Startup meets corporation: Romanian entrepreneur shares how Facebook killed his project after paying USD 0.5 bln for it

Romanian entrepreneur Andrei Dunca shared for the first time the story behind the sale of LiveRail, one of the most valuable projects ever developed in Romania, to Facebook. In a podcast interview with his long-time business partner Sergiu Biris, Dunca spoke about the months of negotiations and doubts and about what happened after the USD 500 million deal.

LiveRail was a software company that developed technologies for online video advertising aimed at helping content producers monetize their inventory better. The company was founded in 2007 by British investor Mark Trefgarne and Romanians Andrei Dunca and Sergiu Biris and most of its technology was developed by a team of programmers based in Cluj-Napoca, coordinated by CTO Andrei Dunca. In 2014, Facebook bought the company in a deal estimated at USD 500 million. Two years later, Facebook gave up on the Liverail project and integrated part of the technology into other Facebook services. Why did this happen?