I'm going to have to disagree here Mark, for a few reasons. First, I don't think it had anything to do with there not being enough money or VCs "pulling out". In his entry he said that they had enough money to sit lull for a few years, work hard on the same path, and see what happens but Ev wasn't satisfied with that. Second, I highly doubt that his investors weren't still interested considering that Ev and his team were some of the most well-known entrepreneurs from the dotcom bubble all grouped together and taking on pondcasting -- there was (and is) still a lot of room in the podcasting industry and I'm sure if any team could do well in it, it's Ev and his team.

I doubt that this will become a trend in the industry, just because first-time entrepreneurs (the kind that makeup the majority of Web 2.0 startups I presume) just don't have a few million dollars of their own money sitting around in an account somewhere, waiting to be used for a VC buyout. If they do have that kind of money available, why even take an outside investment? Why lose that control? Ev said that they raised too much money and didn't want to be locked into what they said they'd spend the money on, so he bought them out. I think it's a unique situation caused by one entrepreneur's conviction.

Ev may have claimed they had cash to sit on for several years, but the investors were pushing for an exit. Odeo has been actively attempting to sell for months....

I wrote about it here.

I hear ya Mitch, but when haven't investors been pushing for an exit? I'm sure that the investors didn't get into Odeo because their kids listened to podcasts and they thought they were a cool technology, they got in because podcasting is hot and they wanted to make some (potentially) quick money.

There are plenty of patient investors out there. Anyone thinking that launching a new medium like podcasting could produce liquidity, let alone a huge return, in 18 months is an impatient investor. So, they may push, but the entrepreneur has to push back. In this case, Ev and team would have had the asset sold out from under them, which isn't acceptable form of "pushing for an exit," if you ask me.

The investors got between 50 and 60 cents on the dollar back, if my estimate is right.

This is awesome for Evan, and I totally believe in the model and everything he outlined on his blog post about Obvious.

Its funny how I thought, I was reading my own thoughts as I read through his justification, as we have build exactly the same model at Better Labs (http://www.betterlabs.net) since Dec 2005. Most importantly, we have build this completely out of our Pune, India office which bring a lot more scalability for the experiments - what we call as the 12-24 month web service, beyond which the successful ones will thrive as independent companies. dealplumber (http://www.dealplumber.com), indiagoes (http://www.indiagoes.com), iNods (http://www.inods.com) are already in their 1.0 versions.

However, there is a BIG CHALLENGE of how do you follow through after your 1.0 version to drive traffic and customer acquisition, which will make or break this model for everyone who attempts it.

Its re-assuring though, to think someone else who is a lot more accomplished thinks the same.

All the very best to Evan, and his team.

While still too much in its infancy to be considered an immediate threat to the radio industry, podcasting does present the prospect of a growing army of iPod-toting commuters who take programming decisions out of the hands of broadcasters and customize their own listening.

Odeo's founders say they believe that, as with other old and new media, conventional radio and podcasting can coexist in the long term. If, through podcasting, conventional radio programs are increasingly stored and played back on the listener's schedule, rather than the broadcaster's, then the trend could have the same time-shifting impact that TiVo-style video recorders have had on the viewing habits of television audiences.

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