So before we get into this, let’s build the case for the defence. Nokia has been acquiring lots of small startups lately (Plum, Cellity and Bit-Side this year) and TechCrunch.com now has a source that says they’ve bought boutique travel social network Dopplr. This appears to have occurred while Dopplr was fundraising – something which often happens when deals are being thrashed out. Dopplr is not commenting on the story.
Dopplr is headquartered in London but owned and operated by Dopplr Ltd. in Helsinki, Finland. The service is based on the idea of “intention broadcasting” where you publish your intention to visit somewhere in the future, thus making happy coincidences in your social network less and less coincidental (and thus happier, more efficient). Where or from whom the original idea came from is lost in the mists of time (perhaps someone can enlighten us in the comments?).
Anyway, the purchase price is said to be between €10 million and €15 million. We first covered Dopplr in 2007 when it closed on seed funding.
Supposedly it has raised just €1.25 million or so in total funding although exact figures were never announced, even though they assembled a stellar groups of backers who have much deeper pockets than that.
Get a load of this: Martin Varsavsky (FON), Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Saul Klein (TAG), Esther Dyson (Angel), Tyler Brûlé (Meeja), Thomas Glocer (Thomson Reuters) and Lars Hinrichs (Xing). I mean, good grief, most startups would kill and maim to have that kind of board. As good as this purported exit is, clearly these people thought Dopplr would go way, way bigger than a €15m exit.
Why Nokia? Well, here’s a thought: a significant part of the team were ex-Nokia. Dopplr cofounder and CEO Marko Ahtisaari was previously the Director of Design Strategy at Nokia. Various tech people were from Nokia and interface designers Matt Jones, who recently left, was ex-Nokia.
Hold on a second, did I say recently left? Yes, I did. Only last month Jones departed for Jack Schulze and Matt Webb’s design agency, Schulze & Webb, since renamed Berg (British Experimental Rocket Group).
So why would Jones, knowing that the company was funding raising, which would either lead to a higher valuation or to a potential sale (if talks progressed) have jumped ship? Why miss out on a very lucrative exit? I dare-say Jones retain a stake in the company, and in theory he didn’t need to actually physically still be there to benefit. But surely it would make sense to be there when the champagne corks were popped? Maybe he knew about this (still to be confirmed BTW) sale a good while ago.
And let’s get this bit out of the way: The site has never grown to huge usage, but its core users are passionate about Dopplr. It’s one of the darlings of London’s Silicon Roundabout. Let’s acknowledge that Dopplr was an amazing idea, designed beautifully and executed almost perfectly.
But a few things have nagged me about Dopplr. When I met with Marko Ahtisaari a few months ago I asked by why it was that on Tripit, I could email them the flight plan sent by my airline and it would automatically log the tip, but on Dopplr I had to manually type it in. He wasn’t too happy with the comparison, and preferred to emphasise the fast that they had a lot of upscale users – not, I inferred, the great unwashed of mass-market Tripit.
The second thing that stuck me as odd recently was that the launch of their iPhone app seemed a tad ‘quick and dirty’. It used the free OpenStreetMap which, at least on this app, I found spectacularly inaccurate (apologies to all OSM fans) and, crucially, you couldn’t add a trip on the app. It smacked of a half-baked product to try and get some traction.
Then you look at their Compete figures, which are patchy. This is no J-curve:
Furthermore, other things don’t add up: the non-J-curve performance recently, the lack of a press release screaming into my inbox to “set the facts straight” after this TechCrunch story; no announcement on the blog; no CEO tweets or co-founder Matt Biddulph going “Woot!” on Twitter. No comment from the company. Nothing (as of 24th Sept 10.40am). So either the sale has not in fact occurred, as some think (which I doubt), or it has and they just don’t really want to talk about it because it’s not really the exit they ultimately wanted.
But the threads of the prior connections with Nokia and a high profile CEO do look like they have added up to a tidy and simple exit for the founders. Well, if that’s the case, bloody fair enough to them.
It feels to me like they’ve already moved on. Well, I wish them luck.
Congrats, nice guys and well deserved, however, IMHO the core idea isn’t any good, so while the execution is great, being an averagely travelled kind of guy, I found it useless. I remember thinking it was exactly the kind of application that might appeal to potential VC, and most of the people on it are the usual conference-going types. Still, as I said, it has some really nice touches and they know their onions when it comes to the execution.
I’m wondering why @Dopplrhq last tweet is still
“our blog’s down for a short time while we add a bit more RAM. back real soon now.”
I was a beta tester of Dopplr. It belonged as part of something bigger, not as a standalone site. Too much social capital required for yet another “community” website. One single purpose and it was another log on, another bit of data input. Nicely executed, however, but not compelling enough on its own.
It should be Champagne, not champagne, btw.
capitalization nazi or just frenchie?
what. the. fuck.
dude.
Who knows? They might have retained an upside if does well within Nokia. Take the site and plug into Nokia’s world and could take off.
In any event, turning 1.25 into 15 is not that bad. I wish I did that well with my recent investments.
it isn’t 1.25 -> 10-15, 1.25 was raised at a particular valuation. it’s that valuation -> 10-15 which if it’s an early stage thing – could be a 1.5-2x on the premoney.
Great article Mike!
This isn’t journalism, Mike, and if you don’t know why that is, you may need to change your last name to Arrington.
neither is your comment. so *you* may want to change your name to calacanis.
whiner.
Oh, but knacker, I’m not pretending to be a journalist while engaging in sub-Heat speculation to cover the shoddy work done by the TechCrunch mothership. I’m commenting on it.
Don’t let me stop you from enjoying the empty gossip, regardless of the consequences. Arsehole.
Are you one of those exit dudes?
Nokia buy some weird stuff, how does this fit into the ovi stuff?
As the Facebook juggernaut rolls on, I expect it will be more and more difficult for niche, stand-alone social networking services like Dopplr to catch on. If I were at Dopplr, I’d advocate investing more in developing and promoting their Facebook app.
Nice article mike – its much better journalism than some of the other blogs, that covered it so supinely.
I disagree, Nick….it’s nice to see some critical analysis for a change…. it’s so often lacking in articles about start-ups and social media.
Wait did my comment have something to do with this post? Very psyched that you looked deeper
Have you ever wondered that eventhough Dopplr has been media favorite for a long time, it has been almost impossible to find any data about the real usage statistics of the service?
it’s all about kickbacks, look at the companies they have been buying they all are losers in those fields, and they still get $$$$ buyouts, no wonder apple is beating nokia to death, soon this finnish company will disappear from the map as all the money is gone to pay kickbacks!
Could be true…
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the rumored numbers are reversed – €15m in funding and €1.25 in acquisition price to Nokia. But if it truly was a fire sale you’ll never know the truth.
Company I worked with liquidated to a corporate parent at 1/18th of total funding value spun it in PR as being a healthy deal, but everyone involved got shafted except for the CEO who saved his own ass by getting a new salary position with new owner.
The founding team’s history with Nokia sounds like this is the same deal, they may have liquidated to Nokia for a small sum under the arrangement they get their old jobs back. The founders at least have job security, the investors walk away with a loss and everybody else gets laid off. A deadpool spun as an exit…
But thats speculation unless somebody gives the real story (unlikely considering Nokia probably would have the deal under NDA and the execs are probably not happy about it) we’ll never know…
I just realized their team page only has two staff left Marko & Matt B and I’m pretty sure they had a much bigger team at one point.
I think Dopplr has probably been in near-zombie mode for a while. If there were staff reductions they likely happened months ago. There’s nobody left for Nokia to lay off or reassign. Nokia basically bought the CEO, a website and some interesting data. Is that worth 15m? I think someone slipped TC exaggerated numbers
@kickback which Finnish company do you mean, Nokia or Dopplr?
The Dopplr sale proves its who you know and not what you know.
>> Get a load of this: Martin Varsavsky (FON), Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Saul Klein (TAG), Esther Dyson (Angel), Tyler Brûlé (Meeja), Thomas Glocer (Thomson Reuters) and Lars Hinrichs (Xing). + Nokia links.<<
So my advise to all entrepreneurs party harder and meet all these influencers (Techcrunch not included) so that you can sell your company without having to have a useful product with millions of customers.
I used to use Dopplr but it was pointless but with the help of various investors Nokia were duped into a pointless purchase.
Nokia’s acquisitions show the same kind of soft tactical acumen that you see in MS acquisitions. Every one leaves you wondering if they have any real sense of what their core competency is.
I love the service for the travel reports alone. Amazing design. Works great.
I hope it sticks around.
“The site has never grown to huge usage,”
That’s because itinerary sharing is a niche service.
right
Mike, 10-15 M € is a very good exit if your funding is 1,25 M €.
You, the media prefer bit stories about multi-milion IPO’s or acquisitions, but it is not so easy to create a technology or service with limited funding achieving those valuations.
When you are entrepreneuring in Europe, (and in Spain is even harder), you are earning less than half of previous jobs , 24/7, a lot of pressure, high selling-cycles, difficult to raise additional funding….etc…
Then, entrepreneurs should become realistic, you are creating a tool, technology or service interesting but easy to be monetized combined with others offering or by the other powerful sales force / customer base.
Then, if you can sell, get the money you don’t have received as your normal salary, and make additional money, and your investor is also making money, what is the problem ?
When the bubble disappear playing to the double or nothing is dangerous, and as a viewer is nice to see how others take risks, but when you have to decide the common sense …
Juan,
Could not have said it better – and may add:
Some entrepeneurs still do the first steps of it for the fun of seeing your idea come to life, get the attention and recognition and thus the user, who tell you, they love it. And a niche is a niche – nothing else. But “niche-marketing” will get to the decision makers one day and then we will be there.
Money is nice, no question, but its not always, never the 1st or the only aspect for those who create new approaches…
If you get ppl to fund you – great, if they let you pursue your ideas…if not, well – there have been unfunded businesses that grew before the 90ies, and there will be such in the future as well.
And if you sell – may it be for 1million or 10 million – it still is a success for all, if the idea is preserved.
FlightMemory, fully agree
sale confirmed
http://blog.dopplr.com/2009/09/28/nokia-acquires-dopplr/