Technology

StumbleUpon

Founder: Garrett Camp
Acquisition Price: $75 million
Buyer: eBay
Capital: $1.5 million from Ram Shriram and Mitch Kapor

The Runup:
With Yahoo's 2005 purchase of del.icio.us and Condé Nast's 2006 acquisition of Reddit.com, the market for Garrett Camp's 2001 social bookmarking startup, StumbleUpon, was red hot at the beginning of the year. The site had gained more than 2 million users, who vote "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to recommend sites to their friends and like-minded Web surfers. An unlikely bidder emerged in eBay, which has found success in a string of small buys over recent years while its core auction business has seen a decline in growth. The all-cash deal was announced in May.

The Payoff:
Because he stayed away from any big investments from venture capital firms, Camp says the return was substantial. "I had a great experience going with angel investors," he says. "They had a lot of industry experience and it was very informal." Camp says he would like to be an angel investor in the future, but currently plans to devote himself to running StumbleUpon under eBay.