Marissa Mayer: No, I Didn't Overpay When I Bought Tumblr For $1.1 Billion
David Karp, founder of Tumblr, recently said he was still happy with the decision to get bought by Yahoo despite the fact that his company still isn't profitable. When asked if Marissa Mayer was happy with the Tumblr acquisition on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, she replied, "Absolutely."
When the interviewer, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, asked if she overpaid for Tumblr, Mayer replied, "No."
"I think it's a huge platform that has some fundamental advantages over other things that are in the market today," Mayer said.
"They just released a new blog composition tool that's created a lot of excitement. When you look at the excitement from brands, they can express themselves in a way that's more free...The response of the community to sponsorships [has been great]. More than 58% of tumblr users engage with sponsored content, 48% actually share it. There are really great statistics there."
Arrington asked why Tumblr wasn't in the top 100 mobile apps. Mayer replied that Yahoo was slow to launch mobile products, and they're still getting mobile up and running. She says when she joined Yahoo, there were only about 60 mobile engineers within the company.
"I think last year, it was the year where we began to make our investment in mobile," Mayer told Arrington. "We made great strides but there's still more to do."