Eran and Uri, great work!
I was the third musketeer at FotoNation in 1997-1998 for Zing.com bought it. Eran and Uri bought back some of the good parts during the bust, after Zing bought the farm. It was a less in, “don’t sell for other people’s crappy private stock, you already have your own.” This time they sold for cash, and I’m pretty sure they had little if any outside investment.
Under the terms of the agreement, Tessera will pay $29 million in net cash with up to $10 million of additional consideration, contingent upon certain milestones over one year. This transaction is subject to various standard closing conditions, and is expected to close in February 2008.Based in Burlingame, Calif., FotoNation is a privately-owned, 80-person company that develops innovative embedded solutions to improve image quality and enhance, extend and simplify picture taking for digital still cameras and mobile devices. The company’s extensive portfolio of patented solutions includes advanced hardware and firmware image processing solutions. Principal products encompass technologies for red-eye correction; face tracking; smile and blink detection; as well as other solutions for enhancing digital image quality. FotoNation’s technology is embedded in more than two out of three digital still cameras sold today.