Bigfoot Ventures Acquires ChinesePod
jennyzhu
February 02, 2012, 03:11 AM posted in General DiscussionWe've got some exciting news to report: Bigfoot Ventures has acquired ChinesePod in order to bring together Chinese-training offerings that blend the best of engaging lesson media production, interactive web technologies and the classroom.
We believe that this partnership will bring top quality education content and tools for our users and the larger Mandarin learning community and help define a new blended model that's the future of language learning.
Your subscription and speaking classes will not be affected. We are also working with Bigfoot to offer some special gifts to our users.
For more details, please see our official press release.
jennyzhu
Thank you Baba. You've been such a tremendous support over the years. It's greatly appreciated.
bababardwan
ganxie Jenny :)
pretzellogic
February 02, 2012, 03:43 AMUsually, companies that get acquired by a VC end up repositioning the acquired company in some way, either by changing the company roadmap, or making changes that impact the acquired company's user community. What are Cpod's plans around current lesson creation? Will we see production of new/revised lessons decrease with the new owners? Right now, it's about 5 new/rerecorded lessons per week or so, plus a BST and a QW. Is that per-week lesson number increasing or decreasing?
pretzellogic
After a casual review of Bigfoot's portfolio, it looks like there's going to be some cross-sell/up-sell opportunities between cpod subscribers and New Concept Mandarin schools; maybe the opportunity for cpodders to attend a couple of weeks free at a New Concept Mandarin school or something?
jennyzhu
Bigfoot and we passionately share the vision of combining online, offline and media production. They've invited us to their film studios for future content production. It means doing more exciting things. BTW, the founder of Bigfoot Michael Gleissner is an entrepreneur at heart. He's been encouraging us to think bigger and more since the beginning of our discussions.
pretzellogic
Thanks for the reply. So it sounds like new lesson creation will increase, to include video in addition to the audio/pdf content?
jennyzhu
We haven't got into the details on that yet. But we all feel that we should use videos for things that really need a visual component to such as learning characters. And with tablets being a top device now, it makes a compelling case to do some video lessons.
bababardwan
"They've invited us to their film studios for future content production. It means doing more exciting things"
hey that is exciting. I can't wait. Not had a chance to read the link, but it's sounding like a great opportunity. Hard to imagine how CPod could be any better, but you guys are so innovative and cutting edge that I'm really looking forward to see what the investment of funds can bring. Yeah, sounds like congratulations are in order. gongxi gongxi . Thanks for always stepping it up and keeping us interested and motivated and finding new ways to help us learn in such a fun way. Jiayou. :)
jennyzhu
Take a look at their media productions http://www.bigfoot.com/
pretzellogic
February 02, 2012, 03:59 AMJust curious; did Bigfoot acquire Praxis Language and all the language pods (spanish, english, french, italian), or just cpod? And if it acquired all the language pods, what does Bigfoot's Cpod acquisition mean for subscribers of the other language pods?
jennyzhu
Yes, they did acquire all the other Pods. There're no changes planned to those sites.
bababardwan
great question anyway pretz. Thanks for asking it :)
pretzellogic
February 02, 2012, 04:15 AMCpod made some price increases a couple of years ago, and increased the number of offerings with things like courses. Can we expect any price increases over the next few months for existing offerings?
jennyzhu
No, we don't have any plans to increase prices on existing products.
jamestheron
February 02, 2012, 04:41 AM
Very big news indeed!
Having followed CPod from close to the start, I have enjoyed watching the company grow (through storms and all) and mature into what it is now.
I wish you best of luck and continued success to the new arrangement.
jennyzhu
Thank you for your support!
ouyangjun116
February 02, 2012, 04:58 AMCongrats to the Cpod staff involved in the deal. It appears Bigfoot is a Private Equity firm specializing in the venture capital branch of private equity. From my experience, most private equities end up making their money by an "event"... what I mean by that is that that their real payday is from selling the acquired company to another party or take the company public with IPO's. This is not always the case and some private equities do hold on to their purchases completely or partially for long periods of time. With this in mind it will be interesting to see what happens at Cpod over the coming years. At the end of the day, for Bigfoot to make a return on their investment they will need CPod to grow (so that they can sell them for multiples more than what they bought them or keep a steady income stream to fund their other ventures), hopefully Bigfoot is willing to invest in the proper areas to make this happen and allow the CPod team to stay the course in regards to their teaching strategy. Best of Luck!
jennyzhu
Thanks a lot!
bodawei
February 02, 2012, 08:12 AMCongratulations Jenny on this big development. It seems to me that ChinesePod has progressively improved its product - you've got a lot of loyal fans. I hope the new owner supports the kind of innovation we have come to expect of ChinesePod.
Is the ChinesePod management changing?
bababardwan
February 02, 2012, 03:37 AMWa, that is big news. I wonder what it all means. I wish you guys well. :)