Congratulations StreetEasy on your sale to Zillow!

Ditto - congrats and Zillow, please keep the site great, or greater.

Indeed. Well done!

Incredibly smart move for SE, incredibly smart. This is the opposite of, "buy now or be priced out forever."

Thanks for a terrific experience. I was a very, very early participant in SE.

congrats to Michael, Sebastian, and the SE team on a great exit (and lets not forget Dawn D's work when she was at SE too)! Wishing the SE team the very best on this exciting news!

Best of luck to all of you. I L-O-V-E StreetEasy. xox

Well done!

Zillow would have done much better just renting StreetEasy instead of buying.

Kidding... congrats!

kharby, are you going to get around to education us?

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/36159-once-in-contract

Hope all the employees got a piece.

Very nice, was that 12x or 15x? Congrats!!

So very happy for all of you. When's the party?

Congratulations Michael and crew!

Keith

Congratulations! What a great combination: two outstanding sites, with complementary strengths.

mazel tov!

small crooks join the big crooks, together such more money from the innocent people

that's exciting! Mazel tov!

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Sign of a market top?

"Sign of a market top?"

Possibly. Additional evidence: Streeteasy's condo index is up 9.2% in the last year. At that rate of return, prices will double in 8 years.

FLMAOzzz. $50MM. 34 People. 6 years.

That works out to $245K/year per employee.

Let's add in taxes and transaction cost. 40% tax/transaction cost. That's $147K/yr per employee left over.

In the REAL world two guys/gals take the bulk of the money, let's say 50%. The rest of the guys make $73K/yr per employee.

So congrats to the 2 dudes. $7.5MM buys you two 700 sq ft one bdrms
http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/891999-condo-302-west-12th-street-west-village-new-york

$3.5MM left for $5 fuji apples Riversider complains about all dayz long. Ali just made $120K on the buy side of the above mentioned 2x 700 sq ft coop.

Hilarious.. .should've went toe to toe w/ Zillow and made them pay you more..... -shrug-

I knew it! HB hinted at it awhile ago in a thread where he wrote "who's next?" in relation to another RE website selling out. I almost responded "please, don't even think about it!" I hope SE quality remains intact; I have worked with excellent start-ups that just weren't the same after acquisition. Nevertheless, I am happy for SE creators - congrats! AND, maybe now I'll get that "make me move" feature for NYC listings for which I may be the only audience.

I just hope they let you keep your website as is. Zillow is not user friendly for NYC properties. It keeps coming up with "new sales" in my building that were sold 2 years ago and are not back on the market. Then there are all the properties you can't get info on... You don't get a shred of information on past sales, etc.

And what about us "SE Greys"? Will be affected in any way - i.e., kept grey, restored to black (highly unlikely, I know), or banned completely?

Inquiring Trolls want to know!

Congratulations, but please don't change Streeteasy to be more like Zillow; I use Streeteasy instead of zillow for NYC real estate because zillow's format sucks when it comes to NYC, especially Manhattan...hopefully they will realize Streeteasy's strengths and not destroy a great site for a quick buck...

>I knew it! HB hinted at it awhile ago in a thread where he wrote "who's next?" in relation to another RE website selling out.

But you could have bought Apple.

By the way, if you bought Zillow in April when Apple traded at $390 and w67 said to buy Apple, you would be up 60% on Zillow vs 30% on Apple. Nearly the same if you waited and bought Apple in late June because you were kicking yourself for not having listened to 67 the first time despite the fact that his initial call involved selling Ford to buy Apple. Ford ran up 20% in the period when AAPL went from $390 in April to $390 in June.

HB - Glad you are still with us. SE definitely would not be the same without its premier troll. I hope material term of deal for Zillow was post-acquisition retention of key individuals in appropriate roles.

Things are very good.

Request to Zillow: bring back Greensdale! Un-gray him!

So who is going to manage SE now? Anyone from the current group staying on?

HB - Glad to hear it. Also, if nobody grants request by 9d8b7etc to bring back Greensdale, I hope Fieldschester keeps it in check so he does not end up gray too. Too funny.

Greensdale got greyed mid July after quoting w67 verbatim simply based on 67's own content. That would correspond with the period of heightened final stage Ziligence.

Jason the Retard is also grey after ramming his retard helmet through the monitor.

Now they can use Zillow's backend algorithms and create a Magic Eight Ball valuation feature for StreetEasy's frontend: the "Jestimate"

Wow-wee! It sure took them a long time, what with his propensity for telling people that Harlem is safe.

Now they should change his greyed-out handle to JasonTheRetard, so there's simply no confusion.

Congratulations, StreetEasy. I wouldn't own my wonderful home without you, certainly not at the market-bottom price I paid.

Mazel, SE!

#ZILLOW #StreetEasy #RealEstate #NewYork #Year2013 #August #GeorgePalaganas #SpencerRaskoff http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/36216-congratulations-streeteasy-on-your-sale-to-zillow
From georgepalaganas:

"I hope the buyout of this New York patch at $50 Million will be fruitful for ZILLOW. We welcome STREETEASY in the ZILLOW family! Congratulations to Spencer Raskoff for this decision. Good luck to everyone!"

Great work. Best site anything NYC!

Congrats to the SE team... I hope it gets even better! :)

Congrats Streeteasy! Wondering how much you are doing in EBITDA to justify the $50MM pricetag?

Guessing $1.5MM in ebitda with 40% growth.

I live in NYC and streeteasy is the best!!

Exciting news

Congrats, SE.

W67th, you missed on a couple of bits. It was 7.5 years, and you forgot about the investors ($2.9M circa 2006).

Hopefully Zillow knows that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've never been impressed with Zillow so here's hoping they don't muck up StreetEasy.

Yeah, Streeteasy is so user friendly! I hope Zillow leaves it alone

scarednycgal,
Yes, what I like about SE is how streamlined and "no frills" the interface is. Minimal ads, straightforward controls. I'm NOT a fan of how bloated and overloaded Zillows interface feels, which worries me slightly. Staying positive, I hope SE continues to it's great motif of providing just enough, without "too much."

:-)

Let's hope that Zillow embraces the "New York is different" mantra and lets Streeteasy be Streeteasy. Personally, I suspect the product/branding integration will follow the Walgreen's/Duane Reade model: Keep the name and a separate identity but slowly morph into the parent company. Hope not.

But congratulations, nonetheless to the StreetEasy team, nice to see rewards for developing a good product which fulfills a real marketplace need.

Spencer and the Zillow team are awesome but haven't been able to crack NYC. This is a great step for both companies. Very exciting.

2x FLMAOzzzz.. as nada points out the "34 employees probably made what a junior banker would after 7.5 yrs.

Streeteasy was better designed and could have ruled all the "major urban" city RE listing, possibly been a worldwide MLS listing service and taken Zillow head to head in 10 years... but apparently they gotten goodum advice from a sophisticated "banker" out of DeVry.

GO TEAM RE!

Hmmm - W67th sounds like he might know some entrepreneurs who were persuaded by bankers to cash out too early. I know nothing about the terms of SE's transaction with Zillow or what bankers or attorneys were involved, but I think SE made a good move given the other industry participants; last time I checked, it appeared to be a crowded field where competition was already fierce such that growth for any small entity was going to difficult to achieve without a large infusion of capital. I am curious as to whether w67th agrees, and if he does, where he would have recommended that SE find the required capital. I don't think an IPO would have made sense for SE for a number of reasons; could they have borrowed the requisite amount without crippling interest payments? should they have gone to PE funds? I am genuinely curious as to what w67th would have done and defer entirely to his experience in finance. As I have repeatedly stated, I have no background in finance, but from layman's perspective, SE's sale to Zillow appears to make sense from SE perspective on a number of fronts.

Playing armchair quarterback here...

If you look at Zillow vs. SE, they both got their starts within months of each other but have taken different trajectories. SE has always had the better product, and in 2007 they really had lightning-in-a-bottle. IMO, the type of thing that you throw VC money at up the wazoo and expand. Rather than improve the product + expand, I think they decided to improve the product + monetize. The attention to monetization killed growth, made the focus too local & idiosyncratic.

Is a $50M sale to Zillow the right move now? Probably. But really, it should have been the other way around.

I hope we see SE features making their way into Zillow, not the other way around.

yeah the $10/month.. insider thing killed it. Instead of getting VC money and going national, they decided to try and "monetize" it.

Where would facebook be if they started charging $10/month? How about if google charged $.50 to look up something? Then there is zillow, would Mrs. W67 pay $20/month to find out what her friends paid to buy their homes?

They got the lighting in a bottle internet idea and got $5MM max after paying off the VC. They'll go and buy a few rounds of Prosecco at the four seasons bar and act like a big shot "internet" millionaires... then w81's 85yo mama gonna show up with her $10MM RE BUBBLE profit and break out the grande damme veuve cliquot.... BUBBLEs.. life ain't fair nor is it a meritocracy. Meritocracy is what ppl who got theirz sell to the bubblers at the end of the line to keep it from going like Egypt/Syria.

Hilarious. -shrug- fk if I care... I'm gonna make mine.. just step aside sucka.

Well, Zillow launched in early 2006, not 2007. But sure, ino is likely correct.

>to keep it from going like Egypt/Syria.

How about Pakistan? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/20/pakistan-musharraf-bhutto-murder-case/2675459/

Nada - Interesting; always nice to hear your perspective.
w67th - Thx for the response; I reluctantly admit that I enjoy your perspective too and particularly appreciate the stock pick here and there.
HB - I preferred the clip that came up at the end of the video about the goat that thinks it's a dog.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/15/212327280/zoo-in-china-swaps-lion-for-dog-hopes-no-one-notices

Jason, both SE & Zillow started in 2005 & launched in 2006. I was saying that by 2007, SE's website was a very fine piece of work.

Personally I think they undervalued the Talk section. They could have highlighted some of the contributors like Eddie Wilson.

50 million seems like a pittance.

Congratulations, very nice

i agree that it seemed to have gone low. We might be nearing the end of the startup buyouts. Congrats team and I wish everyone the very best

To give Inonada his due - he was saying this years ago before the sale (SE missed their chance - needed to get more capital to go big).

Well, easy to play armchair quarterback giving a "reason" why something very unlikely (becoming a billion-dollar company) didn't happen.

I've witnessed a gamut of start-up angles. You name the angle, I know an example from inception (i.e., know founders personally). Decent-sized raise to household name the fast way. Moderate-sized raise to billion-dollar company the slow way. Small-sized raise to decent ROI the old-fashioned way (as was the case here). Hats off to all of them, no easy feat.

Because I've also seen the other side. Lots of companies that went nowhere. Anywhere from small millions raised to a hundred million that went nowhere.

In the West Coast, the "go big or go home" attitude toward start-ups dominates. Lots of things in NYC are "go big or go home", but you just don't see it in the start-up scene.

If Bloomberg really wants to get the tech scene in NYC going, I say he should take a couple of billion and start a NYC-only venture fund. The first billion should be pissed away in glorious fashion just to establish NYC as a place to go big. Then the second billion may have a shot.

That's hot!

inonada, my comment was based on Zillow's purchase of RentJuice. It also sold for $50 million. I am a paying user of both sites and find Streeteasy gives me and its users a wealth more features on a much more sophisticated data platform. Considering the size of the team at Streeteasy, its entrenched nature in the NYC Real Estate market, I was a little surprised at the valuation. It's possible they didn't want to sell to someone like the Observer or Murdoch and were uninterested in creating a lead generation & retention platform.

Again, I wish them the very best and this is great news.. I always thought it would be great to work there if I ever got tired of running the streets.

Best

A Google search reveals Rentjuice for $40MM, and that renters move 6 times more than owners: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/01/zillow-completes-its-40m-rentjuice-acquisition/