I'm sure you realize the net was after payroll and bonuses, right?
One effect of this deal that I expect will trickle into the combined corporate culture is that we, being Americans, are not balance-sheet oriented and instead focus very strongly on profits. We've rarely distributed balance sheets in-house because the P&L's tell the story we're most interested in reading. And that mindset isn't going to change on this side of the pond. Profit excites us and we're especially excited about what they can do for our profit picture and we can do for theirs. The whole thing of being greater than the sum of the parts.
I'm really looking forward to getting rolling on this. Money in the bank? Yeah, that'll be cool, but it'll be forgotten soon, as I shift my attention forward again.
The things that excite me most about this deal mostly are the way they'll fill in areas in which we're sorely lacking:
1. A devoted accounting *department*. I've gone through bookkeepers like Spinal Tap went through drummers. Much of it because, though back in the day when I was a college professor, accounting was actually one of my subjects, I absolutely DESPISE counting or even touching the money. I just want others to count the beans and tell me if we made some more. That'll now be covered and I'll be uninvolved except as a person seeing results. And I'll see them as one of a number of metrics I can use to gauge my own performance.
2. A dedicated ad sales team. Face it. I SUCK at selling ads. The few times I've been able to devote some serious time to it, I've done alright. But it's been ages since I've made the email equivalent of a cold-call. I'm not a salesman, and the fact that I had to do it or it wouldn't be done not only made me personally miserable, we haven't come anywhere near seeing the kinds of ad revenues that real salesmen with real contacts can achieve for us.
3. Marketing dollars and effort. They have people who do it for a living. I haven't a clue how to do it and have always been extremely reluctant to let go of any money in the interest of marketing. I know you have to spend money to make money, but I'm a tightwad who prefers to spend money on computers, and then only when I see that I must soon.
4. An exciting and huge new set of features we'll be able to incorporate into the sites, making them supersites like Silicon Investor once was.
5. The ability to hire local geek talent and access to a team of geeks on the other side of the pond. I'm a geek, but I'm not the kind of super-geek we need. Super-geek has been hired and starts shortly.
I've always done best for the company and the sites when I can be more big-picture oriented while still keeping control of the geek side of things, and for the first time in years, I'll once again be free to be that person. And Dave and Matt can confirm that I really haven't much enjoyed my job since those days came to an end (out of necessity) some time back and I haven't been quite as effective as I can be.
So the best part of this deal to me is that the parts of my job I've always loathed and/or been poor at, are now the responsibility of people who love doing it and are good at it. And now I get to focus on the parts at which I'm pretty good and have at least basic competence.
