Flash sales site Fab.com yesterday announced that it raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz at a reported $200 million valuation. This came just five months after Fab pivoted from its original incarnation as a gay social network.
So I spent a few minutes on the phone yesterday with Jeff Jordan, the former OpenTable CEO and current Andreessen Horowitz partner who now sites on the Fab.com board of directors. A few takeaways:
* Part of the due diligence involved seeing what merchants were saying on Twitter about using Fab.
* Fab’s revenue run rate was reported to be $50 million in November. It took OpenTable (OPEN) eight years to hit that mark.
* Jordan believes the online private retail space looks a bit like the daily deals space 18 months ago. So I asked him about a recent comment from KYNETIC exec Saj Cherian (during a conference in Philly), who believes the sector is ripe for consolidation. Jordan didn’t seem to agree, largely because so many of the current brands with deep subject expertise (Zulily, One Kings Lane, etc.) are producing big numbers. Not quite sure, however, why that would preclude consolidation – particularly given what we’re now seeing in daily deals (where consolidation is rampant, although that space was segmented more by geography than product sector).
* Jordan declined to comment on speculation that he could be in line for an operational role at Yahoo, were Andreessen Horowitz to become a shareholder. He said (smartly) that he’s really enjoying life as a venture capitalist.
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