August 4, 2008
Austin-Based Thoof Folds; AV Loses Entrepreneur Deal
Founded in 2007 by former Revver co-founder Ian Clarke and backed by Austin Ventures, Thoof was designed to deliver news tailored to your interests, based on what you click on rather than voting buttons or other preferences.
Traffic peaked in October 2007, but by January, reports surfaced that Thoof was up for sale. Thoof's current site now redirects to Reddit, a social news site owned by CondeNast.
Also last week, Austin Ventures had another deal go sour. AV was leading a $200 million deal to acquire Entrepreneur Media, publisher of Entrepreneur magazine and Entrepreneur.com.
Entrepreneur CEO Peter Shea told employees in a memo sent Thursday that the company had decided not to proceed with the sale, FolioMag.com reported.
"There are several reasons for this," Shea said in the memo. "One being that I decided that I am not ready to retire, another reason being that the debt market has made it a very difficult market for [buyout] funds to raise debt financing at a reasonable multiple and percentage rate."
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