NBR Audacious finalist’s business bought by YouTube founders
NBR Online Audacious Challenge top 5 finalist Alex Dong's company Trunk.ly has been bought by the founders of Youtube.
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NBR Online Audacious Challenge top 5 finalist Alex Dong’s company Trunk.ly has been bought by the founders of YouTube.
Mr Dong, who is completing his degree in Information Technology at Otago Polytech, founded Trunk.ly, a social book marking and search service with his business partner Tim Bull in 2010.
Mr Dong and Trunk.ly were finalists in NBR's Online Audacious Challenge Top 40.
Trunk.ly automatically collects and stores links when users share them, and is supported by intuitive search, but would now be discontinued as Mr Dong and Mr Bull worked to integrate its technology to aid the link-saving and searching capabilities in Delicious, the pair said on the service’s website today.
The company behind the acquisition, Avos, is led by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen who built Youtube and sold it to Google in 2006 for $US1.65 billion. After leaving Google, the pair purchased Delicious from Yahoo, a social book marking service, in April.
Mr Hurley said on Avos' website that it became clear from the first discussion with Mr Dong and Mr Bull that the two companies’ visions for the future of book marking and discovery were closely aligned.
“Their technology and insights will accelerate link-saving and searching capabilities in Delicious.”
Mr Dong said Trunk.ly was excited to be working with Delicious, where there was a great team with ambitious plans.
“Together we hope to build the best way to discover and collect the web.”
Audacious challenge business coach David Quinn said the acquisition of Trunk.ly to power the backend of Delicious was a remarkable achievement.
Mr Quinn said while he imagined the pressure was for Mr Dong and Mr Bull to join the Avos team in the San Francisco Bay area, he would embrace the chance to keep Mr Dong in Dunedin to build his development team.
Alex Walls
Thu, 10 Nov 2011
Thu, 10 Nov 2011
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NBR Audacious finalist’s business bought by YouTube founders
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