TechCrunch reports today that BT has acquired Ribbit for $55 million to build GrandCentral competitor. The article states that the company has denied the rumors, but wouldn’t comment on wether or not the merger discussions were occuring or not. Given that Ribbit recently raised $13 million dollars, it’s interesting that they exited so early, and if the more than three times valuation seemed to be enough of a win for the investors and management. In any event, good job to all involved.
The story goes on to state the the primary reason behind the acquisition is to build a GrandCentral competitor. I say bullsh*t:
- You could replicate GrandCentral for way less than $55 million. All praise due to Craig Walker and his team, but a web integrated find-me-follow-me application doesn’t take $55 million to build.
- I’m a GrandCentral user, and really enjoy it, but GrandCentral has been languishing for the past year. There’s no sense in competing with something that isn’t winning.
- It doesn’t pass Occam’s razor: there’s a simpler reason why BT would buy Ribbit. If BT recognizes that their Enterprise customers will deploy communications enabled business process applications, and Ribbit has some 3,000 developers already, and it looks like Adobe Flash has more traction than (ick) SOAP… you get the picture.
Congratulations to Crick, Don and the crew at Ribbit. Well done.
In short: I’m with you Thomas. It’s not about GrandCentral (although that may have been an easy headline for the original article, which I understand). BT are *very* much in the game of figuring out how to open their network, extract value from these two-sided business models (see: Martin Geddes and Telco 2.0) and push on with their enterprise focus especially (where, as you’ve often highlighted, there is so much potential for either adding value or stripping cost if voice can truly be a first class citizen in the process).
i’m just surprised that Ribbit went from new-kid-on-the-block to Acquired-by-BT in such a short time! As an entrepreneur, I have to say: hats off!
Seems like this deal didn’t go through just yet. In any event, $13 MM isn’t their valuation (they might have given up 60-80% for that $13MM – who knows)
The deal has now been confirmed by BT at $105 million – considerably more than the previously reported $55m.
BT press release: http://bit.ly/3c8et1