eBay acquires Milo

Today, eBay announced the acquisition of Milo, a True portfolio company.  We are incredibly proud of what Jack, Ted, John, and the entire team at Milo created over the past two years.  True led Milo’s Series A round in November of last year (2009), and Jon joined the Board at that time.  The A round syndicate was incredible, and included Keith Rabois, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, Aaron Patzer, Chris Dixon, Youniversity Ventures, and Felicis Ventures.

Milo was a remarkable startup for several reasons.

Vision: Founder Jack Abraham was driven from day one by an incredibly big vision to fundamentally re-invent the eCommerce landscape.  Jack saw that the web-to-local shopping experience was missing an important part:  easy access to real world, real-time inventory.  The Milo team envisioned a service that would allow web users to search for products and find out if they were available in stores near them.  The company was founded on the simple mission of tracking “every product on every shelf of every store in real-time.” To do this effectively, a service would need to tap in to thousands of store inventory systems in real- time.  This is an immense technical challenge, and one that Milo’s team solved.  Today, Milo delivers local inventory results across over 50,000 stores.  Big vision, even bigger execution.

Focus: Jack went about the building of Milo with a rare intensity and focus.  He is an exceptionally gifted entrepreneur.

Values: Jack’s values also aligned perfectly with ours at True, because he always placed all of his value and focus on his people, his team.   Every conversation started and ended with how the team was doing, where morale was, and what the team needed to succeed. Jack and Ted built an engineering team that would best most in the valley.

Milo is also a testament to the teamwork and family we believe in and cultivate at True.  Our original lead to the company came from Tim Young, the Founder of True company Socialcast.  The Board of Magid, Keith, and Len provided exceptional guidance to the company throughout.   Our good friend Ted Wang brought tremendous legal perspective to the company, and in the final hours, Mike Marquez at Code Advisors was an incredible resource and advisor.   This is a success of a team of great people.  Thank you.

On a personal note, I’ve gotten to know Jack well through our weekly Coupa meetings, and this is a partnership that I will miss.  Jack and Ted have both been strong and consistent contributors to the True Founders group, and their creativity and talent make them two of today’s most exciting Founders.

Following the acquisition, the team will move into eBay’s San Jose office and begin expanding the Milo experience with eBay’s massive reach and resources.

To Jack, Ted, John and the entire team at Milo, thank you from all of us at True.  We recognize how hard you have worked to build Milo.  It’s been an exciting ride, but like all startups, filled with long hours, uncertainty, and a ton of hard work.   We recognize and appreciate all that you have done to get here, and we’re extraordinarily proud to be a part of your team.