Martech: Martech is Marketing Logo
  • Topics
    Transformation
    Operations
    Data
    Experience
    Performance
    Management
    Special Reports
    All Topics
  • Conference
  • Webinars
  • Intelligence Reports
  • White Papers
  • What is MarTech
    Mission
    Team
    Newsletter
    Search Engine Land
    Third Door Media

Processing...Please wait.

MarTech » Marketing Management » The Tech Investment Metric System — A New Type Of “Gram”

The Tech Investment Metric System — A New Type Of “Gram”

Instagram sold for $1 billion! Slideshare is being purchased for $118 million! Facebook about to go public for $100 billion! Apple’s on its way to being worth $1 trillion dollars! A tech bubble? Who cares. With valuations like these, we need a new way of measure the worth of a company. Allow me to introduce […]

Danny Sullivan on May 3, 2012 at 9:14 pm

Instagram sold for $1 billion! Slideshare is being purchased for $118 million! Facebook about to go public for $100 billion! Apple’s on its way to being worth $1 trillion dollars! A tech bubble? Who cares. With valuations like these, we need a new way of measure the worth of a company. Allow me to introduce a new type of “gram,” one used to value companies.

I can’t claim the credit here. Last week, I was talking with Google distinguished engineer Matt Cutts. Most known for his role as head of Google’s web spam team, Cutts is also an investor himself, as well as a pretty witty observer of all things tech. He joked to me that he was now measuring acquisitions in terms of instagrams.

Funny. I ran with it today tweeting about how the Dodgers sold for 2 instagrams, prompting Cutts to tweet that SlideShare just went for “119 milli-Instagrams.” That got me thinking more. Milli-instagrams sounded awkward. What if we had an investment system where everything was based on a “gram,” in a way that it could work up to an instagram being $1 billion.

And so, for better or worse, I give you The Tech Investment Metric System:

Feel free to use the image if you like, but a link back would be nice. Below, some annotations of what’s on the chart.

Forgetogram ($100,000): Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn’t actually forget about their initial $100,000 investment check from Andy Bechtolsheim. They just hadn’t formally created the company Google that the check was written out to, so it really did sit in a drawer for about two weeks.

Gram ($1 million): As I said, this seemed a good base unit for the chart.

Flickrgram ($10 million): I was looking for a tech company that would be recognizable as a big deal when it sold in the $10 million range at the time. Flickr was actually speculated to go for more than that, around $30 to $35 million.

Borogram ($100 million): I was pretty amazed myself when Andreessen Horowitz seemed to take flack in the New York Times and a few other places for only making $78 million off of Instagram off a $250,000 investment. Could I please make such mistakes? Given that making nearly $100 million these days seems almost boring, I’ve dubbed that figure to be a “borogram.”

Instagram ($1 billion): The now famous amount, of course, that Instagram went for. As for the usage, didn’t you see The Social Network? I’d put the clip up, but Sony hasn’t put an official one out that I can find, and linking over to them at YouTube, well, that’s like a guarantee they’ll disappear.

Googlegram ($10 billion): As with Flickr, I wanted some name to match up to this valuation to help contrast it against the newer ones. After Google went public, it was valued around $23 billion. That seemed a good contrast against Facebook’s impending IPO that will value it at around $100 billion. Google, of course, is valued much more now than when it went public and above what Facebook’s initial public value will be).

Facebookgram ($100 billion): Since this is around the expected valuation of Facebook, when it goes public on May 18, I gave it this name.

Applegram ($1 trillion): Right now, Apple is worth around $600 billion, the most valuable company on earth. It’s worth a little less on this chart from the Economist from earlier this year, but be sure to check that out. It gives the relative size of other companies like Google, Amazon and McDonald’s, along with facts like number of employees. If only we could get the wealth of Apple to transform the lives of some of those employees at McDonald’s


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


New on MarTech

    Martech is mainly about relationships

    Do it once (and only once) with workflow automation

    The anatomy of personalized search

    Why we care about mobile marketing: A guide for marketers

    Social media platforms see sales boost as pandemic shopping habits take root

About The Author

Danny Sullivan
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Related Topics

Marketing ManagementPerformance Marketing

Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

June 7, 2022: Master Classes

September 28-29, 2022: Fall

Start Discovering Now: Spring

Learn More About Our MarTech Events

June 14-15, 2022: SMX Advanced (virtual)

November 14-15, 2022: SMX Next (virtual)

March 8-9, 2022: Master Classes (virtual)

Learn More About Our SMX Events

Webinars

Data-Driven Answers to Achieve Omnichannel Success

Is Your Marketing Stack Ready for Omnichannel CX?

Outrank in Organic Search with These 5 Core Tactics

See More Webinars

Intelligence Reports

Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Identity Resolution Platforms

Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Sales Enablement Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Digital Experience Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Call Analytics Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

See More Intelligence Reports

White Papers

Realising the power of virtual events for demand generation

The Progressive Marketer’s Ultimate Events Strategy 2022 Worksheet

CMO Guide: How to Plan Smart and Pivot Fast

The Retail Renaissance Report, USA Edition: 4 Keys to Predicting Online & In-Store Demand Across Global Markets

Thinking Bigger About Marketing Budgets

See More Whitepapers

Receive daily marketing news & analysis.

Processing...Please wait.

Topics

  • Transformation
  • Operations
  • Data
  • Experience
  • Performance
  • Management
  • All Topics
  • Home

Our Events

  • MarTech
  • Search Marketing Expo - SMX

About

  • What is MarTech
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS

© 2022 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.