Last week, About.me, the San Francisco based started founded by Tony Conrad, rolled into public beta with an astounding 400,000 registered users. Today we were surprised to hear that About.me was acquired by Aol (confirmed by this True Ventures blog post). The fact that Aol acquired About.me was not nearly as surprising as the speed at which About.me was launched and flipped. Aol Ventures was one of the initial investors in About.me, which was called Pumpkin Head, when it was in stealth mode. About.me founder Tony Conrad is also an advisor to Aol and Aol Ventures so the rise and acquisition of About.me looks like a well planned out and executed strategy; the discussions for this acquisition were in place long before public launch.
Tony Conrad is no stranger to Aol. He had his last company, Sphere, also acquired by Aol and I was able to talk with him about those days and his dual roles as an investor and entrepreneur when he spoke about the new art of launching at the Tech Cocktail Startup Mixology Conference. Click here to watch the video interview to see if Tony left some clues about the acquisition during the session. Let us know know what you think in the comments below.
Congrats to About.me co-founders Tony Conrad, Tim Young and Ryan Freitas and investors True Ventures, Radar Partners, Scott Kurnit, David Mahoney, SV Angel, Founder Collective, Freestyle Capital and Aol Ventures on success of their investment with the Aol acquisition.
