Today it was announced that NBC Universal purchased iVillage for $600 million in cash. I have mixed feelings about this deal. I liked the idea of iVillage being independent; standing on its own. Despite all the knocks the company has received, I’ve always felt proud of my association with it. So as the founding cfo, I liked owning shares in it the company all these years; it made me feel connected to it even though I haven’t been part of the company for a long time.
On a less emotional level, I wonder about the sale. iVillage’s recent performance has shown that it hasn’t just survived the dot.com boom and bust but that it has thrived. And, this from a company that was founded at a time when smart people wondered whether or not women were going to be a powerful important online constituency and advertisers questioned whether women really had buying power. Perceptions have changed so much over the last decade that it’s hard to imagine that these attitudes ever existed.
iVillage is by far the most important online brand for women and it has been for years. It gets 14 million plus unique visitors per month, hardly an insignificant number. Without knowing the details of what’s really underneath the hood at either General Electric’s NBC or iVillage or what their strategy is after the acquisition (only an insider can really know these things), it seems that NBC is buying a company that has the potential to be central to their efforts to revive their sagging fortunes. And they seem to have done so at a price that doesn’t leave people shaking their heads wondering what they were thinking. On the other hand, with all the volatility that iVillage’s stock has had over the last few years, $8.50 a share will make a lot of iVillage stockholders happy. The quandry is that, on the one hand, iVillage seemed to really be hitting its stride leaving many feeling that it hadn’t yet lived up to its full potential and, on the other hand, so many companies end up with nothing by failing to take a reasonable deal.
I just hope that this sale doesn’t provide yet another example of women getting paid less for what they’re worth than men.