I must be lucky (at least, that's what I keep telling myself). In December '07, SideStep was acquired by Kayak (I worked for SideStep a few years ago and launched SideStep.com in January '05). Today, I'm excited to announce that my current employer, Powerset, was acquired by Microsoft.
As I'm sitting here on briefing calls with reporters, I'm just in awe. I joined Powerset because I had big dreams about transforming search, but I've always been realistic: most big dreams like that just don't pan out. Another round (or two?) of funding is seductive because we'd have the chance to be the next Google or Microsoft, but the risk is incredibly high.
That's why I'm so freakin' stoked to be teaming up with Microsoft. Suddenly, concerns about scale, spam, capital expenditures, runway, servers, marketing, computation, distribution, etc. aren't our concern. Powerset can focus on what we do best: creating a phenomenal product based on deep scientific advances.
Much more news to come soon, but for now, I'm off to finish press briefings and then to celebrate.
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