OPINION: Sunday, March 5, 2006 was a busy night at Trade Me. The leadership team – Sam Morgan, Jon Macdonald, Jessi Morgan, Rowan Simpson and myself – had the job of calling all 50 staff members and telling them that Trade Me was about to be sold to Fairfax Media.

The next morning Fairfax staged a press conference at the Park Royal Hotel. Morgan and Fairfax chief executive David Kirk sat on a stage beside Fairfax New Zealand boss Joan Withers. Macdonald and myself crept into the back row as press packs were passed out.

In front of me was Bernard Hickey, the former business bureau head of Fairfax New Zealand. He scooped up the pack, ran his practiced eye across the media release and did a double take. Then he leaned across to me and said: "Hey MOD, I think there's a typo here. It says Fairfax has paid $750 million for Trade Me. Don't you mean $75m?".

Hickey's response, one of astonishment that this online garage sale had been snapped up for $750m, was typical of the time. The Warehouse's Stephen Tindall reportedly went into a funk for days and many commentators said Fairfax was mad.

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However, over the next seven years – through a process of staggered IPOs and a steady stream of dividends – Fairfax ended up netting $1.7 billion from Trade Me.

Even in 2006 the maths was impressive. A 50-person company that had $50m of forecast earnings, with strong growth and a profitability ratio of around 91 per cent. And Fairfax managed to pick it up at a multiple of 15 times earnings. A compelling deal really.

MARTIN HUNTER/STUFF Sam Morgan founded Trade Me in 1999, and had just 20 users including himself.

Last week another compelling deal was tabled. British private equity house Apax Partners launched a takeover offer for all of Trade Me at $6.40 a share. That's a 25 per cent premium on the recent trading price and values the company at $2.54 billion, about $500m more than prior to the offer.

While Trade Me described it as a "preliminary, non-binding, indicative proposal", the figure has been finely set.

It's at a level that means bottom-feeders and hastily put together consortiums of old-world media and scavenger funds won't bother putting in a cheeky counter-offer.

More importantly it gives all existing shareholders a 25 per cent premium to exit, off the back of a history of solid dividends and growth across the three verticals.

It also gives them liquidity with no brokerage costs at a time when equity markets are starting to look a bit iffy. A time when cash is king and if you can get yourself that cash while also enjoying a bit of profit taking then you'd be a mug not to.

KEVIN STENT/STUFF Mike O'Donnell was a member of Trade Me's senior management team.

Particularly when all the easy money had been taken off the table by Trade Me, so future growth is likely to be tougher for the business.

Of course Trade Me isn't one business, it's four. A marketplace business which stalled for several years but is now showing hard fought-growth of 1.3 per cent with revenues of $70m.

A terrific motors business that is delivering revenue of $70m and still managing to show growth of almost 13 per cent. A business that is almost 10 times the size of the number two player.

A healthy property business giving $38m of revenue and 10.2 per cent, with fewer properties than its main competitor but more traffic.

A good jobs business that's doing $28m in revenues and is growing at 14.1 per cent off the back of new "depth" products. And a lesson that its entirely practicable to run a strong number two vertical which is nicely profitable.

PHIL REID/STUFF Sam Morgan struck a deal with Fairfax chief executive David Kirk to sell the business for $750 million in 2006

The fact that Apax has picked up three other e-commerce assets in the last year or so shouldn't go un-noticed. In Israel they picked up Zap, a classified verticals business similar to Trade Me.

In its native Britain it took a major shareholding in the motors behemoth Autotrader. It also acquired transnational e-commerce solution Global E.

Like any private equity player, Apax will have a number of possible plans for the new assets up its sleeve and a number of possible exit strategies. But what's likely to happen in the short term?

First, they won't want to sour the secret sauce. A key part of this for Trade Me is a round-the-clock trust and safety team that ensures out of 300,000 odd trades a week, only about 100 go haywire and of that only about 25 are fraudulent; a remarkable figure.

Another ingredient of the sauce is a consumer centricity that dates back to Morgan's early bias towards buyers.

Second, Apax will immediately be able to strip out about $2m of compliance costs that comes from being a listed company in two countries. There's the economic saving, but also the distraction saving that comes from having your chief executive, chief financial officer and other senior managers having to stroke a global collection of investors rather than focus on making the boat go faster.

SUPPLIED Trade Me isn't one business, it's four including a motors business that brings in $70m of revenue and continues to grow at nearly 13 per cent.

Third, Apax will look at synergies and the changing face of local e-commerce with Amazon, Alibaba and Facebook all playing an increasing role in Australasia. Fee rises have meant a growing number of punters now turn to Facebook first to sell items.

In its first 10 years Trade Me benefited from an e-commerce xenophobia. Parochial Kiwis were reluctant to send their money overseas and had worries about items arriving or being able to swap them. Worries that have now evaporated.

My two teenage daughters are 100 per cent comfy buying off the likes of Asos, Zalando and AliExpress. Meanwhile Amazon's ability to put things right is now legendary.

Standing back and trying to put the whole thing in perspective, two things stand out for me. Both point to technology's trajectory to become our most valuable sector.

The first is that a youngster with a laptop and a couple of hundred thousand dollars tipped in by workmates and family can create a business that distributed $750m to its Kiwi shareholders. A company that then delivered another $1.7b to an Australasian media company, and now looks set to deliver another $2.54b to its shareholders, which by number are still mainly Kiwis.

ROBERT CHARLES/STUFF The Warehouse boss Sir Stephen Tindall was reportedly in a funk for days after the sale of Trade Me to Fairfax.

Adding in the dividend stream, that's $5b and change. Not trivial.

But the more exciting thing for me is how Trade Me acted as a combined agar dish and kindergarten for the next wave of local web entrepreneurs. I can count over a dozen local companies whose founders learnt their trade at Trade Me and now inject considerable value into the economy.

​StarNow is run by early Trade Me techo Cameron Melhopt. Retail software company Vend is run by Trade Me's former head of strategy Alex Fala. Health and beauty website Timely is run by Ryan Baker, who did his time at Trade Me after it snapped up BookIt.

Online retailer Trade Tested is run by former Trade Me analytics guy Richard "Fast Ricky" Humphries. Meanwhile home services website GoodNest was founded by former Trade Me guru James McAvoy.

SUPPLIED Timely's Ryan Baker is one of many successful entrepreneurs to spin out of Trade Me.

The Punakaiki's Fund's Lance Wiggs also did time at Trade Me. The full list is longer but put a rough slide rule over just these six and you're looking at another billon dollars of value, and they're just beginning.

In the coming weeks there will be detractors to the Apax offer and reactionary criticism that the 19-year-old company is not as good as it used to be.

But one thing that can't be argued is the formidable value its created for Aotearoa New Zealand. And that's no typo.

Mike "MOD" O'Donnell is a professional director and advisor. He is a former chief operating officer at Trade Me and authored the book "Trade Me – The Inside Story". MOD holds no shares in Trade Me but writes its motoring blog MOD's Motors.