Last week my company (Open Box Technologies) put itself up for sale on eBay. I published a lengthy post here on The Roach Post the morning the auction went live that provided some background on our company’s decision to sell, along with why we chose eBay as the vehicle. Over the last week I’ve appended a couple brief updates to the original post, however and now that we’re within 12 hours of the auction’s end, I wanted to share with you what the results have been so far.
As a little background for those who haven’t read my original post, the decision to put OBT up for sale came about as the result of our recent inability to raise a Series B round of financing. We had been working to raise this round since the middle of ’09, however we simply weren’t able to secure commitments at the level needed to support and grow our business over the next 12 months.
After much deliberation and discussion, we decided the best course going forward would be to pursue a sale of OBT. We ended up choosing an eBay auction as the sale vehicle for a variety of reasons, chiefly to allow for the participation of the widest possible range of potential acquirers. The results have been interesting.
Here’s a high-level overview of what’s occured since the auction went live last Wednesday 2/17 at 9:01am EST:
- The OBT eBay auction page has been viewed roughly 3,000 times
- We’ve received a total of 11 inquiries from potential buyers
- We’re currently in diligence discussions with seven of those companies
As some of you have undoubtedly noticed, the auction (which currently has zero bids) is due to expire this morning (2/24) at 9:01am EST. One thing became very clear to us by the end of the first day of the auction: no potential bidder, regardless of their level of interest was going to place a bid on eBay. It’s also interesting to note that none of the companies that have approached us have inquired about the eBay auction in any way. It’s simply been assumed that if there’s true interest on the part of a potential acquirer, both parties will take the necessary time to reach a mutually agreeable deal.
As such and in order to allow all prospective buyers to conduct due diligence to their satisfaction, we have decided to let the eBay auction expire and conduct all ongoing discussions on a direct (i.e., offline) basis. In this regard, we have requested that all prospective buyer proposals be submitted to OBT by next Friday, March 5 at 12:00pm EST.
Going into this process, our goal was to find a cost-effective way to broadcast news of the OBT sale to a broad range of potential acquirers, the majority of whom were likely not on our radar, and vice versa. While there’s no question a good amount of work remains to be done before we’ll reach a closing, the eBay auction has proven to be an extremely cost effective (emphasis on effective) lead generation engine.
I’m going to append brief progress updates to this post as we move towards our proposal submission deadline of next Friday 3/5. As always, I’d very much enjoy hearing your thoughts, feedback, comments, etc.
One final note: I just want to be clear that The Roach Post has no affiliation with OBT, its investors, or team beyond my role as a part time contributor. A couple of you had asked about this in your comments last week.
