Many readers know we sold Jupiter Research yesterday.

So why did we sell?

Many reasons. We bought JR for $250,000 four years ago and we received $10 million plus ridding ourselves of liabilities. Obviously we made a great return on the investment! But the return was not our reason for selling.

We saw a nice future upside with Research. JR has a great team of analysts and support staff. But so much more could be done with this fine business and team and we were not prepared to make further investment. Our focus evolved into running our JupiterWeb division and our Jupiter Images division. Therefore we had to make a choice on allocation of time and money and the other divisions won out.

Another reason for our selling was related to our sale of our Search Engine Strategy shows last summer. The relationship between our SES shows and ClickZ Network (which was sold with SES) and JR were strong. Both fed off of each other. But once we sold SES and ClickZ the rationale for owning JR was no longer stong or necessary.

Therefore a combination of evolution, future investment, risk-reward added up to selling Jupiter Research.

We worked hard at finding a buyer that would preserve the proud tradtions of JR and a buyer that relished and needed the employees. We think we found such a buyer in MCG Capital of Arlington, Virginia. The JR employees are some of the finest people I have had the pleasure to work with in over 35 years of running companies. Stars such as David Schatsky, Kieran Kelly, Mike Gartenberg, David Card, Patti Freeman Evans, Zia Widger, Pete "Patriots Fan" Sargent, Tommy Crawford, Mark Mulligan, Ian Fogg, Andrew Peach, Brian Kelly, Todd Chanko (if I forgot to mention someone I apologize -I write this at about 3am Paris, France time) and many others were a pleasure to work with. Many of these people could have jumped ship when we showed up as the only buyer for a nearly bankrupt company in the summer of 2002. But these fine people and others decided to take a chance on us and history was made as we worked together to bring Jupiter Research back to life. Today JR is financially strong and supreme and the best Internet research company in the world. Thanks to all of you. It was a good ride.