Odeo, the 9 month-old San Francisco startup founded by Evan Williams of Blogger fame, has announced that it will be buying itself back from its investors. Odeo, Inc., the parent company of Odeo (the product) and Twttr (now called Twitter) is now dead. Both products are now owned by Obvious Corp, started by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and associates to initiate the reclaim of Odeo and take it to new heights.
For the last couple of months, Evan Williams has been hinting something like this was going to take place. First, he heavily criticized and admitted to his (and Odeo’s) mistakes and faults at the Future of Web Apps conference, and earlier this month closed down AudioBlogger, one of Odeo’s unneeded products.
While the sum of this acquisition is undisclosed, TechCrunch reports Evan Williams saying it is “enough for the VCs and angel investors to be made whole (i.e., they get their money back), and the common shareholders (including co-founder Noah Glass) to make a modest gain.“
I think this might be the beginning of the real Odeo. They can now begin to focus on creating good products without worrying about impressing investors. When they receive a buyout offer, they’ll be able to talk it through themselves rather than being overshadowed by a bunch of VCs, and lastly exempt the pressure of being the ‘next big thing’ (as, again, their VCs would want them to) and operate as a company with a future to look to.
[tags]Odeo, Acquisitions, Funding, Investments[/tags]
