Local Y-Combinator startup Kiko is up for sale on eBay. Having made fun of calendaring apps in the past, this isn’t exactly shocking, and you have to respect the Kiko founders’ willingness to let go. For sale is the domain name, the web hosting account, and all Kiko intellectual property including the software; as well as the option to buy a week of consulting time from the founders for $1500.
Now the big question is whether it’ll sell. Most of the recent, smaller tech acquisitions seem to be thinly veiled signing bonuses. Perhaps owning upcoming.org isn’t that important to Yahoo! — they could rebuild it in a few weeks — but it is a sign of hiring a highly competent person. As alternative to recruiters that charge $7000 per hire, an acquisition that binds a small group of people to your company for 3-5 years while their stock vests could easily be worth several tens of thousands. But without the option to acquire the Kiko team, I’m not sure who would buy their domain and software.
After all, who sits around with $50k wondering “gee, I wish I could get myself a neat but young implementation of something Google is really good at?”
Update: Tucows, the buyer, explains. Pretty convincing logic, actually.
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