@ SIIA Info Industry Summit: Deals Gone Wild; Audio

(l to r) Mike Kelly, Mark McLoughlin, Dennis Miller: An energtic panel led by conference chair Adele Morrissette with Mike Kelly, president, AOL Media Networks; Mark McLaughlin, VeriSignl Dennis Miller, Spark Capital, looking at the kind of deals being made today and at the pay/non-pay world. Some quick hits:

– Miller: “Way too much venture capital has been raised chasing the frothiness of the 90s.” AOL recently acquired Truveo for about $50 million. Miller says his firm approached Truveo about six months ago and tried to convince “the very young CEO” that instead of selling to an AOL, the company should take their funding at a lower valuation, continue building the busines, and sell it to an AOL a couple of years from now at a higher valuation. No go.

– Kelly has played a large role in AOL’s string of deals — “When it comes to me, it’s sort of how do we make money at this? Will we make money?” He says, “There’s a lot of rigor in modeling out the value, not just ‘we want it so we’re going to pay whatver it takes to get it.”

– McLaughlin, who handled Verisign’s recent publishing services acquistions Moreover and Weblogs.com: “You have to draw a distinction between what’s delivered to the consumer, and what’s delivered to the business world.” He thinks the business world will keep paying for information but consumers are looking for the value that can be added around the content.

- Asked about paying $25 million for blogging empire Weblogs, Inc., Kelly joked — at least, I think he was joking — “It was basically just about Jason; that’s what it cost to get Jason in the door.” Jason being Jason Calacanis, who’s sitting in the audience with partner Brian Alvey. (Note to AOL PR — Kelly didn’t confirm the purchase price.)
Wish I had time to transcribe more of this but mp3logo1.gif you can download the audio here . (49.9 min., 22.9 megs.)

The SIIA IIS coverage is sponsored by HighBeamTM Research

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