Online recruitment’s brightest minds and opinion leaders have recently given their take on the Jobster acquisition of WorkZoo. Attitudes have been all over the map. As always, John Sumser gave one of my favorite assessments.
Personally, the more I think about it, the more I think we’re all maybe looking too hard at this deal. Maybe it’s much more elementary than we’re prepared to swallow.
Maybe the WorkZoo acquisition by Jobster is a simple "buy low, sell high" deal. In other words, maybe Jobster looked at WorkZoo and saw a piece of low-priced real estate in a location that may or may not blow up someday.
Vertical job search is undoubtedly a hot topic. Between SimplyHired, Indeed and WorkZoo, ‘The Zoo’ would have been by far the most affordable in an acquisition play.
So, if I’m Jobster, why not buy a bargain vertical search engine with sufficient technology and a track record of driving eyeballs; give it a facelift, and generate some modest revenue from advertising (which probably will cover the cost of the acquisition)?
Then if a suitor with deep pockets and a penchant for vertical job search technology comes along, a meager investment becomes a nice chunk of cash. Time to party like it’s 1999!
Too simple? Maybe. But hey, simple’s easy for me to grasp, so I’ll stick with it.
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July 21st, 2005 at 2:38 am
maybe Occam’s razor does apply here.
still, it’s unusual to see an early stage startup do an acquisition of another early stage startup.
personally, i think Jobster saw what we did with the SimplyHired-LinkedIn partnership (see http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2005/04/26/job_hunting_try_using_your_connections_online.html) and thought it was such a good idea they wanted to do something similar ;)
anyway, best of luck to Jobster… the Maunders are some smart folks and we wish them well.
- dave mcclure
http://www.SimplyHired.com