KG4, <I could spend all day long going over "what AOL brings to the table"...if you don't know by now, it is a very, very moot point. I feel a deal will be done with AOL, because frankly, it makes sense, and both parties want what the others have, and both know, the other will get what they want over a long period of time, so they would be wiser to suck up the ego's and do a deal now.>
Very cool. I suppose I could muster a lengthy dissertation myself. Its been done numerous times here already as you note. My point is simple, I do not own AOL, I have no vested interest in seeing it marry ATHM as many others may. In my opinion, ATHM, independent of AOL, has the marbles in place to do the job. From Eric's post quoting. thestreet.com:
<Amidst the swirling rumors, Stevens, Excite@Home's executive vice president for corporate business development, toils away as the company's deal-maker. Though he's not nearly as well known as Jermoluk or George Bell, the company's president, Stevens is arguably Excite@Home's most important behind-the-scenes player, engineering a partnership-cum-investment strategy designed to maintain the company's position as the dominant broadband player.
Stevens, as well as other officials at Excite@Home, declined to talk about the speculation of a sale of part or all of the company. But if anyone can stabilize this rocking boat, it's probably him. An elite Silicon Valley lawyer/businessman, Stevens cuts deals that assist in creating a compelling mix of content and services on the Excite portal, a task that will help the company take on America Online (AOL:NYSE) rather than being taken out by it.
Far from being a bad fit, the hybrid of content and high-speed Net access is what sets Excite@Home apart from its rivals, Stevens says. "We're the only ones with a clear strategy," he says. "Which applications are going to be the killer applications in the first generation of the broadband future? We'll probably choose those.">
So I don't think AOL has what athm needs, other then being established as one of the first and being the present biggest ISP. In time athm has the potential to gain it for itself.
Management is a key. I like Mr. Stevens. Read the whole article to see a little more of who this guy is. He has vision. The reality is that with mega dollars, from many sources will they let him play it into fruition? While we debate, speculate, and pontificate, time will tell.
I'm willing to bet on them over time. I would rather not see them give away the deed to the farm. About a week ago I posted a response, I think to Wendell, who posted about a radio WS interview covering ATHM. In it the analyst used figures of 7-10 million subs for athm by 2003, not y3k. Without an AOL marriage.
In all likely hood something significant may happen soon with merger/buyout hysteria and internal strife with major shareholders..and so it may go. In my opinion it may not be the best and is certainly not the only way to go, over time.
A last thought, years ago I was going to buy AOL. It first came on and had a little run. So many analysts and others negative hyped it as an over priced balloon built on sheer hype and fool hearty promise I stayed away. Foolish.
I 'see' the promise of athm with experiential clarity and like the promise.
<Good Luck. Differing views make for interesting conversation, especially when both views are hoping for the same end results>
Was it Emerson, 'It is good to build castles in the sky. Now put foundations under them.'
We each see different blueprints and 'essential contractors'.
It's good to hash out.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Solid
ps- if interested to save the search for Stevens:
Erick Hachenburg, Pogo's CEO, can attest to Stevens' negotiating skills. In deal talks with Pogo, Stevens stressed Excite@Home's desire to get access to all of the games in development at Pogo. But Hachenburg was reluctant to agree, especially since his company had yet to launch its own Web site. Ultimately, Stevens convinced Pogo that its distribution network was its critical asset, not its Web site, and Pogo gave Excite@Home what it wanted.
"He forced the issue," recalls Hachenburg. "It was his argument that we eventually adopted as our internal policy."
Go West (Again), Young Man
A Cupertino, Calif., native, Stevens is a quintessential Valley product, a child of the "blue sky" generation in California that built a middle-class utopia on the back of the military-industrial economy. During high school, he wore a calculator on his belt. He entered Santa Clara University already four courses short of a bachelor's degree in math. He graduated in 1979, when he was just 20, and took a job with a defense contractor as an engineer, following in the footsteps of his father, who worked for 35 years at GTE Sylvania.
Dissatisfied, Stevens soon entered Northwestern University School of Law on a full scholarship. Upon graduation, he returned to Palo Alto and convinced Fenwick & West's Gordon Davidson, now the firm's chairman, to hire him. An expert in law and technology in the Valley's early days, Stevens rose quickly through the firm's ranks and represented a roster of blue-chip clients such as Excite, Oracle (ORCL:Nasdaq) and Electronic Arts (ERTS:Nasdaq).
So successful was Stevens that he was pegged as a successor to Davidson before Excite's Bell pulled him aside one evening -- while the two were in the final throes of negotiating Excite's $7 billion merger with @Home -- and offered Stevens the about-to-be-merged company's position of chief deal-maker. Now, at Excite@Home, Stevens is Davidson's biggest client.
"He's very quick on his feet, very creative," Davidson says of Stevens. "The thing that really shines through is his intellect. You can see that he thinks two or three moves ahead."
Tom Gimple, CEO of tickets.com, says he appreciated Stevens' rare combination of business and legal experience when the two were cutting a deal. Gimple is also one of several people who praises Stevens' pragmatism and his ability to keep his eye on the big picture and not let a deal get dragged down by the details.
"Mark [has] a genuine interest in getting a deal done quickly," says Gimple. "In the Internet space, time kills a deal. Mark is very conscious of that, and he tries to move very quickly. That's not something we find with people we sit down with."
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