Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 90% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

LiveBid amassed $100M in inventory before acquisition interest from Amazon and eBay

Matt Williams · FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams · Jul 31, 2015 · at 4:52

Matt Williams describes LiveBid's rapid growth in auction inventory within one year of launch, leading to acquisition interest from major tech giants.

0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.7s
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“And in about a year we're able to amass close to a hundred million dollars in inventory that was, you know, being offered through auction through our website, which at the time was quite a bit, and we then had, had interest from eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon for acquisition.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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