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Advertising - Thursday, October 25, 2007

Skinny On Zango's Buyout of SmartShopper

We reported yesterday on Zango's buyout of SmartShopper. We got some interesting skinny on the deal from a trusted source.

The story begins last June when Israeli adware firm Hotbar was sold to 180Solutions (Zango) for a reported $55M. As part of that deal, one of the founders, Oren Dobronsky, bought Smart Shopper (one of Hotbar's main products) for $250K back from Zango and by he became the 100% owner of the venture (he had a bit more than 10% in Hotbar).

Dobronsky sought to raise funding for SmartShopper without success. Fortunately, for Dobronsky Zango was interested in buying back SmartShopper from him and was willing to pay $9M for SmartShopper. So to underline the point, Dobronsky bought SmartShopper for $250K from Zango and a year and 5 moths later sold it back to them for $9M.