Former Linden Lab CTO Corey Ondrejka Predicts Strong 2009, Acquisition

Corey Ondrejka, the fourth employee at Linden Lab who was pushed out of his spot as CTO  just over a year ago, has blogged a set of predictions for 2009.  Ondrejka, now Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy,  EMI Music, predicts that the down economy will be a strong booster for Second Life, shutting down competition while pushing users to look for more collaboration tools. All in all, he's calling for a 50% growth in concurrent users. At the same time, Ondrejka predicts that Linden will be acquired in 2009. While he's not around any more, his long tenure (and likely still significant stake in shares) adds some weight to his perspective.

"For the earliest employees, this is year 10 at Linden Lab.  For most of the investors, this is year 8.  With capitol markets in the toilet, even with the great performance I expect out of Second Life this year, an IPO is impossible," wrote Ondrejka. "Thus, the pressure of no liquidity -- from investors, from employees trapped by AMT, and from the increasing need to be able to diversify the Second Life product offering to being truly rebuilding the code base -- is going to mount, with an acquisition the logical way out.  Per the [Microsoft] discussion, an acquisition this year may be for fewer absolute dollars, but in the long run the deal would be more valuable as markets recover." [via Collapsing Geography]

Comments

[len]

He's probably right but it would be illuminating to hear precisely what assets Linden Labs believes have value.