AOL buys The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post just announced that AOL has acquired it for $315 million.

The 6 year old startup started with $1 million in funding, and grew into a power house of online news.

Arianna Huffington gives some background to the deal:

There were many more meetings, back-and-forth emails, and phone calls about what our merger would mean for the two companies. Things moved very quickly. A term sheet was produced, due diligence began, and on Super Bowl Sunday the deal was signed. In fact, it was actually was signed at the Super Bowl, where Tim was hosting a group of wounded vets from the Screamin’ Eagles. It was my first Super Bowl – an incredibly exciting backdrop that mirrored my excitement about the merger and the future ahead.

By combining HuffPost with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus, and international reach, we know we’ll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform.

Read their full announcement at Huffington Post.

Thumbtack wants to be this Generations Yellowbook

Thumbtack is essentially a marketplace for time. When you buy a service, you’re buying someone else’s time and the associated skill and effort that comes with it. People purchase services to free up some of their own time (childcare, house cleaning, etc.) and to get the benefit of expertise they don’t have (dance lessons, interior decorators, caterers, etc.). Thumbtack’s goal is to reduce the friction of these interactions.
The founder of Thumbtack, Jonathan Swanson, put it like this:

We’re aiming to create a marketplace where buyers and sellers can easily find and transact with each other. To the consumer, we offer a vetted network and ease of scheduling and paying. To the provider, we offer the support of a back office and the marketing power of having a virtual storefront that we’re bringing consumers to. Thumbtack makes money from each transaction, and from the added services we offer to providers.
Most of the services purchased today are sourced, vetted and transacted offline, but this is changing. We’ve got a big vision–we want to be the infrastructure for the local service sector as it moves online.

Work on Thumbtack began in 2008 and they launched at the end of 2009. Since Thumbtack is creating a marketplace they have two different customers — service professionals, and consumers looking for services. They spent 2010 focusing on signing up service professionals and based on results on their site, they seem to have had a positive response. Tens of thousands of professionals have already signed up all around the country.

I see Thumbtack is what the Yellowbook would have been if it was made today.

Expectations

What to expect from The Startup Foundry:

We will be posting 4-5 articles a day. At least one of those will be focused on a startup that hasn’t made it big yet, but we believe will soon. We love startups and want to see them succeed. This is a place where startup founders and investors can call home.

What we expect from our community: The Startup Foundry is a place where iron sharpens iron. We encourage you to jump into the comments and share your insight with the collective whole. Constructive criticism is appreciated, but trolling will get you banned. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

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Please feel free to introduce yourself to me in the comments. I look forward to building The Startup Foundry into the premiere place for startups. All the best.

Paul Hontz