AO Consortium

[detoxsmurf]

I think you should split the investors up into two groups. A group of poor college kids like myself, who want to give whatever they can and a group that can make a serious investment into the site. The serious investors would be the decision makers.

[MicroBurn]

I would definatly pitch money in, The members would know how to run it, I'll work my ass off, even though I'm 14. :\ And buy Antionline. But I think it'a a good idea members pitch in money, there's a hell of allota members here, if all or even only some pitch in money, I'm sure we can make up enough to buy it. I'd hate to see AO go down the drain. I love you all. And it would suck if AO died.
/me thows in money for Ao.

[mohaughn]

Originally posted here by bludgeon
I like the other part of Sitting ducks question. . .what is included. . .the site design, just the name, and equipment?? I dig the site, but like Viktor brought up, if we're just buying an idea that's been founded on JP, there might not be much return to it. . .not like that should really be that big of a difference if the people on the site just want to keep it alive and not make any $$ off of it.

The ad states what is for sale...


"(Acquisition would include the domains: antionline.com, antionline.org, antionline.net, antisearch.com, anticode.com and antistore.com, all site content, and all of the software and hardware used to run it)."

I wouldn't spend to much time trying to figure out how to do what you are talking about doing unless somebody out there has deep pockets and is willing to give some of that up to JP... You are working with a double edge sword here..

You will not see the financials unless you are considered to be a serious possible purchaser... You will not be considered a serious possible purchaser unless you can prove that you have the amount of money needed to complete the deal...

And you will not be able to get enough people interested to even begin to think about getting the proper amount of money if you do not have the business details...

there is also the question of what kind of debt comes with the company, etc.. etc.. etc... Everyone must remember that AO was able to start it's business because of some venture capital money that JP was able to obtain.. Has that debt been repaid?

[cF_nM]

Well when I first saw the for sale sign, I didn't have much time to check into it or think about it much, but I just came up with something here...I say we get together a group of people who are seriously interested in investing money (from $10 on up) and we vote on a temporary treasurer who will organize the first sales of stock of AO...after, say maybe a week of this, we anyone who invests the most into AO will then become a part of the AO board and will then make all the decisions (maybe the top 5% of the investors depending on how many there are).....just an idea.....

[Louie]

Lets throw an imiginary figure in the air though. Think about AO. It runs on a bunch of servers and the sun. You know the sun costs at least 40 - 50k. So figure all the hardware/software/apc's and then all the publicity etc ao already has. So lets pretend AO is up for sale for 1 million US dollars. That means if we had 10,000 members that wanted to buy it. We'd need $100 a piece. That's if you can find 10,000. Say we only have 1,000 people though. Each of us has to shell out 1,000. Now after that lets say 1,000 of us buy AO. Then we have to figure out some profit sharing program. Second you need someone to self advertisements. Do you change the business model and charge people to access the site.

How do you decide where to Headquarter AO??

Lots of questions to ask yourself. I think first you need to find about 1000 people willing to invest 1000+ and then work from there......

[SittingDuck]

This is all very nice, but this conversation will go round in circles untill there is a figure on the asking price. As for AO members running that brings in a whole new problem, who is willing to run it as a full time job. Who has more power, Where would the server be located, the lists go on and on. memebers in AO can't even decide if the anti point system is any good or fair.

Well thats it from me untill I see what the asking price is.

SittingDuck

[t2k2]

I think it's a great idea for the people of AO to own parts of the whole. I would love to own part of the site that is responsible for a great deal of my Security knowledge. I wish I could help with some sort of plan of action, but business is one area in which I lack expertise.

[R0n1n]

ok, I didn`t get a chance to answer soonner, and I think most of my thoughts have been voiced already.

I agree with the fact that we need a figure, how much is it going to cost?

Based on that everyone is in a better idea on whether they actually want to try and buy AO. United Airlines (if I recall correctly, which I may not) had a situation where the employees bought the company, a board is that put in 'power' and they make the day to day decisions, votes can be cast on big issues, but the running of the organization needs to be in the hands of a few people, you cannot have 1000 investors all trying to have a say in how the site is run, it just isn`t practical. The board will need to be paid as well, so those funds will need to come from somewhere.

Of course the good thing about that setup would be that everyone could own a piece, whether you can invest $10 or $1000. Although you still need some big investments (depending on the price, or unless you can get thousands to donate $10 - depending on the price) and as the majority of security practictioners are not millionaires third party funding would be needed, for which a good business model will be needed.

In terms of generating revenue, there is not a lot of advertising on AO at the moment so is it being suggested that advertising increase? or that a fee structure be introduced? all of these will change the current 'feel' of the site so that needs to be considered, the AO brand name (which is really whats up for sale here) has certain characteristics that need to be maintained, at least in the short term.

It is unlikely that in its present format that anyone is going to make millions out of it so anyone wanting to invest for that reason should reconsider.

Now, the approach could be taken that AO would evolve into a consultancy type organization as well (like what happened to L0pht) which throws open a whole new can of worms.

I think a major issue that would need to be addressed by any potential owners is do you want to keep the site as it is, a forum for knowledge sharing, and therefore not expect to make a fortune, or do you want to take the AO brand and run with it where you can?


Now if there are people out there who would seriously like to consider buying into AO then a private conversation needs to be had, I for one would like to be a part of that.

[cF_nM]

Originally posted here by R0n1n
I think a major issue that would need to be addressed by any potential owners is do you want to keep the site as it is, a forum for knowledge sharing, and therefore not expect to make a fortune, or do you want to take the AO brand and run with it where you can?

R0n1n brings up an excellent point here...do we/could we take the AO name even farther than JP did? I believe with the right leadership, we very well could! We could do much much more with it. I think it'd be great if we kept the site the way it is for now, but added some things to it to generate more revenue. Such as building computers...most of us (I should hope so, anyways, have the knowledge to build systems). We could also sell services such as (credit to R0n1n) consulting. Since AO is so large, we could easily have representatives all accros the world. We could eventually setup headquarters in some of the larger cities where most of the work can be had. AO has a LOT of potential I think.....

[cwk9]

I’m going to go against the grain here. The idea sounds good in theory but I think it would fail in practice. I doubt we would be able to raise the money. And even if we did I fear we would just end up running AO into the ground due to lack of organization. I think AO would be better off in the hands of a select few whose full times job is to manage AO instead of many members trying to share power and responsibility while juggling their day jobs.