s legacy is Fred, Cuban, and various other people whose careers it has launched or greatly enhanced. It’s almost as if Marissa landed there and quickly came to realize that it’s not Google, that the core needed to execute on the broad and powerful ideas is not there. That has been supplanted with marketers, content people and the like. All great resources to have if you are successfully executing as a content company, but not so much if you are trying to execute as a technology company. (AOL again)Of course, I’m not trying to be overly harsh to the company, just trying to see if there’s some kind of strategy lurking in the widespread M&A activity of the last year. Something that would make up the parts of a new Yahoo.Even if every acquisition is successfully integrated into the whole, there is still the problem if bringing back the users which have found another company delivering much the same mix of portal, maps, news, mail, sports results, and just about everything else you could want to know on a daily basis.The other strategy would be to turn each acquisition into its own operating company and carve out a niche for each one, with its own branding and its own built-in audience.

    4. LE

      Yahoo successfully executed on the low hanging fruit of opportunity crossed with the luck of being in the right place at the right time. A company like Yahoo is not the same as a company with an actual formula (and kick ass established non fickle base of different businesses) like GE or even your local NYC restaurantpreneur which can develop new concepts and continue to be successful. And at her heart I would doubt Marissa is an entrepreneur. That’s not her background. She joined a rocket ship and rode it. (You didn’t, right? You helped make the rocket ship?)I think part of the problem with trying to do the things she is doing is that at the level of money that they appear to be spending to do some of these things there is no way to have the number of iterations necessary for one of the things to actually hit and turn out to be “the answer”. That’s one of the reasons that companies aren’t able to do what VC’s do. They aren’t in a position to gamble on a large number of highly improbable startups with the hope that 3 or 5 or 1 end up being big wins.When you can’t predict the future or control it you have to spread around the cheer and keep your fingers crossed.

  9. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

    Is this really a HAPPY ending? 3-5 times (with the rumored numbers) for the investment and 8-9-years of hard work?OR the rumored numbers are wrong?

    1. leigh

      There are sadder endings (says the girl who gave her startup away for nothing just to see the technology live on 🙂

      1. JimHirshfield

        Power on @leigh:disqus …Power on!

        1. leigh

          lol is there any other way to live 🙂

          1. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

            Yes.Been there in a similar situation 9-years back… except for just owning the product patent (in the inventor list).Joined another start-up 9-years back … now that company is going great and I own a good amount of share … started another new one of my own.What i mean is… there are plenty of ways …. take every walk of life as a learning experience.A hand cannot engulf or shut the light of the sun. If you are a SUN no-one can block the light … shine-ON.

      2. ErikSchwartz

        The definition of “sad” depends why you’re in it to start with.Given YHOOs recent track record Flurry will likely not live on very long.But yeah, giving it away sucks.

    2. LE

      Is this really a HAPPY ending?It’s happy because it wasn’t a shutdown and a failure. If you read Fred’s post carefully you will see there is nothing to indicate that it was a big USV win.Look, this is the life they have chosen. I think people who do startups don’t realize maybe that they will be locked into something during 8 or 9 of the most productive years of their life. This is similar to getting tied up with the wrong girl and emerging later and having to correct your error. (This isn’t a commentary on flurry or what they did by the way…)

      1. sigmaalgebra

        > this is the life they have chosenThat was an awfully good line, really succinct but meaningful view of a strange life, of many, in that series of movies. I have no idea how Coppola collected and/or invented so many good lines. And in this thread today we also have his line about napalm in the morning smells like victory.

        1. LE

          What’s great about lines like that is that they are shorthand for a concept that would take a paragraph or longer to explain. Almost like a picture is worth 1k words.Same with yiddish sayings.One that my dad taught me translates roughtly to “if you are going to eat like a pig let it drip from your beard”. which doesn’t necessarily have to refer to “eating” btw.

      2. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

        liked that one-liner.

    3. fredwilson

      Pinch was started in early 2008

  10. pointsnfigures

    Congratulations. It seems as if USV has a traditional buyout partner in Yahoo (that goes back to GeoCities too!) Smart move by Yahoo if they want to get mobile.

  11. John Revay

    Fred – more Yahoo stock!

    1. JimHirshfield

      They’re building him an office.

      1. Chris Phenner

        laughing.

        1. JimHirshfield

          😉

      2. Guest

        Seems fair, they built him one.

  12. Barry Nolan

    Mobile analytics is fast becoming a fascinating place. It’s fundamentallydifferent from its desktop counterparts focus on traffic, uniques, conversions,etc. Mobile analytics rather is obsessed with getting to know the person behind the phone – who they are, where they are, what they like… As our phones are very personal things, with thousands of APIs, these APIs effectively build a forensic profile of each person.Flurry monetized through an Ad Marketplace. Their scale is truly impressive. I think the next opportunity lies in personalization services and contextual communications.

    1. leigh

      What do you mean by contextual communications?

      1. Barry Nolan

        Relevant to you. e.g. Foursquare recommendations on where to go next. An iBeacon notification letting you know that a favorite wine is in-stock. A voucher from your taxi hailing app (because you haven’t used them in 2 months).

  13. Andrew Kennedy

    Congrats the the Flurry team and all those involved. Good story.

  14. Jeff T.

    Great outcome for Flurry! They have an amazing product.Fred – I wanted to point out this article to you regarding Net Neutrality. Throttling of Netflix when using FiOS is already taking place. Crazy!! http://boingboing.net/2014/

  15. BlairMacGregor

    Congrats Fred, as well as the rest of the Flurry team.I think the fact that they’re going to Yahoo also helps since they’ll remain an innocent bystander in the smartphone wars. Going to Google, for example, while they undoubtedly would’ve had closer access to the hardware, I think would’ve potentially hurt their standing with iOS developers. Or perhaps at least their perception in the marketplace as being an unbiased source of information.

  16. Chris Phenner

    I got to know Flurry as they started life as a music social network (myspace-esque) with a mobile-first approach, and they helped us sell ringtones at Thumbplay. We later found far more value in them as an analytics platform for our apps (years later).

    1. JimHirshfield

      Quite a journey

    1. David Semeria

      Thanks an amazing clip, thanks for sharing.There were more insights into Job’s psyche than in countless articles I have read.

  17. sigmaalgebra

    542,000 mobile apps? Wow! At’s a lots’a apps!Where did someone get that really strong funny stuff they were smoking to come up with such a number? :-)!Gads. What planet is this? Did we move to another planet while I was sleeping last night? 542,000 — is there any way to make sense out of that? Good grief.But, congrats on the outcome.

    1. App Maven

      The Flurry SDK is included in over 1/4 of all apps downloaded every day. They see 5.5 Billion (with a B) app sessions (someone using an app) *every* day and that number more than doubles every year. The numbers are mind blowing, really.

      1. sigmaalgebra

        That explains a lot.So, maybe one step deeper, they used the comparatively large equity funding to spend whatever was needed to get their SDK used and, then, under their assets counted the net present value of the future stream of usage data and resulting revenue from ad targeting. Billions a day — has to be some money in there somewhere.I have Google’s Chrome browser installed because that was necessary to use some of their map software, but I’ve never used Chrome and in part because I suspect that maybe somehow Chrome would be sending data on my Internet usage back to Google. Well, that’s just what Flurry has been doing except on mobile. Amazing.The fact that mobile has so many apps while instead Windows and MacBook make such heavy use of just a browser seems like part of the opportunity of Flurry. I.e., on desktops, they’d have to get their software, and it would be called spyware, used by Mozilla and/or Internet Explorer, Chrome, and just a few more while on mobile they have hundreds, no, hundreds of thousands, of apps to target. Lesson learned.

  18. Eric Friedman

    Great learning experience during the merger. It has been nice to follow this all the way through.

  19. LE

    Congratulations. Makes sense now. I knew you were in a good mood for a reason 1 week ago. (Attached grab).

  20. JaredMermey

    A blog post on startup mergers: when they work and when they don’t would be an excellent and insightful read.

  21. PhilipSugar

    It is good to see a win on a merger of two start-ups. I always have said I never have seen that work, you disagreed. Well we know who is right and who is wrong.

  22. AlexHammer

    It is interesting with Yahoo!, with the cash which they have coming, I believe that half is targeted to the stock, but with the remainder, how might they prioritize future acquisitions?What is the criteria?

  23. Bobur

    Yahoo! always makes people (except users) happy! 🙂

  24. youflavio

    I guess a clueless Mayer can buy justo anything you throw at her

  25. Chris Fralic

    Lots of good stories and lessons in this one, great working with our friends at USV, couldn’t have said it better myself… http://nothingtosay.com/201

    1. fredwilson

      Chris Fralic taking on Steve Jobs!!!!

  26. OurielOhayon

    Fred do you consider this exit a success for Flurry (it s obviously not a failure..)?

    1. fredwilson

      Yes I do. Its not a Twitter scale success, obviously, but its a great outcome

  27. Rishat Muhametshin

    Bye, Flurry.

  28. awaldstein

    We agree on something else. if Yahoo vanished in a snap of the fingers, would it touch my life? Can I think of anything they could possibly do that would?

  29. JimHirshfield

    Nice smiley new avatar. 😀

  30. LE

    Nice logo for Lancaster Food Co by the way.

  31. LE

    Hey Charlie your company name http://www.thelancasterfood… is going to be a problem trademark wise because of these people:http://www.lancasterfoods.com/They also do organics. Have you consulted a trademark attorney? Impossible to believe they would clear that name. Chance of confusion is very high on this.

  32. JimHirshfield

    They serve a purpose for exits. There are only so many companies that can acquire startups at a meaningful price point. Silicon Valley needs Yahoo, which means the whole industry needs them, which means we need them.So, while they don’t have your attention as a consumer, I think their demise could touch your life….could.

  33. sigmaalgebra

    I’ve rarely paid any attention to Yahoo as a company and much less as a Web site destination. But recently I went to their Web site twice. What I saw was essentially grocery store checkout line celebrity gossip. Twice was more than enough.What Melissa has in mind, as in ‘Back to School’, “I have no idea.”. Maybe she does. No doubt I’m not in her target demographic, and neither are you. Maybe she’ll be successful; stranger things have happened.But look at the bright side: On a good day, well rested (that is, lots of sleep, but let’s not mention that thing in France), all fixed up she can be really cute, look like she’s still in high school!

  34. awaldstein

    This makes me smile.The ole snake eating its tail argument.Similar to the one that says that without advertising there would be no internet as it supports everything we do there. And that consequently, regardless that most simply tolerate ads we as a culture need advertising.Obviously we don’t 😉

  35. LE

    I think their demise could touch your life….could.Lots of things are similar. Think about what would happen if there was much less crime. There would be no jobs for people and for companies that support law enforcement. Same with healthcare.Silicon Valley needs YahooHaving even just 2 bidders for an item for sale (or a company for sale) inevitably raises the value of that object greatly. Even if those bidders are imaginary. (I’m serious you’d be surprised how easy it is to get people to fall for that one..)

  36. JimHirshfield

    Pleased to amuse you.

  37. LE

    What Melissa has in mindYou mean Marissa, eh?I read an interesting take down of Jeff Jarvis the other day (from 2008) where the implication was that he was doing some thing in the political playbook to minimize an opponent. (Not what you are doing I’m sure but I found it interesting).http://alexanderwayne.blogs…(See Step 2, denigrate the critic pretending you don’t know what publication he’s from).

  38. JimHirshfield

    For sure

  39. awaldstein

    meant in jest my friend.

  40. JimHirshfield

    😉

  41. AlexHammer

    Why people like you and I follow Fred so closely, MINDSHARE LEADERSHIPhttp://www.quora.com/Alex-H…

  42. sigmaalgebra

    > You mean Marissa, eh?Sure. No doubt Shana will mark me down a full letter grade for that error.