Remember Quokka?
I was reading recently that the founder of Quokka Sports has redeemed himself by making his investors (and himself) and pot of money on a venture that was far less glamorous than a broadband consumer site. You may recall that Quokka had an accumulated deficit of $42 million on revenue of only $2.5 million dollars yet Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget still gave the company a ton of ink. While he and many others were way off on this one I suppose it doesn’t really matter because if you had stayed out of internet stocks altogether I guess you would have missed other trains that actually made sense (GOOG). Alas, that’s another story…
To be honest, I actually think that Quokka was pretty cool and could have been a real business. There were really only two problems. First, they simply spent money the wrong way. That is, too much, to fast. Second, they were WAY ahead of their time. Other than that, it was a compelling experience. Some screens still exist around the web like these.
Anway, Computer Associates paid $375M Wily Technology this week. Wily makes programs that analyze problems in company software applications and Dick Williams, CEO of Wily, previously was founder and CEO of Quokka Sports. Good for Mr. Williams and good for Accell Partners who was in on the deal. Accell was an early investor in my former employer (RealNetworks) and these guys seem to just hit one home run after another.
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