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Originally Posted by jgaiser
This thread is revealing an amazing amount Amazon hate.  |
You should read the threads on the Goodreads feedback forum!
The thing that leaves me shaking my head is the number of people who seem to have no idea that Goodreads is, and always was, a commercial business. Also it was a VC-funded business which means it would always be looking for a point to either float or sell.
I hope this link works without you needing to be logged into LibraryThing but it's
Tim Spalding's take on the sale (Tim is the founder of LT).
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Unless I'm quite mistaken, Goodreads was not hugely profitable as itself. With 30 employees, many of their engineers and in Los Angeles, he was probably burning upwards of $3 million/year on salary and benefits alone. When you do the advertising math, there's no way he was making lots of money--not the sort of money that justifies a $150m valuation. (I don't for a second believe the $1b number.) My guess is that he wasn't even cash-positive. A number of people in the industry share my assessment. Unless the company itself is very profitable and very, very large, there's no chance of going public, hence no way for the investors to cash out.
So he had to cash out. And he pretty much had to sell to Amazon
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