Accoona's IPO Postponed As Underwriter Drops Out

from the still-a-nobody dept

Wed, Aug 22nd 2007 6:11pm — Joseph Weisenthal

Earlier this month came the surprising news that little-known search engine Accoona had filed to do an IPO, hoping to emulate the public market success of Google. Of course Accoona is nothing like Google, as its search engine is not widely used, with most of the company's revenue coming from dodgy e-commerce sites that it has acquired. Well, it looks like the company may have to wait another day for its invitation to the dance, as the planned underwriter, Maxim Group, has pulled out of the deal. Considering the company's shaky financials as well as the checkered past of its founder (in the past he was a penny stock promoter), it seems highly unlikely that any reputable investment bank will get behind the deal. So unless Accoona actually starts drawing users to its search engine (highly unlikely), the company wouldn't appear to be going anywhere soon.

Filed Under: search
Companies: accoona

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Meltdown, 22 Aug 2007 @ 10:47pm

Accoona on CNN
Accoona was running jungle-themed ads on CNN very heavily for some time. A happy female voiceover announced "Accoona, welcome to the world of relevant search results".

So I tried it, and it was mediocre.

And people who can't judge the quality of results they get know they have to use Google.

Basically things are hopeless for Accoona.

Google has ubiquity and brand recognition;
Yahoo has brand recognition and a huge content portal;
Live.com has Microsoft force-feeding us via Windows integration;
Accoona had stupid CNN ads...
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matt, 23 Aug 2007 @ 4:16am

and dogpile uses all of them in an aggregate in an equally fast fashion
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Davis Freeberg, 23 Aug 2007 @ 11:22am

Another Sleezy Camera Store
Between the credit crunch and John Battelle calling shenanigans on the site, I'm not surprised that Maxim pulled out. Take a look at their store front and their BBB record and you can tell that this was a disaster waiting to happen.

http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/0123.jpg

http://bbbnewyork.org/reports/busi nessreports.aspx?id=4046&pid=44&page=0
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